[010] MTSU celebrates 15 years of rock ’n’ roll campers on campus July 24-29

MURFREESBORO — The Southern Girls Rock Camp, formerly known as Southern Girls Rock & Roll Camp, will celebrate its 15^th anniversary at MTSU this month.

Scheduled for July 24 through July 29 at Wright Music Hall, the summer day camp will offer girls ages 10-17 a safe, nonjudgmental place full of creative opportunities. Registration details are available at https://southerngirlsrockcamp.com/.

Professionals will provide guidance in songwriting, home recording, band promotion, screen printing, band photography, body confidence, arts and activism, media literacy and music “herstory.”

“The band isn’t about gender, but getting young girls together,” said former camper Cary Ann Hearst of the band Shovels and Rope. “Showing them how to find power in each other makes for women who can play music with anyone.”

Hearst, who was named Emerging Artist of the Year at the 2013 Americana Awards, cites SGRC as being important to her musical development.

“As a kid who loved to play music, I was always straggling along with the boys who had the gear,” said Hearst. “I had some guitars and an amp; they had (public address) equipment and more guitars and amps.”

A former camp volunteer, Kyshona Armstrong, said she also had to prove her talent in a male-dominated field.

“When I was a young girl, I was taught to be a quiet and humble young lady,” said Armstrong. “I learned how not to make waves and blend in with my peers. I was secretly competitive with and jealous of my female friends that soared and shone bright with their music.”

Armstrong, who was one of the Nashville Scene’s 2016 Featured Artists, also hails SGRC as a positive place for girls to develop their talent.

“It wasn’t until I started volunteering with (the camp) that I found a group of women that were donning their crowns with pride and standing tall as if to say ‘WE ARE THE LIGHT!’,” Armstrong added. “(The camp) is a place where young women from all cultural and economic backgrounds can come together and ‘be the light’ for someone that they otherwise may have never met outside of camp.”

As always, the camp will culminate at 5 p.m. Saturday, July 29, in a showcase concert at Wright Music Hall that will enable the bands formed during the camp to rock the house. Admission is $10 per person.

The Southern Girls Rock Camp is produced by Youth Empowerment through Arts and Humanities, or YEAH!. The nonprofit organization was founded in 2006 to foster “the creativity of young individuals while building a community of like-minded volunteers and supporters who love the arts and want to share the arts with kids,” according to www.yeahrocks.org.

When she was an MTSU student, Kelley Anderson, now an alumna, organized the first Murfreesboro camp in 2003 as a joint project between the feminist student organization Women for Women and what is now known as the June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students.

No musical experience is necessary to participate. The full tuition cost, including equipment rental, is $320. Scholarships are available for families in need. Forty-three percent of attendees at YEAH’s various 2016 rock camps did so with scholarship assistance.

For more information, contact YEAH! Executive Director Sarah Bandy at 615-849-8140 or director@yeahrocks.org. To register for camp, go to https://southerngirlsrockcamp.com/.