The Mamas And Pop

Bergeron is one of dozens of mothers nationwide who are creating a new genre of music: mom rock. They write songs about motherhood, and motherhood influences their tour schedules (jam close to home, travel during school vacations), practice times (early morning, after the children's bedtime) and careers (record a CD, play the PTA circuit). For the past three years, these musical moms have coalesced around Mamapalooza, a May event in a smattering of cities around the country that stars local mom musicians and artists. Washington's Mamapalooza, featuring a dozen musicians, is the day before Mother's Day, at Ned Devine's in Herndon.

The movement's performers have all been in the delivery room at least once -- if not two, three, four times -- and many of the band names reflect that shared "Give me the blasted epidural!" ordeal and its aftermath: the Mydols, Housewives on Prozac, Placenta, Moms on the Edge. Their songs have little in common with the pre-K-friendly fare sung by smiling puppets; in fact, many could make a child run scared to Daddy. Titles include "Soccer Mom Stomp," "Take Out the Trash" and "Eat Your Damn Spaghetti."

Despite the attitude, the music is far from dismissive. "Every song on my CD is about motherhood," says Bergeron, 39, who is organizing the Herndon Mamapalooza and last year released "MomsOnTheEdge," a collection of her pop songs. "So much of what we do is represented as mundane, but it is such important stuff. It is what lays the foundation for our kids and our future."

Cue "A Trip to the Park":

It's not just a trip to the park, it's a chance to learn.

How to get along, make new friends and take their turn.

How [to] share a bucket and shovel, how to deal with a skinned knee, too.

That trip to the park may just be the most important thing you do.

Mothers who sing, strum and drum are not a new invention. In the 1960s and '70s, such earth mothers as Joan Baez, Carly Simon and Carole King celebrated their maternal sides through music. A radiant Simon posed pregnant on the cover of her album "Hotcakes," and King wrote a children's album for the "Really Rosie" television special. (Of course, many performers of that era were also notoriously witchy mothers. Flashback to a vice-addled Grace Slick, who joked about naming her child "god.")

The difference between today's mom rockers and yesterday's is these women aren't just trilling about the pretty, baby-fresh side of motherhood. These women are griping and rejoicing and lampooning themselves in their mommy roles, all the while cranking out some kickin' tunes.

"Being a mom shapes their music in a sense," says Judy Kutulas, director of women's studies at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, who has studied women's music of the 1970s. "Male-defined music is sexy, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, having a good time. But that's not the image women want to put out there as a good mother."

Yet it's that bipolar image -- June Cleaver vamped up with bleached hair, animal-print pants and a Gibson guitar -- that will flash on stages during Mamapalooza.