Nine Badass Women I Interviewed in 2015
(There were way more than nine, but here’s some of my favorites. Click through the links to read full interviews.)
Sleater Kinney’s Janet Weiss on self care:
“If you want to be in this for the long haul, don’t just suppress what’s good for you for the good of the band. You need to take care of yourself, and have the band reflect who you are. When things start going well, you really get offered a lot of stuff. It’s overwhelming, when things are going well. You don’t want to turn down opportunities, but at the same time you need to keep in mind, “Is this too much for me? Am I going to hurt the show? Am I going to do too many interviews before the show to where I can’t sing right, or I’m too tired to play, or I get sick?” There’s self-preservation, especially as you get older that you need to take into consideration when you decide to do this difficult endeavor. Really, for us, the show is the most important. Whatever we can do to make the show better, whether that’s limiting interviews to 15 minutes so Corin’s voice doesn’t get trashed, whether that’s making sure we have a good hour before the show to be in the dressing room together connecting, just being goofy, warming up, making sure we’re all there and all on the same page, that’s important. We learned over the years what we need to do to make sure the show goes off. Taking care of ourselves is a big part of that.”
JoJo on her all-lady management team:
“I have a female management team, Gita and Katie, and I've known them since I was 12 years old. To see the way that men are a little taken aback by having to take orders or direction from a woman, it's really great to see the way that they use their femininity and their strength to get what they want – not in a weird way. They don't need to act like bull dogs all the time. It's very inspiring to see strong women and to have them on my team, and it empowers me as a woman as well.”
Rosanne Cash on telling women’s stories:
“You know, my mom and dad's divorce was almost equally as painful for my mom and Etta. There was this natural separation that had to happen. It had to happen. It was a terrible loss for both of them. I still talk to Etta; in fact, I'm going to call her tomorrow. And she always starts with stories of my mother. She wants to go over all the old stories, and it's always about my mother. I don't think that sadness ever left either one of them. And there was just no way to find their way back to each other. It lasted for a particular time, and then it was over. It was just tremendously sad.
“The stories of the women, because I'm a woman, they interest me more, too. What did the women do when these men were gone? How did they handle the babies and the homes? Their relationships? The loneliness?”
Dianne Reeves on her mother:
“My mother was a pretty extraordinary person, as I guess we believe all our mothers are. She really touched a lot of lives. She had her faults like everybody, but she was able to take those faults as things that she learned about herself and change them and use them to help other people. She was a nurse, and she worked in the community. She worked with generations of people. She would work with one girl's child, and that child would bring her child, and that child would bring theirs. It was like that. It was really a pillar in the community. For me, even now, we just lost her like almost four years ago, you hold onto everything that you ever learned. Everything that you ever saw the shining example. For me, my mother really held the sky up for me in a lot of ways. She was a wise person. This song, a mother lives in her children, and in children in general. She always saw light, and she always saw the best in them. This song was really my journey with her, and some of the things that she would say, and her spirit.”
Esperanza Spalding on her alter ego, Emily:
“A lot of people used my middle name. I remember there was a point in my life where I was like, 'That's not me. That's not me.' … I went through this emergence in my teenage years, where I was like, 'No, Emily, no, that's too plain, that's too young and kiddy, no. I'm Esperanza and I want to be called Esperanza. So from then on everybody called me Esperanza. Actually what happened in my case, I would say with Emily is that [I realized] that it is me. That is me, too. Yes, I'm Esperanza, … but the truth is they're both me. In a way, I see Emily as the vessel with which I can bring up to date my total self, engaging with a lot of the things about performance and art that I was always curious about that just didn't really get cultivated in my quote-unquote Esperanza stage.”
American Idol finalist Jax on her love of Janis Joplin
“My dad introduced me to Janis Joplin because he saw the similarities [in our voices] when I was really, really young. I took that and ran with it. I was obsessed with Janis more than anybody. I have her on vinyl, all of her records. I'm a huge, huge Janis Joplin fan. I'm a big woman power person. I remember seeing Pat Benatar and BB King; my parents did everything they could to give me that musical culture. I think they did a pretty good job, because I'm kind of in love with it. It's kind of my therapy.”
Circuit des Yeux Haley Fohr on reinterpreting Bruce:
“I actually hadn't ever heard that 'I'm on Fire' song until I was tripping on some psychedelics, and I had that cassette. It was like a summery Bloomington weekend, and I think I was a sophomore or freshman in college. The tape was warped, so it was really slowed down. I like Bruce Springsteen — he's kind of hit or miss for me, but I think Nebraska is a fantastic album. He's a great performer and artist — that song in particular, though, it's kind of creepy. It's about a guy fetishizing a younger woman and trying to have his way with her. I thought It would be interesting to have a woman have a take on that, and deliver those lyrics, and really bring to the forefront what the content actually is. In that process, I released a live recording of that, that was recorded at Russian Recording on Portrait, which was a record that came out in 2011. It had a live band after that. It kind of evolved into this rockist, noise track. I feel like my emotions towards that recording, and that song kind of took the place of the delivery of the song. ... What is expected of a woman, that's the collage.”
Mitski on being undeniable
“Being at SXSW; you meet a lot of artists, and you're surrounded by “the industry.” Just yesterday, I was very aware of the fact that I wasn't dressing a certain way, or presenting myself in a certain way. I didn't have a lot of the things that are asked of me, or a lot of the things that would help me progress faster and further as a musician, being a woman. I've actually become even more aware of my … I don't want to say non-beauty, but non-adherence to these standards that would be very helpful for me to actually present myself as a musician, if that makes any sense. It really does motivate me or drive me in a sick way to make the music better, or to perform so well that people forget that I don't look a certain way, or that I'm not from a certain place.”
Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band’s Breezy Peyton on playing through the pain:
“I didn't have time to have surgery. So I've just been playing with a really hurt hand. Finally, right after our Thanksgiving show, that's when I had the hand surgery. I had to play New Year's Eve in a cast. I taped a whisk to my fingers that I could use. Now I have a small cast on. When we go back out on tour, it's really going to be the test.”
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