Rocking the scouts camp

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

WELLINGTON – It's 10 a.m., and the kids are just starting to stir, pouring milk over cold cereal to try to reignite their senses after a late night watching movies.

Waiting just feet away are guitars, a keyboard, drum kit and amplifiers linked by yards of cable.

At Camp Judy Layne, songs have always been a part of the activities.

Melanie Johnson remembers picking up a ukulele when she was a camper and then switching to acoustic guitar the next year.

Those musical roots have grown into her career as a singer and songwriter with the Lexington band The Bats and as a solo artist.

For the second summer in a row, Johnson is taking a few days off from her day job as a diabetes specialist and dietitian at Central Baptist Hospital to go back to the camp near Cave Run Lake to teach girls how to rock.

”I just love playing music with a band – rock music,“ Johnson, 54, says. ”If I was 12 or 13 at camp and a bunch of women came and rocked out, that would be the best thing I ever saw.“

That's what the eight girls in Judy Layne's Rock 'n' Roll Camp saw on Monday night when Johnson and two of her bandmates rolled in for a show.

”The show was really cool,“ says Amy Rice, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Somerset Christian School. ”The counselors got up and started dancing on the tables.“

The show gave Johnson an extra dose of credibility with the girls who were already digging her rock 'n' roll vibe.

”The way she acts for her age is just incredible,“ says camper Rachel Tussey, 13, an eighth-grader at Jessie Clark Middle School. ”She acts like she's one of us, with a little more knowledge.“

The knowledge she wants to impart is pretty simple.

”You can play just two notes on an electric guitar and sound cool,“ says Johnson, who whips out her seafoam green Fender Stratocaster several times during lessons, teaching campers 12-bar blues and the pentatonic scale. Those are simple structures that form the basis for a lot of rock 'n' roll.

The goal for the girls was to go from absolute beginners Monday morning to camp rock stars Wednesday night.

When they arrived at camp, the girls helped set up gear in the shelter near their tents and then started noodling around with the instruments. The girls picked what they were most comfortable with, split into bands and started writing their songs.

”We chose a Girl Scout song and punked it out,“ says Rice, drummer for The Price Tags, one of the two bands.

The Kittens of Doom, the other band in camp, wrote their own song.

”We've really progressed since yesterday,“ Kittens guitar player Kaye Crawford, an eighth-grader at Morton Middle School, said before Wednesday night's show beneath towering trees at the camp's Thicket Theatre. ”We've had so much practice, and we've come a long way since we started.“

Now, none of the songs are intricate masterpieces à la Radiohead. There are no ”face melting“ guitar solos, like those that Jack Black tried to coax from his students in The School of Rock.

This is simple three-chord rock.

”The point is not to be polished; the point is not to be perfect,“ Johnson says. ”It's to start it and finish it and do it yourself.“

She also wanted to give the girls a chance to start playing without guys around.

”That's not part of their social thing, to play in a band,“ Johnson says of girls. ”They take more chances if there's not a guy around who can already“ play flashy solos.

”It's good to have a place to start where you can go at your own pace and not have people look down on you because you can't do Eddie Van Halen licks.“

Girls and women, Johnson says, generally are more oriented toward crafting songs with strong rhythms and melodies and thoughtful lyrics than trying to show how quickly their fingers can fly across the fret board.

Rachel admits she probably would have been intimidated to play in a band with guys prior to the rock camp, ”but now, I'll step right in there.“

In addition to holding their own in a band, Rachel and the others learned rock 'n' roll isn't all spotlights, cheers and making the theater take all the green M&M's out of your candy dish.

After hacking out their songs, plus an all-group blues song, the girls experienced the joy of being their own roadies.

As the sun set, they hauled their amps and axes onto the stage and tried to sort out the ”spaghetti wire“ that had become tangled up in a crate.

The rockers allowed they had some butterflies in their stomachs while waiting for their show in front of the other campers.

”I'm excited, and I'm a bit worried I'm going to mess up with the drums,“ says Mallory Sailors, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at St. John Catholic School in Sadieville, who pulled double duty as drummer for the Kittens and lead singer for the Price Tags.

”Even if we mess up, it's not like everyone is going to say "ha, ha,'“ says Bryan Station High School freshman Taylor Howlett, 14, bassist for the Kittens. ”People here are cool.“

The bands get a little warm-up from other campers, including the Brownies, who sing I'm a Little Teapot to the tune of Queen's We Will Rock You.

When the show goes on, the camping musicians get a charge from a crowd that sings along to their choruses and cheers.

The Rock campers all gather on stage for that group blues song, which goes something like:

I haven't had a shower

In at least three days

When I walk down the trail, even the skunks run away

It's just one of those things

At Camp Judy Layne

And I can't wait to come back again

It's a lyric that rings true for the campers, several of whom hope to return to the music camp. But some won't wait that long to rock.

”When I get home, I'm getting together with a friend of mine, and we're starting a band,“ says Kittens singer Lisa O'Connell, a 17-year-old Boone County High School senior.

First things first for the Price Tags' axe woman, Rachel: ”I'm asking my parents to get me a guitar.“

Hearing that, Johnson pumps a fist in the air and says, ”Mission accomplished.“