Author Offers Guided Tour of Rock for Girls

Jessica Hopper has experienced the indie music scene from all sides: as a roving band member, music critic and now as the author of 'The Girls' Guide to Rocking.' The Chicago resident penned the book to provide girls with the tools, inspiration and wisdom needed to start a band, keep a band and take it on the road. She knows a little about it, having toured with several bands before becoming a music writer. She hopes to steer young girls and women away from the kinds of door-slammers she experienced (e.g., "Your hands are too small to play bass.") But her refreshing observations may be just as useful and comforting to grown-up musicians who already have albums and tours under their belts.

Naturally, Hopper hasn't done a traditional book tour; instead, she's made it all about the music. Currently on her second tour, she reads excerpts of the book before acquiescing the stage to a group of musicians whom she describes to Spinner as "just incredibly cool, profoundly talented and determined young women who have made music their whole lives."

In the live setting, Hopper writes in the book, what's often most memorable to fans is the uniqueness of a show, not the fact that it happened in the city's hottest venue. Play in a pizza parlor, she suggests, or play under a street lamp. Her tour mates, These Are Powers, Katie Stelmanis, MNDR and Ghost Bees, performed Saturday at the Gowanus, Brooklyn performance space Littlefield in New York, a venue with one-of-a-kind cocktails that opened last fall. The artists are a talented mix of self-taught and classically-trained rock, IDM and folk outfits whose different sounds are an ideal introduction to the book's philosophy: "Making it" has infinite definitions, and "making it" is secondary to making good music.

With several all-ages, early-evening events that carry on into the night, the tour has put Hopper in contact with "the future girl rock stars of America," she says, "whether they are eight-year-old Jonas Brothers fans or discerning 16-year-old chicks into Bikini Kill and Crass."

"The first night of the tour, the mom of a 14-year-old girl who was there told me that her daughter had a flier for the tour taped to her bedroom door," Hopper says. "I was so stoked -- what you tape to your door at 14 is your way of announcing to the world who you are and what matters to you. I felt totally honored."