Deborah Carr stands beside a piano, addressing 27 women at Bayside Presbyterian Church in Virginia Beach. She leads them in breathing practice, asking them to hold their hands a short distance from their faces and blow gently, as if through a straw. Soon, sounds of “ooo,” “looo,” “meh,” “seh,” and “sah” waft through the room. Grey-haired women stand next to younger blondes and brunettes, wearing Birkenstocks, sneakers, sandals with kitten heels, comfortable blouses, and blue jeans. Even though they are only warming up, their sound is heavenly.

On the other side of town, blue-jean clad women rock it out in the early evening hours before the opening of the earthy Squire’s Club, one of Norfolk’s oldest after-hours clubs on East Little Creek Road. And somewhere on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, a published author is playing with a few chords to match a song she’s writing, wondering where and when her next gig will be.

It doesn’t matter what genre or generation, women love to sing and play together. The simpatico of sisterhood brings creativity to a new level. Groups like The Dixie Chicks, The Indigo Girls, The Runaways, The Go-Gos, and even crossover classical groups like “bond” bring women’s talent into the limelight. In our region, while some groups are polished, professional, and awe inspiring, others serve to free dreams and stories held deep inside, encouraging women with messages of peace and power. Still others just get together for musical fun.

ATTENTION TO PERFECTION

“Let me see your teeth! It’s necessary to get your projection going,” Deborah L. Carr tells the women of Bellissima. She’s been the artistic director and conductor of the group since it began in 2001.

It is the first fall rehearsal for their tenth season. Bellissima is practicing for a concert featuring Deborah’s compositions, much of it poetry set to music. One piece, “Warning,” is based on the familiar poem that begins: “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple.” The women falter a bit over certain phrases. Deborah insists that they get it right.

“Pay strict attention to each note,” she says, adding, “No sliding; you have to be right on it.” The women chatter, ruffling pages of music, but heed their director.

Among the sopranos is Barbara Galonsky, one of the founding singers in the group. A Pennsylvania native with Polish family roots, Barbara has sung with church choirs and other groups like Symphonicity and Schola Cantorum, founded at Virginia Wesleyan College. Music has always been part of her life.

“There was always music in our house growing up. My father taught all of us to play an instrument …and there were nine of us!” she said. Barbara received piano lessons from her dad and from a “sweet Italian lady,” who gave her stars for her beginning efforts. But Dad, a self-taught musician, was a stern taskmaster who made her practice, practice, practice.

Now that she’s a member of Bellissima, all that attention to perfection has paid off.

“We have to audition every year, with a piece of music we have never seen before,” Barbara explained. Rarely are unprepared singers invited back to perform. Standards are high.

Part of the thrill of Bellissima is the blend of sopranos and altos, the melding of voices from women who know how to sing well, and a director who creates sound pictures with her harmonies. It’s serious music, but it’s absolutely a joy for Barbara.

“Sometimes when we sing a very profoundly sad piece, it really is the most beautiful,” Barbara said. “What you can’t always speak in words, you can somehow express in music.”

Barbara admits that just about anyone can join a church choir, but being part of this group has stretched her musically, singing with more than two dozen women who have impressive musical resumes.

“I always want to be doing something new, learning something more,” she said with the confidence of a woman who has been involved in music for a lifetime.

FEISTY FOLK ROCK

Other groups form out of a desire for musical camaraderie. That’s the case with a group on the Eastern Shore called Dirt Road Bitch, also known as DRB. The women couldn’t be more different, but somehow the music resonates. Four women joined their friend, author and ODU professor Sheri Reynolds, and helped turn one of her long-held dreams into reality. Eclectic? You can say that. Well trained? Not at all. But as Sheri faced her fortieth birthday, she mentioned she had always wanted to sing with a band. Three years later, DRB has a loyal following and a repertoire of more than a hundred songs, despite a rugged beginning.

“I had a guitar, but I didn’t really know anything beyond D, G, and C chords,” Sheri explained. “My friend Barbara had a keyboard, and it was up in the attic, but she didn’t know how to play it, except for a few Christmas songs.”

“Our friend Andie knew a guy who needed a place to keep his drums, so she became our drummer, and our friend Sara said she would be the bass player,” Sheri continued. “And our friend Sophie wanted to be the banjo player.”

They scheduled a meeting, sang a little karaoke to open up their voices, and the rest, as they say on their website, is history. The group planned an event several months in the future and started learning from each other and friends who had more advanced music skills. More than 80 people came to their first concert, not long after Sheri’s birthday. Sheri describes their musical genre as “country-folk-rock.”

“We started out sounding like a 6th-grade band, playing songs with easy chord changes like ‘These Boots Were Made for Walkin,’” she said. “But it was huge for us!”

The band’s name was kind of a joke. After talking about the fact that the original band mates had grown up in rural areas, one of the members showed up at practice with t-shirts and notepads emblazoned with Dirt Road Bitch. The name seemed to express their proud, independent, creative selves. For Sheri, that means singing with all her energy. As a young girl, Sheri admired a woman in her church choir who sang with great power, almost like Loretta Lynn. That experience informed her vocal style.

“I belt it out; I’m not going to bother if I can’t do that,” she said. However, now that the band has performed in a number of venues—including community events and weddings—she’s learning more about vocal dynamics. They try to learn new songs for each gig.

“One of the most amazing things about being in this group is that all of us were not close friends; we were acquaintances who were fun to hang out with,” Sheri said. “When we started, we had different styles of music, different sorts of values, but now we’re like sisters. It wasn’t always easy to get along. Sometimes we really pushed each other in some hard ways, and we had some blowups and a lot of chances to grow.”

“Part of what we bring is the sassy, middle-aged woman, a ‘we are good’ kind of energy,” she added.

After three years, Sheri is most comfortable with the group’s pattern of planning a gig several months in advance and then practicing enough to make it work. There is no concert on the calendar as of this time. The band mates have scattered, summer is over, and they are back at work. Sheri’s teaching schedule at ODU and writing keep her busy, and the band’s drummer has moved to Texas. A new banjo player, Erika, has joined the band with years of musical proficiency.

“She can out play all of us,” said Sheri.

But something else is happening that makes her artistic self happy. Sheri Reynolds, beloved Southern contemporary fiction writer, storyteller, and playwright, is beginning to write songs.

“I get these ideas and they’re sort of like stories,” she said smiling. “I’m putting chords to them. I just wrote one called ‘Apostolic Girls,’ and it’s really funny.”

Perhaps, if this trend continues, people unfamiliar with Sheri’s books may know her for her work as a singer- songwriter.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” she mused.

SOUL JOURNEYS

The world of rock has known all-female bands, but none quite like ” Mermaids in the Basement.”

Lead singer Sheela Fortner’s voice ranges from clear, direct vocals to a growly, powerful roar as she grabs the microphone stand and leans it over, moving across the floor. She’s a compact fireball with short blonde hair and intense eyes.

“I should have known love, but I didn’t believe it, I should have known, but I couldn’t conceive it,” she sings, backed up by powerful drums, tasteful electric guitar, the low harmony of electric bass, and the beautiful movements of a signing performance artist. These songs speak about relationships, soul journeys, and the longing to become authentic, not the usual stuff of hard rock.

The band is one of Tidewater’s premiere all-female rock ensembles. They’ve been performing—with personnel changes—over the past 15 years, and the present band members have been together for almost ten. Where did their name originate?

“A friend and I were sitting in a Ghent apartment. We kept asking, ‘What should we call ourselves?’” said Sheela. “Another friend was going through some books, and she pulled out Emily Dickenson.”

Beth Whyle, the band’s bass player, added, “It was actually a compilation of her poems with one called ‘By the Sea,’ and it talked about where was the least likely place to find something so beautiful as a mermaid. The answer was in a basement.”

You don’t forget this band’s name, especially in Norfolk, which adopted the Mermaid as its mascot a few years later, and with its large population of sailors. Many of the Mermaids have been in the military and a few still are.

Jill Harris, guitarist, was an interior communications electrician on the USS Truman and served for 14 years. She was a trumpeter in her school marching band, but learned guitar in community lessons she took in Florida while in the Navy. She learned to play bass with a male rock band and met members of the Mermaids who were jamming at a New Year’s Party in 1999.

Beth Whyle brought her beautiful drum kit to the group many years ago, but ended up learning bass. Her longing to play and willingness to learn make her central to the group dynamic.

Devon Barrett, the 26-year-old drummer, has played since she had a toy drum kit as a little girl. At 16, she auditioned for the Mermaids several times until they brought her in. She appreciates how her parents put up with years of percussion in the family’s garage.

Lead singer and songwriter Sheela was a great fan of Linda Ronstadt, whose emotional delivery inspired her to sing in a high school rock band in Tabb, Va. She was the girl singer in other bands driven by young males. But she nursed a dream of an all-female band, a team that would write their own songs, arrange, and perform them.

“And it started happening because when you throw it out to the Universe that that’s what you want, the Universe listens,” said Sheela. “And it’s happened just that way.”

“Playing with all women, is different, more emotional, not testosterone driven,” she continued. “For me personally, there is something that women bring collectively without speaking about it. It’s as if Mother Earth is saying ‘Yes! Sing! Say! Do!’”

There is silence as well beyond the pauses in the songs. The Mermaids’ fifth member is signer Jennifer McLaughlin, who is deaf. Many signers are able to hear and can interpret in sign to an audience based on listening, but Jennifer works closely with Sheela and the printed song lyrics, creating a dynamic presence unique to their group.

As the band begins to practice a tune called “Into Your Soul,” guitarist Jill fingerpicks on her electric guitar. There’s more energy here than in the electricity, and the Mermaids in the Basement share it easily—in strength and cooperative power. They’ve won Battle of the Bands contests and are releasing their third CD this fall titled “The Dotti Molsin Chronicles.”

Women who perform in all-female bands do more than just share their talents. They support and accept each other in the creative process of writing, collaborating, and performing. What fine teachers they are to the rest of us.

• Bellissima will be performing in November at various venues in Virginia Beach and Norfolk. For tickets and information, www.bellissimachorale.org

• For more information on DRB, see www.dirtroadbitch.com

• Mermaids in the Basement’s next performance is October 23 at The Hershee Bar in Norfolk. Search Facebook for the band’s name as well as Dotti Molsin.

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for TW.