Pollstar Live! Coverage: Women + The Road

Waterproof Pictures – Women + The Road
Paradigm Agency’s Corrie Christopher Martin leads a frank discussion of gender issues in the live music scene with Lita Ford, K.Flay, Kimberly Perry, Aubrie Sellers, and sisters Jahan and Yasmine Yousef of Krewella.

Guitar goddess and former Runaway Lita Ford’s first concert was Black Sabbath at the Long Beach Arena in California.

“I walked into the arena and smelled all these smoky things I’d never smelled before. All I could see were these figures onstage with crosses everywhere, and they were gods,” she told the audience for the Women + The Road panel Feb. 7 in Los Angeles.

“They seemed to have a certain possession over the audience and I wanted to do exactly what they were doing. That’s what I wanted to do with my life.”

And so she did, as well as the other women on the panel led by Paradigm agent Corrie Christopher Martin: alternate rocker K.Flay, country singers Aubrie Sellers and Kimberly Perry, and electronic dance artists Jahan Yousaf and Yasmine Yousaf of Krewella.

What they have in common, besides the obvious fact of being women, are that they have all navigated successful careers in male-dominated genres.

“They are all unicorns in their own way,” Martin said of the group.

The Yousaf sisters of Krewella noted that while they knew they had a place in the EDM world, and were welcomed into it, they part of a very tiny sorority.

“The presence of females in the EDM world at that time, from 2010-12, were mainly as vocalists on tracks that weren’t credited,” Yasmine said. “They weren’t valued as much as songwriters and singers compared to the DJs and producers.”

They realized over time, and as Krewella began to headline events, that it isn’t enough for a festival to have a woman headliner.

“I think it’s important, if you are a female artist, to share that space and realize that opportunity needs to be given to other female artists and not just those one or two female artists in the electronic music world.”

Sellers didn’t notice the disparity until she embarked on a career of her own. But she says it’s not just up to women performers to share the concert stage.

“It’s also up to the gatekeepers to give more slots to women so everyone doesn’t feel like they have to compete with each other more intensely than a man might feel,” Sellers said.

K.Flay added that the power dynamic starts taking shape in childhood.

“For young men power is seen as limitless, that power begets power,” K.Flay explained. “And there’s infinite power. If you know someone with power, you might be powerful, too. For girls, I think we are socialized to believe that power is limited and there isn’t that much. If you have it, you’d better hang on to it. Because it can be taken away from you. We all have to work at it, and it won’t happen overnight but there’s kind of a paradigm shift.”

For Lita Ford and the Runaways, those lessons in power are more than 40 years old.

“The Runaways were before their time, in 1975-76, for a bunch of teenage girls to get up and play rock and roll, she said. “We took it seriously, but we were not accepted in the United States. We weren’t taken seriously as musicians.

“We put on a pretty crazy show. Cherie Curry dressed in corsets and it’s hard for people who dress like that to be taken seriously. But it was part of us, part of who we were and what we did. We were young punks. We rocked out and wanted to prove it. Everybody who met us had an experience.”

Yasmine Yousef explained that the need to be taken seriously hasn’t changed all that much, but is showing signs of improvement.

“I really think it’s changing,” she said” In 2010-11, if you saw women in that space, she was a half-naked on a flyer selling tickets because people were seeing that image of a sexual woman and that sells. Now it’s changing.

“I used to dress more like a ‘bro’ onstage. Becoming one with your femininity is another subject. Whether we are half-naked or dressed like a bro we need to be taken seriously.”

While the #metoo and Time’s Up movements have focused on women’s issue, they exist for those in the LGBTQ community, too. And Perry, one-third of the family act The Band Perry, said that her team has dealt with and educated crew members that are not welcoming.

“We ran into one situation with someone on our road team who was not supportive of a gay member we had on the road and we had to very kindly asked him to leave,” Perry said. “As leaders of our environment, it’s up to us to be responsible for that leadership and to operate with integrity. And sometimes it means we have to be in an uncomfortable situation or inconvenience to get the place cleaned up and take responsibility to make a safe and encouraging environment for everybody.”