It’s a Saturday night at the Wicker Park Urban Outfitters and the punky all-girl trio Gamine Thief is playing in the second-floor men’s footwear pagoda. Flams and feedback fill the store, and fans and supporters stand side by side with curious shoppers, potential purchases in hand. The spectacle, part of a benefit for the Girls Rock! Chicago summer camp, has lured in two plump-faced girls no older than ten who are cruising around on their own. Though they aren’t campers, they are the camp’s target demographic: they love music, all kinds. The girls nod in unison; this is the first time they’ve ever seen a rock band. After two songs they depart from their hiding spot inside a rack of men’s pants and scurry downstairs, where they spend the rest of the set covertly browsing a book of sex advice.
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At Girls Rock! Chicago, a weeklong summer day camp, girls ages 9 through 16 can accomplish more than some indie rockers will by 25: they receive basic music instruction, form bands, write songs, and get to perform in a showcase at Schubas. But the camp is about more than just teaching the girls killer drum fills or how to tune a bass. “Girls watch a lot of American Idol and that is their idea of ‘women in music,’” says camp president and cofounder Emily Easton. “We show them another way.”
Easton and her cofounders–Heather Lember, Alison Murray, and Renee Neuner, the three members of Gamine Thief–have formed a nine-member board and successfully applied for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. No aspiring rocker will be turned away for lack of funds: tuition is on a sliding scale and ten scholarship spots have been reserved for underprivileged girls who will be culled through partnerships with Latinos Progressando and the YWCA Rise Children’s Center.
O’Keefe continues to practice on an electric guitar loaned to her by one of the counselors at the end of camp last summer. She says her material is mostly “dark funk and funny songs.”
