Rachel Frankel - She Can Really Lay It Down: 50 Rebels, Rockers, and Musical Revolutionaries

FOR ALL WOMEN WHO MAKE NOISE

Copyright 2019 by Rachel Frankel.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-4521-7177-7 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN: 978-1-4521-7165-4 (hardcover)

Design by Allison Weiner and Alma Kamal.
Lettering by Rachel Frankel, Allison Weiner, and Alma Kamal.

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For centuries, women musicians have been seenbeheld, judged, appraised, rejected, devouredby their male critics and peers. Which is to say, theyve been written into corners and out of narratives, cast in supporting roles or cast out entirely. In many instances, extraordinary acts of ingenuity, bravery, or virtuosity were ignored or overlooked in favor of the perpetuation of some other mythmaybe the one about the lone, itinerant troubadour who couldnt manage his relationships and his art simultaneously (instead, hes always loping off toward some distant horizon, gone to transform anguish into gold). Ill admit that those old storiesthe tortured male savant, undone by his workare romantic. Im sure Ive reiterated a few in my own writing. After all, anyone who has listened to any music at all in the twenty-first century has internalized some fairly odious notions about genius, and who gets to claim it. But this is part of what makes Rachel Frankels She Can Really Lay It Down feel so revelatory. These remarkable women arent just being acknowledged, theyre being seen in the best way possible: drawn into life by an artist who understands what animates them, and what their incredible work means to us all.

Theres so much joy and glory in these portraits! Some faces will be familiarBonnie Raitt, Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse, Joni Mitchellbut others are newer, more obscure, more overlooked. Each drawing comes with a story: an explanation of who that artist is, where she came from, and how she came to make the music she does. I was riveted to read about the gusty freight trainhopping and busking of Alynda Lee Segarra, the Nuyorican songwriter and activist of Hurray for the Riff Raff. And Selena Quintanilla-Prez, the queen of Tejano music, rendered here midsong, her face ecstatic and wild. And Odetta, a beacon of the folk revival, her expression calm and serious. There are musicians who work in explicitly punk-rock modeslike Janet Weiss, of Sleater-Kinney, and Annie Clark, who performs as St. Vincentbut all of the women of She Can Really Lay It Down share a spirit of rebelliousness and, to a degree, fearlessness. They insisted upon themselves when it wasnt easy.

The presentif long overduepush toward a more progressive, feminist reading of our cultural history requires disabusing ourselves of known canons, and some pretty deeply entrenched ideas about the history of popular music. She Can Really Lay It Down is not just a corrective to those stories, but also a giddy celebration of the future. I, for one, cant wait to hear whats coming.

AMANDA PETRUSICH

At fourteen years old, I couldnt imagine anything cooler than playing in a band. Clumsily working through my first few sets of guitar chord progressions, I developed my musicianship over the next few years, and my taste in music began to expand beyond the likes of whatever eight songs KROQ, my local rock radio station, played on endless rotation in the early 2000s. As I progressed as a musician through college and learned more about feminism, I vividly remember the excitement and sense of belonging I felt in continuing to discover music played and written by women. Singular musicians like Nina Simone, Neko Case, Amy Winehouse, and Kathleen Hanna particularly stood out to me as powerful acts of defiance against a male-dominated industry.

Years later, I began recording music and playing shows with my own band. I soon began picking up on the stereotypes and subtle microaggressions that often plague female-identifying musicians:

• - Being mistaken for a roadie;
• - Being mistaken for a girlfriend;
• - Being ignored by male peers as they engage in hearty conversation with my male bandmates;
• - Hearing a male singer referring to a venue staff member as his merch babe;
• - Overhearing sexist remarks from the audio engineer.

When it came to press, I began to scrutinize headlines more closely, noticing the proliferation of belittling gendered modifiers like female-fronted, all-girl, or the dreaded woman in music. My experiences and frustrations, along with those of my peer female musicians and role models, inspired me to dig deeper. I noticed a dearth of music-related resources that catered to women, much less covered women musicians at all without a gender bias, positioning them as anomalies, or worseusing women as bikini-clad accessories to merchandise products (thanks, Guitar World). Publications like She Shreds and Tom Tom Magazine stand out in a sea of misogynistic magazine covers staring back at me from newsstands and bookstore aisles. Fabi Reyna and Mindy Abovitz, along with their respective magazine staffers, eschew the reductive classification of women musicianstheir magazines speak directly to drummers and guitarists who simply happen to identify as female. It was my discovery of these vital publications, in fact, that gave me the idea for this book.

In beginning my research for this collection, I looked first to some of my personal favorite musicians to see who had influenced them. In digging through Laura Veirss catalog, I stumbled across an Elizabeth Cotten cover, and I discovered Lauras original song, Carol Kaye, which pays direct homage to one of the most prolific and widely heard bassists in the world.

She can really play it
she can really lay it down
Smile, Good Vibrations,
Help Me, Rhonda, Homeward Bound

From that point came several sprawling lists of influential musicians from different genres and decades. Memphis Minnie left behind a legacy of defining the blues; Sister Rosetta Tharpe was one of the first electric guitarists to innovate with heavy distortion. This deep history dive eventually broadened my search, turning what was originally a rock and pop nerd-fest into a full-blown international quest that blew past any and all genre distinctions.

She Can Really Lay It Down is my humble, heartfelt love letter to fifty of the most groundbreaking musicians in recent historyall of whom have defied genre, sexism, and convention to expand what it truly means to be a woman in music. This list is by no means exhaustivethe sheer number of contenders for inclusion in a collection like this is staggering. With this collection, I aimed specifically to highlight musicians not only for their talent, but for creating and expanding new genres, catalyzing social change, and bringing visibility to causes and communities that are often marginalized. Some of these names might sound familiar. Others may not be so well-known. Some of these women are still with us; some have passed onbut their contributions to the music world and to our culture will resonate forever. I hope that these influential heroines and their stories bring you solace, inspiration, and a reminder to continue their legacy of revolution and progress through your own musical expression.