Rock & Roll Saved My Soul

I have been given a most awesome opportunity to cover the 5th Anniversary of Rock on the Range in words and pictures for Kotori Magazine. Yet, Kotori is not just a magazine, but a "community of underground culture and arts designed for the emancipation of the human spirit." So stop by their site and to get a healthy dose of music, art, and politics.

Rock on the Range will be the the first time I have been invited, along with my husband, to officially cover a huge music event, and if you've seen my portfolio, it's a dream come true for me. Plus, I get to write my heart out for Kotori. I am super pumped!

I want to write a blog about concert photography, but I will save that for later, because that article will be geared more towards other photographers. But right now, it's awesome-story time. A personalized take on my childhood love of music that, over time, has created an entire world filled with vibrations, opening up new levels of consciousness, and making a difference in perspectives. :D

KellieAnn - 1996
Notice the nicotine-stained lace curtains

What I love about music is that it can connect people who would not otherwise be connected. My mother and I connected through music, and no other time. When I was a teenager, she and I would stay up late at night with just the stereo on and the candles lit. My mom, always with a cigarette burning between her lips, squinting one eye and drinking from a wine jug, looking like a big-breasted pirate in a holey concert t-shirt. And she'd start tapping her foot on the floor, succumbing to Pearl Jam's “Ten” or Alice in Chains, then she'd slap the table and start swaying her head back and forth and by the end of a song, we'd both be standing up, jumping and pounding the varnish off the tabletop, hootin' and hollerin' until our throats were hoarse and our hands hurt. "Have another drink!" she'd rasp, taking a swig and wiping her mouth with this look in her eye that said the fun was over when the music stopped. So I'd pop in another album, and hope for the best.

My cousin, Tony, and myself mock-playing his guitar

Good music starts with a beat, but great music comes from the heart. 

My grandfather only listened to Classical music. As a very young girl, I remember listening so intently that I was brought to tears not fully understanding why, so I listened to the songs over and over again until I figured it out for myself. I let the music consume me because it felt good to let myself go. Completely.

As an impressionable little girl, after endlessly tuning an alarm-clock radio in my tiny bedroom instead of playing with my friends, I bought my first boom-box for five-dollars at a yard sale. It was electric blue and matched my bike. I tied that sucker to the handlebars and rode around the trailer park listening to Genesis and Pink Floyd, singing to Jimi Hendrix, Queen and Yes in the woods by myself. My childhood babysitter, called Hannah, gave me my first pair of jeans and a cut-up Guns 'n Roses t-shirt that made me feel so much cooler than I actually was.

My mother may have forbid me to watch “Kids Incorporated” on the Disney channel (not that I was interested to begin with), but I was never told I couldn't listen to Robert Plant wailing and moaning through the speakers. I was only allowed to use profanity when I was singing to a song. And as long as I knew what it meant, I was encouraged to run wild. You can't cut a person off from their imagination, after all.

Wastelands
Metallica Cover Band

When I was in middle school, I quit both Drama and Classical Violin to play the Drums. I begged my divorced parents to get me a drum-set (a 5-piece Pearl Export Series), and they did so without too much effort. When I lived with my dad, he said I played like an African tribesman. When I lived with my mom, she paid for six-months of lessons with a guy called Roth in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Roth told me to bring in a song I wanted to learn so I brought Tool's second album, Undertow, and told him I wanted to learn "Sober". He listened to it and told me to pick something else and then we worked on Paradiddles that day instead. Eventually, I ended up learning a Metallica song and later joined a Metallica cover band (See: Gig Photo, above). I played in a death metal band after that. We called ourselves Anti-Justice and we played once at Peabodies in Cleveland, Ohio.

Moving around a lot as a kid, my drums got beat up over time. Rained on, smashed up, and set on fire in wars with my mom during a few of her binges. When I turned 18, I sold what was left of my drums before moving to the state of Georgia. A few years later, I returned to North Canton, Ohio and eventually married the guy I had sold my drums to, so I got the set back. Funny how things work out.

Drums at my mothers home
Pennsylvania 1997

That was my childhood, filled with music to keep the connections strong by filling the air with an amount of soul that I wanted to attain for myself. Music brings back memories, and creates new ones. A certain song (i.e: "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age) can even remind me of a particular season (Autumn). Music reminds me to keep on living, looking back on even the worst of times as if they were actually pretty good.

In many ways, Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. And I pay it back through light and images. I want to pay tribute to the music that continues to make me think differently, creating photographs with the same heart and soul. Music photography is a career goal for me. I am working my ass off to get where I want to go. Some of the biggest magazines in the industry is where I am heading. It's about time. Thank you, Kotori. 

♫ KellieAnn