When Care Bears on Fire played LA’s Viper Room last summer, they weren’t allowed inside their dressing room. When Jack Skuller played a gig at the Living Room on the Lower East Side, he had a hard time even getting through the front door.
That’s because these musicians are still in school — high school and junior high, that is. Part of New York City’s thriving teen-rock scene, these precocious players spend their weekends (and some school nights) playing bars and clubs in which they’re years away from being able to buy beers.
Call it the kid-core scene. Instead of banging away at drums in their parents’ basements, they’re making records and performing at venues like Brooklyn’s Bell House, the Cake Shop on the Lower East Side and Maxwell’s in Hoboken.
AUDIO: LISTEN TO JACK SKULLER’S FIRST SINGLE, “LOVE IS A DRUM”
“There’s this whole teen underground [scene] that I didn’t know about six months ago, and I feel aligned with it,” says singer-songwriter Skuller, 14, a student at Weehawken High School. They all share the same experiences, he says, and it makes it far easier to, say, play a gig during finals when others are dealing with the same offbeat pressure.
Meet some of the fresh-faced talent (barely) old enough to play the rock scene — and definitely young enough to need their parents to take them to gigs.
THE PARK SLOPE RUNAWAYS: CARE BEARS ON FIRE
This rock trio, who go only by their first names, has been together for five years — since fourth grade. They began performing at all-ages shows in kid-friendly Brooklyn areas like Park Slope and places with teen-band nights, like Southpaw and Liberty Heights Tap Room in Red Hook.
Sophie, Care Bears on Fire’s 15-year-old singer and guitarist, looks like a baby-faced Joan Jett. She first met drummer Izzy, 14, when they were in grade school, before Sophie had picked up a guitar. But after she attended the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Ore., she and Izzy decided to start a band.
Today, with bassist Jena, 16, the three are music-industry veterans. Their second full-length album, “Get Over It,” came out last year on S-Curve Records, and they toured for the first time last summer (with some parents in tow). They’ve even been on “Letterman.”
“We’ve gone through many incarnations since we were wee grublets,” says Izzy. “We want our music to be good for music, not for ‘kids.’ We’re not just talking about boys or fighting with girls.”
THE MINI JACK WHITE: JACK SKULLER
Three years ago, then-11-year-old Jack Skuller was upset about a girl. So, he pounded out his frustrations on his drum set. “I was getting my anger out,” he says, “and I got this idea: Love is a drum. The drum is my heartbeat, and she just broke my drum. Like, my heart stopped beating.”
“Love Is a Drum,” Skuller’s first single on local label Bar None, is a rockabilly-like ditty decidedly more Jack White than Justin Bieber. His arty YouTube video was directed by Brit socialite photographer Poppy de Villeneuve.
When he’s not playing for audiences that range from “a massive crowd of screaming girls” to “a tiny crowd of adult hipsters,” he says, Skuller’s doing schoolwork or playing ball in a Babe Ruth league — calling himself “pretty good.”
He’s also itching to record his first full-length album and tour.
“I’ve wanted to go on tour since I started,” Skuller says. When he plays, he adds, “I go onstage and see the crowd and I realize they’re with me. Even if I mess up, no matter how badly, nothing can go wrong. It’s the best feeling in the world.”
THE EAST VILLAGE-ETTES: SUPERCUTE!
A trio of teens who dress in Day-Glo outfits, oversize hair bows from candy wrappers and colorfully spray-painted boots, Supercute! is made up of Julia Cumming, 14, Rachel Trachtenburg, 16 and June Lei, 13.
The band came together last June when Trachtenburg — who starting drumming for her parents’ group the Trachtenburg Family Sideshow Players at age 6 — decided she wanted to play with girls her age.
This isn’t a typical guitars-and-drums outfit: Supercute! has two ukuleles, a guitar and a keyboard.
“We all love girl groups like the Supremes,” says Trachtenburg. “We wanted to be showbiz-y and fun and theatrical and ‘Brady Bunch.’ ”
But, she adds, “I like to put political stuff into the songs as well as fun candy dreams.”
While the 20- and 30-somethings who make up a good part of their audience love Supercute!’s Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd covers, their quirky style has not endeared them to some of the kids at Lei and Cumming’s school (Trachtenburg is home-schooled).
“There are some kids who don’t get it . . . and then awkward situations happen,” like nasty name-calling on Facebook, says Lei.
But Lei and Cumming took three weeks off from school in the spring so Supercute! could tour with Brit singer-songwriter Kate Nash. Take that, bullies!