We Rock Charlotte Celebrates a Decade of Music, Arts and Social Justice

When Krystle Baller (they/them) was first asked by friend and co-founder Kelly Finley to help launch a local chapter of Girls Rock, a summer camp for young girls to learn to play and perform music, Baller had only taught themself how to play an instrument, having learned the bass guitar from Napster and Guitar World as a teen.

“Kelly is not a musician, so she needed a musical person to help her with that aspect of it,” Baller recalled. “I answered the call not even really knowing I could teach yet. I learned that later.”

Finley and Baller hosted their first one-week summer camp in 2014 with no idea of what it would evolve into. A decade later, Girls Rock Charlotte has turned into We Rock Charlotte, merging Baller’s Pachyderm Music Lab, a music instruction company they launched to help expand on the training they gave young musicians during the short camp.

Today, We Rock offers an array of creative workshops that include Rock ‘n’ Reel, in which kids record a music album then shoot and edit visuals for the songs; We Rock All Stars for higher level music instruction; Femmes & Thems for women and femme-identifying musicians; Rock Roulette for adult musicians of all gender identities; Baby Punk, a family-friendly program that features women musicians covering rock songs by substituting lyrics to make them kid-friendly; and a number of other workshops and programs, all centered around the principles of social justice.

On Nov. 9, We Rock will host Rock the Block, celebrating 10 years by inviting supporters to its Rock on 22nd House for live performances, games and other fun in a newly renovated backyard.

Baller is also nearing another significant anniversary — the “Kidneyversary,” as they call it. In November 2023, Baller offered up one of their kidneys as a donor to help their Rock on 22nd landlord and close friend Ruth Ava Lyons fight polycystic kidney disease.

In the lead-up to that event, we sat down with Baller at Rock on 22nd to discuss the evolution of We Rock, the Kidneyversary, and other topics ranging from how social justice informs their work to Charlotte’s lack of venues for all ages.

*This interview has been edited for clarity.

Queen City Nerve: They say you never really know something until you teach it. Do you feel like teaching music has opened your world when you play with your band, Hey RICHARD? Does it inform your musical ability?

Krystle Baller: I was a sliver of the musician that I am now when I first started doing this. When you teach guitar lessons every day for 10 years, it’s like, oh shit, you’re actually pretty good after 10 years. Because it’s one thing to practice and be like, “I’m going to pick up my guitar for 20 minutes,” but when I’m doing it every day, teaching everyone scales and all the stuff, my muscle memory builds in. Suddenly, I’m capable of all these things without thinking about it.

Read more: We Rock Charlotte to Release New Student Album with Visuals

It was hard at first. I think what really was helpful with skipping all the academia stuff is that I was so close to it. When I first started teaching, I was only one or two steps ahead. I’m like, “Let me show you how this thing works because it was a struggle for me to learn, too,” and having real true empathy for knowing what it’s like to not have the skills yet. Being really close to that was super helpful.

How else has this professional venture changed your personal life?

When you’re an entrepreneur, I think the energy and passion of doing something, and being in your early 30s, starting something and the excitement of it and the feeling of community and that spark, that energy, it drove me to want to create so other people could have better things. I mean, that’s the nature of low self-esteem and poor self-worth is that I’m going to do all these things to try to give these things to other people.

During that process, I subconsciously was doing it because I was giving everybody the things that I needed — creating programming, creating space to just be myself. That was most important overall. I didn’t know it until now, but I created the space that I needed to be able to safely come out [as bisexual] because I wasn’t out until five years ago. But I had to build that thing over time because I had this thing inside of me just being like, “This is wrong. You’re not supposed to be this way,” in complete denial about it for so many years. Then all of a sudden, it’s right in front of me and it’s like, “Okay, it’s okay to be who you are.” You’ve been telling everybody else that for all this time, and now it’s your turn to say, “It’s safe for you to be who you are.”

Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian mindset makes you really ashamed of who you are. Then it’s just striving to prove, “I’m a good person, I’m a good person, I’m a good person.” But all this programming, and it wasn’t me, it was the people that came here. I’ll get people in a room together and they’ll start to share things and be vulnerable with one another, and I don’t even have to do anything. I can sit back and let it all unfold. I can listen to them. Then they’re giving me what I need, too. I’ve been a student this entire time.

You speak a lot about how social justice is at the center of everything you all do here. What does that look like?

Every voice matters, and we say that, right? But we consume, consume, consume, and everybody has a consumable entertainment device in their pocket. How much of that production is coming from women, girls, or non-binary people? Not a lot. I mean, still. It’s like we have this knowledge, but Hollywood is still massively white-male-dominated. We actually lost gains on producers; only 2% of music producers in the entertainment industry are women. Two! That means that every woman that makes a song goes through a filter of somebody else that does not have her same worldview.

Read more: Krystle Baller Gives Youth a Voice Through Pachyderm Music Lab

We’re able to have music production accessible to kids and saying, “Hey, you can make your own creation from start to finish, and you can make it however the hell you want, and the outcome will be yours through your eyes, through your vision, but we’re going to give you all these professionals to help you understand how to use the equipment and some background on what concepts have been from the past, but you take it and you run with it.”

The result of that has been these music videos with songs that are completely, totally different from each other. You watch the movie and you’re like, “I can’t tell what teacher taught what student.” It’s just a showcase of diversity, for women and gender-wise, but also neurodiversity and how we all think differently.

You started as an organization for kids but now offer programming for adults. What inspired that?

Because adults need this, too. They want to give. They want to be a part of it. They needed these things when they were young, but they can have them right now. Because we are so disconnected; our connection is all digital, and it’s all so surface-level and fake.

We Rock, it sounds like, “Yeah, we rock.” Everybody thinks we’re a music school like School of Rock, but that’s just at the surface level. Music and art is the tool that we use to create deeper connections, to create a more just and equitable society. Creating allies, just learning from queer people, having women musicians in places of leadership in a band situation, it’s just not often that these scenarios play out.

Men can come in this space, and they can really embrace being vulnerable, being emotional, exploring those parts of themselves that they often have to mask and pretend and cover up to be a man. That behavior is not allowed at We Rock Charlotte, and we establish that early on. It’s amazing the way that having bands with women and men, how the dynamic of that band changes and how those egos start to subside and people start thinking of the band as a collective.

The new renovations to your backyard will not only upgrade the stage but allow for more accessibility. You’ve mentioned that you’d like to capitalize on that to become more of a venue, and specifically an all-ages venue. Why is that important to you?

That is something that Charlotte lacks in a major way is places for a 16-year-old to go see live music or something like that. We have 16-year-olds here that play in bands, and they can only play at house parties, which is fun, but also, you need that experience of playing on a stage. And are all house parties necessarily the places that I would want these kids to go? I know what I was doing at house parties when I was 16.

We usually have a teacher here that is in high school who’s just a student that’s been prolific, and then we teach them how to teach … One of our student teachers, Lily, she was saying, “I can’t play anywhere in Charlotte.”

The thing is, as a person in a band, when I say all-ages shows, I mean that all ages can come to the shows, all ages can play in the show. Have you ever been to a show with people, and then there’s a bunch of teenagers that are at a punk show, with teenagers in the pit? Oh my God, it’s amazing. We played at Rock Camp, and those kids, they’re down there dancing, moshing; they love punk, they love metal, and they have a serious respect for it. I’m like, “The kids are going to be all right.” We can have them here, just the experience for the bands that come play, to be able to play a show and have the crowd just be so into it. Because I’m older. I don’t jump in the pit like I used to.

What has it meant to you to work with your wife, Elizabeth Palmisano, and have that professional-plus-personal relationship? Because it seems like she has her hands in a lot of stuff. We’ve written about one of her spray-painting workshops held at We Rock, for example.

Elizabeth is amazing, just having somebody who cares deeply about community and connection the way that I do. We’re very different, but we complement each other so well. Of course, everything that I do, I always talk to Elizabeth about, and everything she does, she talks to me about. So her ideas and my ideas will help each other bloom. She’s just really smart. She comes up with a bunch of solutions really fast to things, and I just admire her a lot. 

Read more: We Rock Charlotte Cultivates Inclusive Expression for Trans Youth (2022)

Also, she’s been doing all these murals, so I’ve gotten all this experience helping her with her art and going and working on big projects. I’ve picked up side painting gigs and actually just finished my first giant mural. It’s past Sherwin-Williams on North Davidson Street if you’re going out of NoDa, past Sherwin-Williams on the right, there’s a new lawyer’s office, and [the mural features] over 30 fictional and nonfictional lawyers. It was really fun. I really enjoyed doing that. 

What has the involvement of Ruth Ava Lyons and Paul Sires meant to you and the growth and evolution of this organization?

I mean, providing the space in the first place. How could we afford to be in this area of town without the graciousness of Ruth and Paul honoring what we do and celebrating it in this way? It’s nice to have Paul just walking down the street and back saying, “Hey, Crystal, what do you need?” It’s very much like dad energy.

And having Ruth so close by, too, just constantly leaving little presents at our doorstep. I mean, this was all happening before any of the kidney stuff. They’re just good people, and they really care strongly about the arts in Charlotte. Also carving out this last little stake out in the middle of everything that’s going on with all of the development around us. Yeah, it feels like family.

How tough of a decision was that for you in offering up a kidney for Ruth?

I went to go do tests initially, and of course you’re like, “I hope I can do this thing,” but let’s just check it out. Then it’s like, I’m probably not going to be able to do this thing because they’re going to look in there and they’re going to say, “You’ve been smoking cigarettes for 30 years, your kidneys are messed up.” But to get to where I was, they’re like, “Yeah, you’re really healthy.” I’m like, “I am? Really? That’s awesome!”

Then leading up to surgery, of course, I was scared shitless. I mean, I’m going under a knife when there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m super healthy. I’m like, “Here, have an organ.” It’s like the only surgery that somebody can have where they don’t need anything done internally that’s wrong with them. So of course, I was scared.

What’s the process been like in terms of recovery? Is there any change to your life?

No. I mean, I don’t drink as much, but I wasn’t drinking a lot anyway. It made me quit smoking cigarettes. So that’s great. I just gained life from that one. They made me quit to be able to donate. And now I’m like, what’s the point? No need to go back. I have to drink a lot more water. All the recommendations after kidney surgery is just live a healthy life; go be a healthy person, eat healthy, don’t eat a lot of red meat. It’s all things that people are supposed to do anyway. Now I have a reason.

Do you feel like it’s brought you two closer in terms of like, “I’m a part of you?”

Oh, yeah. My kidney is making art in a studio right now, probably, in one of the most badass artists in Charlotte. I think it’s really cool that my kidney gets to be a part of Ruth. Ruth calls it K. She tells me about K.

Rock the Block will take place on Nov. 9, from 3-6 p.m. at the Rock on 22nd House, located at 423 E. 22nd St.