Ok, so Emma, who is 10 and lives in Atlanta, has asked if I could start an advice section, for girls with questions. I was planning on it, but have been too busy napping and riding my bike to get around to it. SO. If you have a question–a technical question, or anything about music, playing in a band, anything you need help with, write in:
msjessicahopper@gmail.com
If I cannot answer your question, I will find some who can, and will post the answers here.

Demi Lovato debuts at #1.

Just interviewed Mariam from Wildbirds and Peacedrums, her wisdom to be shared on this here blog shortly. I think her band is a really rad example of what you can do with two people. Just drums and singing, and yet it’s so musical, it basic but it’s not simple. Both her and the drummer doing a lot to fill it up. Plus, she’s got such a cool voice. Here’s a video:

and also, a video from PJ Harvey debuting a new song at a festival in England this last week. She’s playing Autoharp along with a prerecorded sample track. Great example of using non-rock instruments to rock.

Autoharps are usually used in folk, country, bluegrass and Celtic music.
Here’s June Carter Cash shredding on the Autoharp. She’s playing so hard she’s snapping strings!

June’s mom, Maybelle Carter, was an ultra influential force in early country music. Here she is with an autoharp on the Johnny Cash show. Johnny testifies about her picking style.

ZHING ZHING!

Gossip covering Talking Heads “Psycho Killer” this past weekend in Seattle.

Marissa Paternoster (guitarist/frontlady for Screaming Females) and I have a convo about learning to play. We interviewed each other for about an hour, but I accidentally taped over most of it when I interviewed some kids in a merch tent at a festival the week after. MY BAD. Meanwhile, Marissa’s band is opening for Dead Weather right now, playing to 4000 people a night, and if the reviews I am seeing are correct–she/her band is mopping the floor with Dead Weather, blowing them off the stage, essentially. DANG!

I know every third post on here is like “OH MY GOSH! ISN’T THIS EXCITING?” but… well, it all is! Lucia Lucia is on the 8.24/DC date of the Rocking & Reading tour and I LOVE THEM.

An idea, or a hunch/tip: Every girl I have met at readings who has on this same COOL purple guitar shaped purse–as seen above on this cool guitarist/drummer in NYC–those girls always have said they are struggling to find a bandmate or a band to join. Which means–all you have to do is look for a girl with this purse and SHAZZAAM! there is your band mate! Find each other, girls of the purple purse! It’s the mark of the rocking girls.

My friend Ritchey who is my penpal and musician/blogger, wrote a really nice review of the book on her blog, but in it, included some info I wanted to share:

There have always been women in music, and lots of them, but they have been ghettoized by bastions of pop culture information like Rolling Stone, who for years would include a few token women in whatever B.S. “Greatest Guitarists” or “Best Songwriters” annual lists and call it good. This makes it look like Patti Smith was the only woman making music for like 20 years, but obviously this is not true. We have always been here, and we will always be here. One of the earliest extant composers IN HISTORY is a woman–Hildegard of Bingen–who composed in the year ONE THOUSAND and was revered by Kings and Popes and Bishops from all over Europe. For a time in Paris after Lully’s death, the most famous and beloved opera composer was a woman–Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre–who was actually supported financially by Louis XIV because she was such a genius. Clara Schumann was much more famous during her lifetime than her husband, crazy ol’ Robert. Sister Rosetta Tharpe is basically the official first person to truly shred on an electric guitar. Early Blues was so associated with women (Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, etc.), in fact, that when record companies finally started marketing Blues albums made by men (à la Blind Lemon Jefferson), they literally put promotional taglines on the albums that said things like “Plays the Blues almost as good as a woman!”

Women have always been in music, but times change and the powers that be no longer want to include us in the story. But the story is just a story people tell. It’s not the whole truth. This is a powerful message for some little girl whose male friends are telling her she shouldn’t play the guitar but should just sing, or just watch, or whatever.

In an interview about her latest movie, Zooey Deschanel talks about being a musician as well–I am a big fan of her She & Him record–but I had no idea she rocked a uke as well:

ESQ: What instruments do you play?

ZD: Piano and guitar. I can kind of play a little bit of ukulele and pedal steel guitar.

ESQ: Do you prefer one over the other when you’re writing songs?

ZD: Well, I mainly write on the piano, because most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I’m not a great guitar player by any means. I’m not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don’t play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot.

ESQ: But which is your favorite?

ZD: Well, my piano’s really beautiful. I actually have two pianos. I have a Yamaha upright from the ’60s that’s blond, wood, and black, and I also have one from the ’20s from Chicago — not a well-known brand or anything. I have a banjo ukulele from the ’20s that’s beautiful. And then I have a 1952 Martin guitar, acoustic. I have some really awesome things.

Here are some pics of former Mika Miko drummer Kate Hall and her art show. I am a big fan of her work, even though it took her away from such a rad band.