“Either you’re the next big thing, or you’re nothing.”
In a YouTube clip that promotes this year’s Girls Rock & Girls Rule Tour, an unidentified member of one of the all-female bands is heard summing up many female rockers’ thoughts. For all the pioneer female rockers cited as legendary innovators — Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, and Chrissie Hynde, to name a few — female rockers are still looked at as something of an oddity.
“My goal this year is to amp up exposure,” GR&GR founder and Chief Executive Officer Gail Silverman said from her New York office just before the tour kicked off in Washington, D.C.
It seems clear from just a cursory listen to the bands’ music that talent isn’t an issue.
The show includes some of the “core bands” that have been on the road with GR&GR during it first six tours — including New York-based G-Spot (Silverman’s band), Loki the Grump and RewBee, plus local bands in each of the 10 cities (Baltimore’s Zoirose, Victims of Experience and Clarissa are slated to play here).
Although Hynde, legendary front woman of The Pretenders, isn’t involved in the GR&GR Tour, she often says what might seem obvious to some — musicianship is key to success.
“I wasn’t good enough,” Hynde said, talking about the struggles she went through breaking into the business. “[Gender] doesn’t matter in rock. What matters is if you can play guitar.”
Though that might be true among musicians, even Hynde would likely note that fans might see things differently.
Laurie Lindeen of the now-defunct all-girl Minneapolis band Zuzu’s Petals, writes about how fans’ inquiries about the members’ boyfriends or sabotage by other female rockers often tainted the Petals’ breakthrough.
“It’s confusing. We’re all supposed to be educated or enlightened feminists to some degree, yet we don’t have the competition piece down,” Lindeen wrote in her book “Pedal Pushers.”
That lack of camaraderie is just what Silverman and the others involved with GR&GR believe holds female rockers back. Tour proceeds benefit the Brooklyn-based Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls.
Kinship with other female rockers benefits all women musicians, and the work is paying off, Silverman said.
“Our mission is to bring exposure and recognition to women that rock,” she said. “People are really starting to hear about us now. It’s really starting to happen.”
If you go
Girls Rock & Girls Rule Tour
Where: The Sidebar Tavern, 218 E. Lexington St., Baltimore
When: Saturday, doors open at 7 p.m.
Details: $8; 410-659-4130
