SHEROES LIVE AT BRANDI CARLILE’S MOTHERSHIP WEEKEND
ABOUT this week’s podcast + radio hour:
It’s Pride month! We kicked it off last week featuring a conversation with music activist, Abbey Carbonneau, of Book More Women - an Instagram account founded in 2018 that provides both a visual and a statistical representation of gender diversity at music festivals. One of the many artists who follow Book More Women is none other than queer SHERO Brandi Carlile, who was inspired to start her own festival in 2019 after seeing the lack of diversity and representation on the posters that Book More Women edits to visually demonstrate how starkly empty those lineups would be if you erased all the male acts off. Last year, Brandi partnered with the concert promotion team at Topeka to co-curate a music vacation in Miramar Beach, Florida on Mother’s Day weekend called Mothership. True to Brandi’s consistent inclusion of legends, newcomers, and everyone in between, the inaugural lineup included Mavis Staples, Katie Pruitt, Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, Danielle Ponder, Hozier, The Milk Carton Kids, Trish Melton, Emmylou Harris, and Fancy Hagood, and of course, Brandi herself. Last month, I took SHEROES on the road to Miramar Beach to experience Mothership for myself. The lineup included Brandi, Nickel Creek, Black Pumas, Sara Bareilles, Bonnie Raitt, and Devon Gilfillian.
As it is both Brandi’s birthday month and Pride month, it seemed like a perfect moment to celebrate her and her most recent partnership with Topeka to create yet another amazing music vacation seeking to feature a gender-balanced lineup. Furthermore, this episode comes on the heels of our feature with Book More Women. In this special edition of Sheroes, we’ll find out more about the story behind Mothership, and we’ll share conversations with two of the artists who performed this year - Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, and S.G. Goodman, as well as speaking directly to the founder of Brandi’s partnerships at Topeka and two of the women who help run it. .