Rooker makes first state tour

By Mary Alice Blackwell

Published: July 17, 2008

Stephanie Rooker is coming home.

Temporarily.

The Virginia native will be making her first tour through her home state. Celebrating her first CD. Excited about playing for the first time at Floyd Fest.

Yes, she is blending all those firsts next week, including her first performance in Charlottesville on Wednesday night.

But then Stephanie Rooker knows the art of blending. She has done it in her music. She does it in her life.

Musically, she was influenced by the old Joanie Mitchell and singer songwriters playing on her parents’ stereo in Radford. She grew to love hip hop and reggae as a student at Oberlin College. During her travels, she spent four months studying traditional music of Ghana and enjoyed the progressive sounds of New Zealand during a visit to see an old friend. When the young woman finally headed off to make it on her own in New York, she connected with the jazz crowd.

But all of that evolved as she soon blended those influences into her own unique sound … and a brand new CD, “Tellin You Right Now.”

As for life, she also has been inspired by the influence of family. It was the love and generosity of her parents, coupled with the tragic loss of a young bother.

When Stephanie Rooker steps on the stage at Gravity Lounge, Charlottesville will meet one well rounded young woman with a pretty darn interesting band. And, there will a tip jar in the room. Oh, it’s not for Stephanie Rooker. She is going to put it there for folks right here in Charlottesville.

“At each show in Virginia, we are doing tip jars for local brain injury services,” she said. “That is something that I am really excited about.

“The organization we will be shouting out and — upon Gravity Lounge’s approval — collecting donations for is Virginia NeuroCare. This organization provides rehabilitation for men and women in the U.S. military who’ve had brain injuries while serving our country.”

The director and several of soldiers could be be among Wednesday’s concertgoers.

“I haven’t been able to do that as much up here, because I don’t have a lot of contacts in that field,” Rooker said. “But my parents know everybody, so they really helped me to get this together.”

Greg and Fran Rooker have been a supportive voice for those with brain injury and their families.

“My younger brother passed away 11 years ago,” Stephanie Rooker said. “He suffered a brain injury. He was a survivor, but about 14 months after his injury, he suffered an aneurysm and passed away.”

Ten-year-old Jason had been playing with a rope when he accidentally hung himself. The flow of oxygen was cut off to his brain, leaving him unable to walk, talk or eat. He had spent nine of those 14 months in hospitals, several at Kluge Children’s Rehabilitation Center.

“There were big things for my family to go through, and my parents saw a lot of problems with getting what services he would need and therapies, and insurance companies were really hard to deal with,” she said.

“Brain injury is not really well understood. You can come back from a brain injury from a fall or from a car accident and experience consequences that are not the same with other illnesses. You can have a different personality. You could lack skills that you suddenly needed for your job. It can change your entire life.

“So my folks, in homage to my brother and in their desire to help other people who are going through the same thing that we went through, started a non-profit called the Jason Foundation.”

While Virginia has a Brain Injury Services Inc. with chapters across the state, there was none in southwest Virginia at the time of Jason’s accident. Thanks to the Rookers, there is one now.

“They just did amazing, amazing things with Brain Injury Services and the Jason Foundation,” she said.

Aside from taking on individuals and helping people receive services, they also lobbied for legistation in Richmond and reached out to universities.

“At George Washington University they helped start a program there for training nurses and people who deal with brain injury,” the proud daughter said. “That was one the the first in the country.

“My parents are so amazing. They are inspiring. They have taken an experience that was really traumatic for my family and turned it into a way that they could really help people.

“I’m really happy to help give voice to that issue and try to bring some support and bring some consciousness of it through my music.”

But a proud father seems just as devoted to his daughter who majored in ethnomusicology at Oberlin. Greg Rooker, a former newspaper publisher, was handling a lot of the PR for his daughter’s tour through Virginia, her first after spending five years in Brooklyn. The tour starts in Arlington, then comes to Gravity, Ashland, Roanoke and wraps up at Floyd Fest on July 26.

“Everyone in the band is really bubbly,” Stephanie Rooker said. “We came down for our short trip to Roanoke [after releasing their CD in March], so now we are really stoked to do the whole length of the state.”

Floyd Fest was an added bonus.

“I’ve gone every year,” she said. “They would get me tickets for my birthday, and we would camp out. It was our thing to do every year. Last year I was saying, my band should play Floyd Fest, that would be perfect.”

This year her band was invited to perform on the emerging new artists stage.

“I only missed one year,” she said. “It’s awesome to be going as a performer and not a spectator.”

What better was to blend it all together. And older sister Jen will be coming in from D.C. to sing backup on the Virginia tour.

“I have definitely been influenced by a lot of people and cultures,” said Rooker, who has quit her day gig [dad called her a nanny, but she calls it babysitter] to concentrate on “music, music, music.”

“It’s pretty cool,” she said. “I have been blessed.”

Come see for yourself … and you might want to blend a few coins in the tip jar.

Showtime is 7:30 p.m. with Soul Revision, formerly known as Acoustic Groove Trio. Tickets are $10.