Mommy Loudest

Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2004

By Nancy Keates

 

SCHOOL IS OVER, dinner's been cleared, everyone's homework is done, and Suzie Riddle is anxious to get to the garage to practice with her band. When her five friends show up, she plugs in her amp and they run through a ditty called "Pick Up Your Socks."

A song about a teenager with a nagging mom? Actually, Ms. Riddle is the nagging mom, and her bandmates are also forty something mothers. The 42-year-old librarian put together the band, Frump, with women she knew from church and her local Montessori school, and now it's a hit on the Dallas community-event circuit with a punk version of "Mommies Are People" (sung by Marlo Thomas in the '70s) and a song called "Vasectomy."

There's a fiew wave of garage bands featuring Mom on guitar, Mom on drums and, on lead vocals... Mom. In Westchester County, N.Y., Housewives on Prozac has recorded two live albums and has a song called "Eat Your Damn Spaghetti." San Francisco's Placenta (formerly known as the Lactators) rages against deadbeat dads. Moms even have their own festival, Last month, MotherLode Trio of Garrison, N.Y., and other bands were showcased at a three-day arts festival in New York called Mamapalooza.

It's the musical version of the irreverent "memoirs" that are showing up in bookstores, and Web sites that chronicle suburban-mom angst with names Re Skateboard Mom, Mamaphobic and Hip Mama. "Mothers are saying no to the notion that they have to devote all their creativity to their children," says Susan Douglas, author of "The Mommy Myth."  

For Judy Davids, 44, who has sons aged 8 and 11, the impetus came during a neighborhood Memorial Day picnic in suburban Detroit. While the husbands smoked cigars and talked about sports and the kids ran around in a sugar-induced frenzy, she says she remembers thinking, "This can't be all." She raised the idea of a band with moms she knew from the local school. None had ever played an instrument, but they met at a karaoke club and soon began playing in a friend's garage. After only six practice sessions, they played at an open- Mike night under the name the MydoIs. 'You're good all day long, so it's really nice to cut loose," says Ms. Davids.

Road Trip to Cleveland

Recently, the Mydols toured with a Norwegian girl band, the Launderettes. This month, they took a road trip to Cleveland for Little Steven's Underground Garage Battle of the Bands-sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts and guitarist/actor Steven Van Zandt. Among the band's lyrics:

Ms. Davids, who is still on the PTA and coaches her son's soccer team, says she doesn't feel overextended because she's doing something she loves. But she says the extra practice hours have caused some tension with her husband, an architect.

Russ Ristau, another mom-band husband, says it's been a challenge to adjust. His stay-at-home wife, Tammy, took up the drums and joined an all-mom band called the Candy Band last year, and now he says she has less time and energy for laundry and cooking dinner. 'I got spoiled with all the things she did around the house," he says. Plus, he has to admitted that his wife's rock 'n 'roll career has so far been more successful than his. Mr. Ristau, who owns an engineering company, has had a band with his buddies for about 20 years, but they've never made it like Candy Band, whose most recent song-"Ken Lost His Head," about Ken and Barbie-bas been receiving play on satellite station XM Radio. "Having a gimmick is huge," he says.

Candy Band blatantly works the mom angle. Its Web site features photos of members, kids, pets and cars (Volvo sedans, Chrysler minivans), and a day-by-day diary with entries like "Yesterday I took Charlotte to teach her to ride her bike" and "Rebecca has an obsession with gum." But there's also a punk edge: A photo on the band's second CD shows the women smashing a piņata with guittars. Their songs, which marry old favorites like "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to hard rock chords, are big with the crowds at Detroit biker bars. "The guys loved them-it was crazy," says Scott Brown, a 42-year-old advertising executive who saw the band at New Way Bar in Detroit, where he says one biker Patron wanted to sing along with "The Wheels on the Bus.

Forget the Book Club

For some moms, joining a band has solved the problem of whether they'll go back to work when their' kids get old enough for school. According to the last U.S. Census, 2517, of all children under 15 now live with a stay-at-home mom. Psychologists say that at a certain Point, full-time mothers need more stimulation. While middle-aged men have long incorporated bands into their midlife-crisis repertoire, women were more often bogged down With PTA meetings and chauffeuring kids to after-school recitals.

Kathi O'Neil, who writes a weekly e-mail newsletter in Portland, Ore., and usually urges her fellow MOMS to buy Kate Spade invitations and Lilly Pulitzer sundresses, more recently advised readers to forget the book club and start a garage band. "First, and most important, YOU need to pick a clever girl-band name," reads an entry last month on her Portlandpicks.com. "You'll be creative, You'll learn something you didn't know about yourself, you'll feel young again."

Candy Band's Ms. Ristau, who just turned 40, says she doesn't see the band as a manifestation of a midlife crisis-but that's what her own mother has been telling people. "She's afraid I'm going to get a tattoo," she says. (She is contemplating one.) "MY mom was a stay-at-home MOM in the '50s, and she's worried I'm getting too out there. " But being in a band has helped Ms. Ristau's self-image, not only by giving her a feeling of accomplishment but alsoby making her look cool to her kids.

Mom musicians say their kids are their biggest fans-and the inspiration for most Songs. MotherLode Trio, a three-woman harmonizing group out of Garrison, N.Y., has titles like "Are We There Yet?" and 'Bad Mutha Blues." And Joy Rose, the founder of Housewives on Prozac, says "Eat your Damn Spaghetti " came to her one night after slogging in the kitchen making dinner only to have her children say, "Yuck, I hate spaghetti."

So what do the kids think? Ms. Rose's 9-year-old daughter, Zena Rose Marpet, says it's Pretty cool to see her mom play in concerts, and to hear the songs before anyone else. Still, having a rocker mom has its drawbacks. "Sometimes it's embarrassing," she says. 'Like at concerts when she dances."