The SGRRC Zine

So our stapling party never happened last Friday. The zine was still at the printer's when I showed up for class, long-armed stapler in hand. Jessi had the great idea of making little envelopes and putting fortunes in them to wedge between the staples of the final zine. We had a great time doing this--especially me, the old dog learning a new trick.

I left after lunch with a promise of a phone call by Anna, the director, as soon as the zine was printed. I planned to rush over and get it stapled before graduation later that evening. At about 4:45pm I got a text message that said, "They are all here and they are all in color!"

Woo-hoo!

I ran over and found that not only were they in color, but they were stapled too. AND they looked freaking awesome!! I rushed around the Gibson trying to find Jessi so that we could put the fortunes in. As I went from room to room I happened upon each of the bands squeezing in one final practice. It was awesome to see everyone playing and singing. I had only been around in the mornings for panel discussions, workshops, and lunch and really missed out on the actual ROCK AND ROLL aspect of the camp.

I found Jessi on the roof with her band, The Klassix. (Each band had a band manager who was a volunteer.) She was super psyched about the zine, but needed to stay with her band. I found another volunteer, Tommy Kha, wandering around and convinced him to help me put the fortunes in the zines. We dashed over to the Lounge where we found several more volunteers anxiously awaiting graduation. Everyone oohed and aahed over the zine making me feel very proud.

On Saturday at the Showcase, Kelley, the founder, actually said to me, "I got a chance to sit down and read the zine last night and it is the best one we've ever had."

I swear!

And she meant it!

There were only 50 copies printed, of which I got one and the 40+ campers got the others. I think. I did notice a few zines for sale at the Showcase for $3.

I'm tempted to post a picture of every single page here so you can see it in all of its glory, but I'm only going to post a few to give you the idea.

Front cover:


Back cover:


(I forgot to tell Hallie to put the title on the right side of the collage rather than the left, but we all liked how it turned out.)

Top 10 list designed by Hallie with imput from all the girls and another collage by Brannon:


The Country Gals (it isn't blurry in real life)--more about them later!



Centerfold of Ravad 74 and the lyrics to the song they wrote for the Showcase:


Teachers and Contributors pages (text by me, drawings by Jessi):

Southern Girls Rock-n-Roll Camp

This week I've been spending my lunch hour over at the Gibson Guitar Factory teaching a zine making class at the Southern Girls Rock-n-Roll Camp. I have to admit that I was pretty nervous the first day, not knowing what to expect. Little boys--no problem. Girls ages 10-17--no clue. I ended up with four really sweet and talented girls and an awesome assistant who is a former camper.

Monday we just sat around and got to know each other and talked about what a zine is. We had a whole stack of sample zines to check out and I gave everyone a copy of Fertile Ground. Then I tried to explain why a mom might want to make a zine without mentioning words like homebirth, breastfeeding, or circumcision that might freak them out. Luckily the latest issue is the Memphis issue and I was able to convince them I was semi-cool with the details of breaking my leg in two places in the derby.

Tuesday we busted out the box of art supplies and started making collages. Everyone was a little more relaxed and we had fun discussing what we wanted to put in the zine. I talked to Chuck, the photography teacher, about getting some pictures of the bands that the girls were forming for the zine.

Wednesday I was a bit panicked about not having any content, so I asked the girls to do some writing before we busted out the art supplies. I talked to Kelley, the founder, to see if she could get the band names, members names, bios, and lyrics for me to include. No small task! No one could come up with a name for the zine so I shyly asked my group of budding hipsters in Ramones and Go-gos shirts if they had ever seen the movie American Pie. They nodded. "Remember how that girl was saying, 'One time at band camp'?" They nodded. "Want to call it that?" They looked around at each other and giggled in approval.

"Maybe we could cross out the word 'band' and replace it with 'rock-n-roll'," one of them suggested.

"Yeah, we could cross it out with red lipstick!" another one said.

Now we were getting somewhere!

Hoping to have a stapling party Friday I told the girls they'd have to work on a few things at home so we could get everything laid out on Thursday. At lunch it occurred to me that everything we were doing was in color and that when I gave the girls free reign to pick out the style of zine they wanted to do, I never asked Kelley what our budget was for printing! Uh-oh.

Thursday I came in to find all of the volunteers looking very sleepy and hungover. Kelley, Jessi (my assistant), and one other girl are in an old time country band called Those Darlins and they played at Murphy's Wednesday night. Chuck had stayed up late too. But it wasn't too bad--Kelley had most of the band info and Chuck had all of the pics I needed on his computer. Once we got all of the band info together--there were eight total--we suddenly had lots and lots of content for the zine. And best of all, one of my girls made an amazing cover collage.

We ran out of time, so Jessi and I ate a quick lunch and then finished the layout ourselves. Even though she is totally laid back and awesome, she agreed with me that we needed a table of contents and page numbers. I was very worried about coming off as totally anal!!

Kelley said she'd get a few color copies for the class and do the others in black and white. A good compromise.

Friday is our last day of camp and I anticipate a rowdy stapling and folding party. With the one exception of having the Mothersville gang help me out after Jiro was born, folding and stapling has always been a very solitary act. I'm looking forward to sharing the experience with five future zinesters.

This is Kelley, who founded SGRRC in Murphreesboro five years ago when she was 17 (!!) and Chuck, the photography teacher, at the check-in table.


Here are my girls putting on the final touches today.


Here's Hustlin' Flow, a derby girl and volunteer drum teacher, and one of my girls admiring the almost finished product.


The eight bands that the girls formed on Monday will be performing in a showcase on the roof of the Gibson Guitar Factory this Saturday night at 7pm. All of the girls are playing their own instruments and almost all of them are singing original songs. It's going to be AWESOME. If you have a daughter (or a son) you should definitely come! Tickets are $7 at the door.

Read The Commercial Appeal article from Thursday for more info!

Those Darlins will be playing at the Buccaneer after the showcase. (Midnightish)

Mobile Airstreams

Today at lunch, Warren and I went over to the College of Art to check out the Mobilivre (a.k.a. Book Mobile) that tours the country displaying zines, artist books and other independent publications. I heard about the Mobilivre project a few years back and sent them a copy of Fertile Ground. A few months later I got a surprised email from a friend in Portland, Maine who spotted my zine on the bus.

I was excited to go and see my zine in action as well as the other zines in the collection. I was sad to discover that I had in fact failed to send a zine for the current tour, but I was happy to discover all of the extremely cool (and FANCY!) zines on board.

I highly recommend checking out the Mobilivre if it comes to your town. (Memphians, you have about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there! They head to Little Rock tomorrow...)

On the 17th, Warren and I are visiting another airstream--NPR's Story Corps bus that travels through the states collecting people's stories. I had originally thought I could go on and read an essay or something, but I found out that they collect stories via interview.

I decided that it would be fun (for me anyway!) to interview Warren. His birthday is coming up and I thought it would be something different we could do to mark the occasion. I'm sure he'll be really shy and I'll sound like a man, but I'm looking forward to it anyway. I plan on talking to him about modern day fathering.

For those of you interested in participating, the bus will be parked outside the Center for Southern Folklore from October 13-30.