By Andrea Sachs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Debbie Bergeron is lost in the musical moment, her eyes half-moons, her fingers hypnotically strumming her electric guitar. As the hip-swinging beat quickens and her groove gets going, she is heading straight into the Hendrix Zone. Nothing can stop her now except . . . 10 tiny digits mischievously creeping up the strings.

Annabel, the 3-year-old, the littlest of the Bergeron brood, wants attention. Now .

Mom wants to practice.

"Annabel, why don't you dance?" prods the mother of four, her fingers resuming their liquid strokes as if they belonged to another body, another setting -- a stage, not suburbia.

After trying to climb her mother's leg like a tree, Annabel finally grows bored and totters off, leaving Bergeron to continue singing "5 o'Clock Hell."

Kids are playing in the yard,

But I know what's in the cards.

I feel the tension getting high.

I hear each minute ticking by.

4:47 now 4:52.

Oh, I don't know what to do.

Luckily for the Manassas mom, it's only 8:15 in the morning. Five o'Clock Hell is hours away.

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.

"The festival is for women who have the same amount of passion for performing as they do for their children," says Alyson Palmer, the fortysomething New Yorker who plays bass with the pop-rock band Betty and performed at the 2003 festival heavily pregnant with her daughter Ruby. "We want to show everyone that they aren't mutually exclusive."

Palmer is executive producer of Mamapalooza, but the festival owes its life to Joy Rose. It was her epiphany, her nurturing, yes, her baby.

"I wrapped my head around creating a new genre of music called 'mom rock.' I saw it as a cross between a new art form and a self-help movement that would honor women in their role of motherhood," says Rose, who lives in Westchester County, N.Y. "It's about the humor, madness and chaos of a mother's life."

Back in the day (pre-marriage and children), Rose had a rocketing career in a post-punk art band and as a solo '80s dance club performer; she met her husband while making a video for MTV. A succession of kids (four in five years) iced her musical career, but after she was diagnosed with lupus, her dormant urge to rock returned.

"I had my mountaintop experience: What's my meaning in life? How am I going to change my life? I realized that in the process of becoming a mother I had neglected parts of myself that were necessary: art and music," says Rose, 48, who also underwent a kidney transplant. "I got off my deathbed and decided to become committed to music. After my children and being a good mother, of course."

With her band -- Housewives on Prozac, which includes a guitar player with a child, a bassist undergoing in vitro fertilization -- she hit school fundraisers, church basements, really any place with a stage and willing listeners. Unlike Billboard hits about lustful pubescents and overwrought breakups, the band's songs could have been penned by a cranky Mister Rogers: "Fuzzy Slippers," "I Don't Think Like My Mom Anymore" and "Pee Alone," about just wanting to use the toilet without an audience:

My needs are simply simple

Succinctly defined

I just wanna read the paper

I just wanna talk on the phone

I just wanna take a shower

And I only want to pee alone

Rose organized the first Mamapalooza in New York City in 2002, which starred 12 acts. The festival has since spawned shows in Detroit, Nashville, San Francisco, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago and Washington, and embraces poetry, comedy and crafts. Each city has a different lineup, as most moms can't get away from their charges for more than an afternoon or evening. The only requisite for the performers: "Mommy" must be one of their names.

"The beautiful thing about Mamapalooza is that it's totally inclusive. It's for the woman who wants to express herself," says Palmer. "It's not about the biggest star, but about the woman who needs it the most."

On a recent schoolday morning, Bergeron could use about five more hands -- two to make breakfast for Connor, 8; one to find 10-year-old Samantha's glasses; one to pick up Annabel's dropped cereal; another to shoo the mutt Walter away from those spilled O's; and two to play her electric guitar. Somehow she manages to crank up the amp and fill her suburban home with poppy vocals and peppy riffs.

Bergeron practices in the music room, a sunny glass addition that holds her guitars and the kids' pint-size instruments. The room is connected to a capacious kitchen adorned with children's drawings and cheery ribbons dangling from the rack of pots and pans. No matter which way she positions her body while playing, she is either in full view of her bouncing tots or within eyeshot of the backyard trampoline and jamboree contraption.

Reminders of motherhood are everywhere. But so are potential life-as-art song titles: "Michael Forgot His Underwear," "I Hate Brushing My Hair" or "Mom, He Tried to Flush Me Down the Toilet."

Between kitchen duties, sleuthing for eyewear and Cheerio-retrieval, Bergeron manages to squeeze in a practice run on two songs -- "My Guy," about her supportive husband, and "5 o'Clock Hell," about the pre-dinner meltdown that usually occurs. The tunes are fairly short, but on this a.m., they take longer than usual.

"Mom, we're late. Look at what time it is!" hollers Connor, his mouth crammed with buttery Eggos.

Down goes the guitar.

"Did you brush your teeth?" she asks her son. "You have terrible breath."

Down stays the guitar until later that day, or night, or tomorrow, or . . .

The mothers defy typecasting. Just look at the Mamapalooza rosters. One Horse Town's Janet Emma Garbe is a 43-year-old single mother of two adolescent girls who works three jobs and performs "whiskey and Jesus" music with Julia Kasdorf, a 44-year-old married mother of two young boys (both women are from Waterford in Loudoun County). Pamela Parker is a 25-year-old student, mom of a towheaded toddler and member of the folk-funk-world-reggae-rock D.C. band Roots a' Risin'. The Mydols of Detroit rage like Courtney Love, while the Mamasitas of Nashville belt out lipstick-smackin' country music.

The women's prominence and achievements in the world of music is equally varied. A few have national coverage and commercial play -- a tune by Jenny Bruce, who's appearing at the New York Mamapalooza, appeared on "Dawson's Creek." Others have regional followings -- Roots a' Risin', for example, performs at the State Theatre in Falls Church. Most, though, are local personalities who are making a name in village coffeehouses, benefits and women's festivals, and are selling their CDs via band Web sites. Finding a mom rock band in a Tower Records bin is rare.

"None of [these bands] have substantially broken through yet," Melinda Newman, West Coast bureau chief of Billboard magazine, writes in an e-mail, adding, "There is definitely an audience for this music, but if it can extend beyond the novelty level remains to be seen. Most mainstream listeners, even if they are mothers, have limited attention spans for such songs as 'Eat Your Damn Spaghetti' or 'Pee Alone' after the initial amusement wears off. However, good music is good music, and you never know when a fun song and strong marketing are going to connect to ignite something bigger."

Top 40 hit or not, the female performers have created not only music but also a nurturing, supportive community where they can address the same overriding artistic concerns: When can they fit in practice? Who will watch the kids while they perform? Will the last set end before the babysitter threatens to quit?

"We can't afford to abuse our babysitter," says Kasdorf, mother of Ranger, 4, and Buck, 3. "We can't hang around after the show and schmooze and bask. Or if we bring the kids, we have put diapers in our gig bag."

And sometimes change them, mid-musical stride.

"There are times when I am really ready to record and then my kid gets a poopy diaper," says Kasdorf.

One Horse Town turns its evening rehearsals into family-style social occasions. The band, which often expands into a much larger ensemble, including Kasdorf's husband on pedal steel, prepares a big, boisterous meal for the whole clan before it sets up the equipment. After the plates are cleared, band members rearrange the Kasdorfs' country-comfort living room to make space for the drum kit, microphone stands and guitars. The toys stay put.

When the duo practices on a recent crisp Sunday afternoon, the quartet of youngsters amuse themselves with computers and games in an adjoining room. With the kids contentedly sequestered, Kasdorf picks up her guitar while Garbe slips on headphones and pulls her mike close. As they sing about escaping the Boschian darkness (the whiskey half of their music) for spiritual lightness (the Jesus portion), their fluttering harmonies are the only sounds that matter. For the moment.

One by one, the children trickle in.

First Ranger, who bolts past his mother and runs out the front door without a coat. Then Buck, who trails him wearing his shoes on the wrong feet. Ranger soon returns to ride his clattering three-wheeler indoors, spinning circles on the hardwood floors. Finally Buck resurfaces, whimpering, "I'm hungry."

As Kasdorf goes to feed her cub, Garbe's youngest saunters in, a typical tween embarrassed by her mother but devoted. Ten-year-old Austin teases her mother about her attire (modish rancher) and her choice of music (if Austin were Garbe's agent, her mom would be the next Eve).

"It's cool that my mom can sing and everything, but I wish she wouldn't play country music," she says. "I like hip-hop, but I can't see her playing that. Maybe she could just play normal country."

Yet when One Horse Town is onstage, Austin is sitting high upfront, mouthing the songs along with her mother.