Tag: gender

Heather Aubrey Lloyd’s Guide to Murder Ballad Survival

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

As you might guess, there’s tens of dollars to be made working in folk music. One of the more macabre ways I’ve made a living is… um… off the dead, performing educational programs on gender inequality in murder ballads for more than a decade with my band, ilyAIMY (i love you And I Miss You).

Maybe I was just born spooky (Halloween birthday!), but I’ve made the most of my curiosity for folk music’s unnerving and often misogynistic underbelly. All while collecting a few outliers that turn the old tales on their heads.

First found in Europe in the 1600s, murder ballad poems and songs have since become heavily associated with traditional American music. A mainstay in country and folk – whether it’s Polly or Omie falling prey to poor choices, or “Stagger Lee” (a staple since 1897), or Brokeneck Girls: The Murder Ballad Musical selling out its 2023 run – we’re still pressing play on cautionary tales of love inextricably woven with violence and remorseless outlaws. But we’re also starting to look back at the facts, wondering more at why the women of murder ballads are voiceless victims and rarely vigilantes.

I’ve kept the body count relatively low on my new album, Panic Room with a View, but there are a few graves. It is October after all. So, witches, black widows, and wanton women – who makes it out from this Mixtape alive? – Heather Aubrey Lloyd

“Bang, Bang” – Nancy Sinatra

This one might be a metaphor, but the messaging sure isn’t. Love is interlaced with violence right from childhood: “He would always win the fight,” and she should have known better. P.S. Sinatra may be singing it, but this lament from the “female perspective” was written by Sonny Bono.

“Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies” – Odetta

In rare cases, it’s not a man’s voice behind the mask, but women warning one another to “lock their hearts” against lying lovers. Cause of death here will eventually be sorrow, but don’t worry – we’re getting to the grisly bits and what happens when you don’t heed the warnings.

“Pretty Polly” – Coon Creek Girls

Appalachian, music academic, or horror movie fan, we all know the rules: the girl getting “busy” is the first body to drop. This song has roots in 1750s English ballads, where the pregnant and unwed victim at least sometimes gets revenge as a ghost. Not so with most American versions of Polly, or North Carolina’s Omie Wise, where the vague-but-violent tale is told with little remorse or consequence.

This is the blueprint of the classic American murder ballad. He’s dug the grave in advance or brought her to the river (no obvious sin-cleansing symbolism here) and “her blood, it did flow.” In some versions of “The Knoxville Girl,” his friends still try to bail him out of jail. Though countless renditions exist (The Byrds, Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, etc.), this stark presentation by the Coon Creek Girls has always been my favorite.

“Barbara Allen” – Joan Baez

Controversial opinion alert! I’ve always had a huge problem with the claim of “the world’s most-collected English-language folk ballad.”

Barbara Allen doesn’t die because she loves a man, but because she simply doesn’t. When women refuse there are still consequences, and “hard-hearted” Barb’ry follows “sweet” William to his grave, where he entwines with her in death. Ew. Still, it’s hard to argue with Baez’s perfectly mournful vocal take on this tune.

“The Dreadful End of Marianna for Sorcery” – Malinky

Or, if she says no and doesn’t die of sorrow, you can always cry “witch” and get her burned at the stake. Happy Halloween! You might think it’s a traditional, but this modern murder ballad from the year 2000 has a feminist twist; Marianna gets to tell on the men who wronged her, their hypocrisy revealed, her virtue extolled. This is a significant evolution from the third-person narrator (or male murderer’s perspective) pervasive in classic murder ballads.

“Frankie and Johnny” – Pete Seeger

Let’s get to a murderess. What if I told you Pete Seeger was singing you a lie? Did Frankie shoot her cheatin’ man? Yup, on October 14, 1899, Frankie Baker did. Was she sentenced to the electric chair for it? No. Songwriters didn’t bother waiting on the verdict. Besides, what ideas might women get if they thought they might get away with it?

Just days after the shooting, the streets of St. Louis were already singing. Frankie’s philandering beau, Allen, became “Albert” then “Johnny.” And Frankie, who unsuccessfully sued once a movie was made, was hounded by hundreds of renditions before she died in 1952.

“The Valley Is Ours” – Heather Aubrey Lloyd

Does a folk singer owe listeners absolute truth, or do we use bits and pieces of honesty to shed light on greater truths? As a songwriter and a former journalist, I’ve spent a while reconciling that question. This song from my freshly released album is a perfect example. I weave true stories from various eras of flood-ravaged Ellicott City, Maryland – a news article about a drowning victim, my time sanitizing debris from my friend’s submerged apartment – into a fictional family, unifying the experiences for the greater story representing all those who brave disaster and rebuild.

“Independence Day” – Martina McBride

If you’re an ’80s baby like me, this 1995 CMA Song of the Year (and one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time) was probably the first murder ballad you heard on the radio. Domestic violence, the standard trope, drives the battered wife to finally burn down the house with them both in it, leaving their surviving daughter to wonder, “I ain’t sayin’ it’s right or it’s wrong/ But maybe it’s the only way.”

I’ve spent years thinking about just how many other ways there should be for that woman. And maybe that’s the point of a great line like that. (I was too nervous to ask Gretchen Peters, the song’s writer, when I opened for her in 2022.)

“Silent Little Bells” – ilyAIMY

We all start by mimicking the art we loved growing up. So, it’s no wonder that in 2010 when it came time to write a murder ballad for my own band, ilyAIMY, I couldn’t seem to let the murderess get away with it, either. But my questions were starting. How do I reconcile my love of murder ballads with their problematic or outdated ideas? Can the women get more say in their stories?

“Can it be a sin/ For a woman done wrong to do the man done it/ Do that man right in?”

“Country Death Song” – The Violent Femmes

And I probably threw my fictional characters down a well, because I subconsciously remembered it from this song. We are all the culmination of everything we’ve ever heard and only think we’ve forgotten. This song’s presentation is so deadpan it’s almost parody, like a scary Halloween costume. An innocent daughter falls victim to a father’s starvation and madness. And when the victim is a woman child, at least, the murderer can’t live with the guilt and punishes himself.

“Delia’s Gone” – Johnny Cash

You can’t have a murder ballad Mixtape without Johnny Cash. The man in black – also a kind of persona/costume – put plenty of women in the ground through song, with a vocal delivery that’s dead serious. We know little about Delia’s actual “trifling” offenses, and as with early American murder ballads, much is left to the imagination.

“So if your woman’s devilish/ You can let her run/ Or you can bring her down and do her/ Like Delia got done…” references the old trope that men are somewhat justified killing sinful women, be it 1762 or 1962.

“Church Bells” – Carrie Underwood

Between 2000 and 2016 women got a lot of mixed messages about spousal abuse and murder ballads. The Chicks’ infamous “Goodbye Earl” was met with 14% of Radio & Records reporting stations refusing to play it with accusations the song “advocated premeditated murder.” Um … “Folsom Prison” much?!? Why not the same uproar for 2007’s “Gunpowder & Lead” wherein Miranda Lambert shows she’s willing, but we never get the actual trigger pull, or Underwood’s similar poisoning of an abusive husband in 2016?

Answer: It’s all about the aftermath and the attitude. The Chicks were too undeniably happy. “Church Bells,” meanwhile, walks the line that the bells toll for her in remorse and damnation, or that she finds absolution in the church.

“Pocket of God” – Cory Branan

When asked how the genre is evolving, I can’t hit play fast enough on this tune, featured on BGS in 2022. It has all the vicious, remorseless teeth I want in my bloody ballads – along with a surprising respect for its female victim. “Pocket” is reminiscent of a narcocorrido (Mexican drug ballad), narrated by a dealer who falls for a woman that becomes “a punch” he “couldn’t counter” and someone he “admired” for her intelligence. It’s only when she double-crosses him in business that he’s forced to kill her, like any other rogue henchman, as an example. But she haunts him.

“Oh (Field Recording)” – Laurel Hells Ramblers

Young artists keeping old Appalachian song traditions alive might be killing off a new kind of character – their former selves. Trans songstress Clover-Lynn follows up this boy’s murder by asking her father, “Oh, tell me daddy/ Can you ever forgive/ The death of your son/ So your daughter can live?”

“The Ballad of Yvonne Johnson” – Eliza Gilkyson

Trigger warning: this one’s a hard listen, but the truth always is. Instead of exploiting “Stagger Lee” as a Black anti-hero powerful enough to usurp the devil, or fetishizing Frankie in her kimono, we get the thorough, unflinching story of a Canadian Cree woman’s childhood abuse and the murder it drove her to, told in her words (Johnson shares a writing credit) through Gilkyson. All so that listeners can “awaken to themselves and to all people of this world.” When it comes to the fate of women in murder ballads, we’re starting to make room for greater complexity.

“Sisterly” – Jean Rohe

I’m skeptical that a song can change the world, but this song definitely changed me. When Rohe witnesses an assault on a woman from her window, she hesitates to get involved “in the name of it wasn’t me.”

“I’m not known for being sisterly/ Let the strong girls win and cut the weak ones free/ The boys lie, they say the boys are mean / Said I better get myself a spot on the boys’ team.”

We’re left uncertain of the girl’s fate, but mine was revealed. I was Rohe at the window, who didn’t like women I viewed as weak. I’d learned the rules to survive and they hadn’t. After I couldn’t look away from that part of myself, I started performing with more women, looking harder at where I stand in life and in the songs I love.

Photo Credit: Rob Hinkal

These Berklee Students Helped Create Ensembles for Women and Non-Binary Folks

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“Bluegrass music is a truly American artform. It reflects the culture and the time in which it’s created, and as with many traditional artforms, a preservationist stance is held on a pedestal. Bluegrass music’s history is very gendered, and when this happens, the music can’t reach its full potential.”

My teacher Laura Orshaw told me this.

There has been no shortage of amazing women bluegrass musicians to come out of the roots department at Berklee College of Music. Gillian Welch, Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and on and on. I’m going into my senior year at Berklee this fall as a mandolin principle, and one of the reasons I went to Berklee was how inspired I was by these women and their music.

Towards the end of my sophomore year, my friend Katelynn Casper – a brilliant bluegrass fiddler – came up with an idea. She wanted to start a bluegrass ensemble of all women and non-binary folks. Katelynn approached Matt Glaser, the artistic director of the American Roots Music Program, about helping us create a class in which we would study and perform in a group. Excited by the prospect, he brought in Laura Orshaw (the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys) to be our mentor. In the past few years, there had been a strong influx of women who came to Berklee and wanted to play roots music, so it didn’t take us long to find people who wanted to join the project.

The ensemble started in October of 2023 with about 12 members, enough for us to break into two ensembles. I got to be in both groups, in one as mandolinist and the other as bassist. Our focus between both groups was to play music mostly written by women who we looked up to and were maybe overlooked.

Through the course of our year together, we moved through a catalog of songs and tunes written by our heroes and then delved into original material. We wrote songs and tunes together and on our own and fleshed them out as a band. It was an empowering experience to be a part of and it was beautiful to watch my friends explore a new kind of confidence in their music.

This past April, the American Roots Music Program sent all of us down to Washington, D.C. In June of 2022, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage opened up an exhibit entitled Music HerStory: Women and Music of Social Change. Laura had caught wind of the exhibit and wanted us to visit, so we could witness its content and impact. The exhibit explored many women who were significantly overlooked in music, but yet the world would have been drastically different had their music not been a part of it.

We heard and read stories of when Loretta Lynn put out “The Pill” and how much of an uproar it caused; stories of how Elizabeth Cotten had to put her music on hold to raise her children and didn’t come back to it until she was in her 60s, putting out “Freight Train” and “Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie” and still was not given much credit.

Walking through the exhibit, I couldn’t help but think about all the different musical influences I have and how so many of those influences were inspired by these women, but how that was never really talked about.

On the same trip, we also got the privilege of going to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and learning about some of the history of their record label and how it came to be. When we were checking it out, both ensemble bands did a little recording in the archives to commemorate the trip. Playing our originals and covers written by powerful women was an incredible experience. We were surrounded by original recordings and records that made bluegrass and old-time what it is now and some of the music that brought each of us to the genres to begin with.

While we were down in D.C., we also got the chance to hang out with Kimber Ludiker (fiddle) and Avril Smith (guitar), two members of Della Mae. In both groups, the inspiration from Della Mae was so apparent – we all learned many of their songs. Getting to stand up and play their songs with them was a mind-blowing experience.

Taking part in this project has been such an inspiring experience. As a kid who grew up in the bluegrass and old-time world, there weren’t always a lot of women to play music with, so to get the opportunity to dedicate time each week to just sit down with a group of deeply passionate women and non-binary folks who are also such remarkable roots musicians was an indescribably moving experience.

A common conversation amongst us during that time was how freeing and comfortable it felt to play music in a setting like this. Whether or not you think about it, music as a whole is an intensely male dominated world – and bluegrass isn’t any different.

“Here’s a question that crossed our minds every week,” Laura said. “‘What would bluegrass be like without patriarchy or bias?’ The answer comes through music, not essays, and this project certainly chipped away at our goal.”

Being in this ensemble, I learned a lot about myself. Being surrounded by a community of women and non-binary folks playing music taught me a lot about my confidence as both a person and a musician. Being in that environment gave me an amazing place to explore.

“When Matt [Glaser] asked me to be the curator of this project, I couldn’t have guessed how impactful and enlightening it would be for me. Working in an all-women and non-binary band filled a void for all of us – creatively, academically, and socially,” Laura continued. “Students shared experiences of the not-so-glamorous parts of working in a male-dominated field. They studied the music and songs of their heroes, who sometimes got overlooked in other classes and ensembles. They wrote songs, arranged music, and tried on different leadership roles in the band.

“But most of all, they encouraged and inspired each other to be better musicians. The mutual dedication and enthusiasm were palpable in every rehearsal.”

It’s been an experience of a lifetime to learn the music I love with a group of women who want to push the boundaries of the genre. To sit with a group of people who understand the intricacies of being a woman or gender non-confirming person playing bluegrass – or even music in general – was a very comforting experience. We all grew so much as people and musicians.

Photos courtesy of Emma Turoff. Lead image: Ensemble, No Man’s Land. Inset image: Ensemble, Ain’t That Just Like A Man.

Lizzie No: The GOAT on Gender, Tiaras, and Leveling Up (Basic Folk)

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Bestie Lizzie No has just released their career-defining new record, Halfsies, and we are 100% here for it on our 250th episode! Lizzie, who co-hosts Basic Folk, put her entire being, identity, and creativity into this project. There’s a lot going on with their main character, the avatar Miss Freedomland, and we’re getting to the bottom of it in our conversation.

Our hero’s journey begins even before the main character is born. Her inception grew out of disdain for childhood beauty pageants – which Lizzie’s mother actually won back in the early ’60s at a now defunct amusement park called Freedomland. And, there are photos of Little Catherine Quinlan with a look of disgust on her five-year-old face. Lizzie grew up with this story and as she got older, she began to think hard about societal expectations and the stock put into women and children’s emotional expression through their faces. Lizzie also grew up hearing and saying the word “No,” hence the stage name.

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Enter Miss Freedomland! (Also the name of Lizzie’s new record label.) She has been tasked with a journey to become free, which will require inner healing, exploration of self-identity, and giving up performance of gender that just feels wrong. The album starts with our main character trying to level up (because, yes, this is a video game) with her own self-expression, revisiting past traumas and shedding the baggage and hot garbage that got her trapped in the first place.

In our conversation, we go track by track through this showstopper of a record and even get some solo live performances. I hope you enjoy exploring Lizzie’s world as much as I did. These songs are brilliant and the concept executed remarkably. Thanks to Studio 9 in North Adams, Massachusetts for the use of their beautiful studio!

Photo Credit: Cole Nielsen

Country’s Genderf*ck Tradition

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

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Country music’s gender politics have always been, well, kind of fucked up. The genre itself is rooted in class-based declarations of authenticity and individualism, all while negotiating assimilation into urban life. Like any other large group of people, country music artists are by no means monolithic, and the genre’s approach to gender – especially femininity – is diverse. But for all the treacly love songs and mincing breakup songs, the ones where country divas’ lives are at the mercy of men, there are songs that flip that dynamic right on its head.

Stephanie Vander Wel’s Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls illustrates how this dichotomy has existed since the genre began. Country music has always sold the story of rugged individualism, and that sense of individualism has paved the path for women who present themselves as more rugged than the “Pollyannas” they’re expected to be. That tradition continued well into the classic country era; Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” and Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” masterfully display centering women’s agency, while couching that drive in humor and a catchy tune.

It’s no coincidence that if you ask someone on the street to name a country music artist, they’re most likely to list a woman. Dolly, of course, or the ‘90s run of divas like Shania, Faith, or The Chicks. As has been oft-discussed, this generation of country stars tapped into the ‘90s exuberance for individual freedom while questioning the traditional ties that bind us to our scripted gender roles. Faith Hill’s “Wild One” and, of course, The Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice” portray a femininity that is self-confident: there will be no more shrinking behind men in too-large ten-gallon hats.

Marissa Moss and Dr. Jada Watson have extensively documented the decline in women’s presence on mainstream country radio since the aughts. But that doesn’t mean women are shutting up, and we are starting to see queer women, as well as nonbinary and trans artists, use their inspiration from the ‘90s to continue using country music to challenge gender norms. Roberta Lea’s “Too Much of a Woman” is brash, rejecting any sexist norms that would expect her to dim her light. Jessye DeSilva’s “Queen of the Backyard” and Paisley Fields’ “Periwinkle” are touching tributes to young people who know they don’t fit in and never will. Desert Mambas’ “Buzz Cut Blues” is a nod to Leslie Feinberg’s legendary no novel Stone Butch Blues, making good on country music’s promise of non-normative gender performance with a meditation on moving through the world as a transmasc person.

Throughout the century’s worth of country music canon, there is one throughline: this genre that celebrates outlaws and misfits must always celebrate women, femmes, non-men, and others who are doin’ it for themselves.

Photo of Dolly Parton from the Michael Ochs Archives.

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You’re Looking At (Feminine) Country

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

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Eight years ago, in 2016, the harp-playing half of Brooklyn-based folk duo Devil & the Deep Blue Sea, found herself filing away songs for a solo project.

“There were certain songs… [that] would tell me who Lizzie No was going to be,” she explained in a recent phone interview.
“There were songs that felt very personal, very femme, and a little more country and a little more pop than would be appropriate in my band. Those songs started getting categorized into the ‘new solo project’ category. And then, I just had to come up with a name, you know. Like, I needed my Sasha Fierce alter ego, to be able to stand in myself.”

The name she landed on, Lizzie No, was a doozy. Considering the femininity she noticed her new songs projecting, the decision to include the word “No” in her name was no small thing. Women, especially feminine women – especially Black feminine women – have a special relationship with the word. It was important to No that her solo singer-songwriter persona reflect the energy she wanted to project, the space she wanted to carve for herself and her songs.

“I think there’s a real difference between singing songs that you wrote in the context of a band versus being a solo artist and having people literally look at you, in your physical body, and associate the songs with you and yourself. So I needed an identity, a performer identity, that would be able to encapsulate the confidence and the directness, and yes the femininity, that I wanted to present with these songs that I was writing.”

The idea of mindfully presenting femininity is nothing new, of course. Women in all professions must decide how they’d like to present; how many minutes or hours they will spend before each workday putting on their face and dressing to impress. But, there is a special place in the history of country music for artists taking the stage while female.

It was far less than a century ago that female country singers were expected to travel with a husband, brother, or other male family member as their escort. Women country singers were expected to eschew ambition and to primarily be a pretty face with a pretty voice.

All that started to shift when Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters made their Grand Ole Opry debut in 1950 – the first all-female band on that storied stage. In fact, well aware of how women were perceived and received by the country music establishment, Mother Maybelle nonetheless insisted her daughters become masterful on their instruments, develop independent business acumen, and forge a career on the stage.

For the 74 years hence, women who can and do shred have been of great interest to country music critics and fans alike.
Author and critic Marissa A. Moss dove deep into this subject with her 2023 book, Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Busted Up the Old Boys Club. Meanwhile, on social media, fans and artists alike routinely return to the evergreen topic of how much airplay women get (or, rather, don’t) on country radio.

To consider what it means to show up wholly oneself while feminine in country music can feel like engaging with a Groundhog Day loop through tired, generations-old expectations. Granted, the options for women have broadened a bit since the Carter Sisters showed up in their gingham checks and transcended what one might have expected from pretty women who sing and play. (A new documentary by Kristen Vaurio on Paramount+ about the youngest Carter Sister, JUNE, is well worth a stream.)

The modern answer to the Carters’ quietly subversive embodiment is a cadre of demonstrably feminine women like Allison Russell, Margo Price, and Amanda Shires. Recent Grammy winner Russell comes off like a clarinet-wielding, angel-voiced supermodel, self-made from equal parts awful trauma and infectious joy. Price appears as a cross between Willie Nelson and Cher, riding her biting narrative lyricism on the vehicles of magic mushrooms and low-cut, glittery fringe. Shires saunters about in spiked heels and leotards, a finer fiddler/poet than you’ll find anywhere else on God’s green earth.

That each of these women is stunningly talented as a lyricist, multi-instrumentalist, and performer, is inarguably the most important thing. But the messages they convey by leaning hard into how they wear their gender, remind us that women in country music no longer need to amplify the pretty and take the brilliance behind the scenes. There’s more than enough space for both/and.

It wouldn’t be a leap to suggest this is thanks in part to a rising tide of queer country artists. Lizzie No, Russell, and others – Jaimee Harris, Brandy Clark, Jaime Wyatt – prioritize songcraft as equivalent to crafting persona. Other queer artists like Paisley Fields subvert the masculine/feminine binary with candid expressions of personhood that transcend traditional femininity while remaining sonically adherent to traditional country music.

All of this raises numerous questions, including: What does 21st century femininity bring to the cis-het boys’ club of country music? Shouldn’t women get country airplay while also being free to show up as the full human they are?

Lizzie No is a good example of a walking answer to both questions.

A rising country singer whose music lands warmly – a stew of Dolly and Emmylou, a twinge of Kris, just a pinch of Sleater Kinney – her new album, Halfsies, is a mostly-country and occasionally rock and roll rumination on the intersections of love, identity, and freedom. While it may resonate for plenty of men and folks who don’t identify as feminine, it is, in other words, about the numerous conundrums and longing-for-transcendence of womanhood.

“There’s a patriarchal anxiety around performance and illusion, and we associate that with femininity,” No says. “[I’m] actually leaning into that and saying, ‘It’s all a mask. Gender is a mask for me and for you.’ That’s a big part of how I’ve constructed my identity as Lizzie No. I am one thousand different things and [you shouldn’t] try to narrow it down musically, or in terms of gender.”

She goes on to affirm that the way she constructed her performer persona is similar to drag. Considering country music is most often associated with Nashville (where No recently relocated from New York City), it’s worth considering that this new wave of feminine people in country music has risen at the same time as a push-back against drag performers in the same state and across the country. The tension between these two phenomena is mostly political and definitely charged.

When indie band Yo La Tengo played a show in Nashville shortly after the state passed its anti-drag bill, their decision to wear dresses onstage was a funny, tongue-in-cheek protest. An overt resistance, an assertion of allyship. This is different from when someone like nonbinary country singer Paisley Fields steps out in a sheer top and jewelry, or a dress. The former is clowning on politicians; the latter is throwing on something comfortable to engage in vulnerable, intensely personal creative expression. The former is playing to its indie rock audience, replete with left-leaning, ironic hipsters; the latter is forging a path of their own in the country music world, where femininity is a little more… complicated.

“The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to femininity in country music is just how misogynistic of a genre it is,” Fields said in a recent interview.

For example, they added, “The first time I wore a dress [onstage], I noticed the way people treat me is very different. Even if I’m just in a more, like, sort of flamboyant or more feminine look—maybe hot pink pants or something – I’m treated very differently. If I’m wearing a dress, it’s almost a little scary.”

Over the past couple of years, since coming out as nonbinary, Fields has been exploring what it means for a person assigned male at birth to express authentic femininity on a country stage. Indeed, they are just as likely to appear in the jeans-boots-hat costume of a country man as they are in a sparkly net top and purple chaps – an outfit nobody would look twice at, were it donned by Margo Price or Lizzie No. In the process, they’ve firmed up their own convictions around country music’s relationship with femininity.

“It would be better for a woman to be masculine [in country music] than for a man to be feminine,” they say. To clarify: “Some of the most successful women in country music are obviously very feminine and embrace their femininity, like Dolly Parton and [Shania] Twain. But there is this sort of like, tough as nails [persona], which I guess is perceived a lot of times as masculine.”
Granted, this tough-as-nails persona is often an outcropping of the mountains these women have needed to climb in order to make it onto the big stage.

In her 2022 memoir, Maybe We’ll Make It, Price detailed a few shady encounters with Nashville songwriters and executives who saw her as a young, hopeful girl who deserved to be exploited. That she survived these instances and earned success with her music on her own terms, in the end, perhaps lends itself to a tough-as-nails persona. But it is one that comes from being a woman with well-marked boundaries in a misogynistic boys club. When she rode into the 2022 Stagecoach Festival in a crop top and glitter skirt, on horseback, she knew she’d earned the right.

This balance of toughness and femininity (often used in a context where it’s synonymous with “weak” or “fragile” or “naïve”) is indeed not a stretch, but rather the innate characteristic of a woman with a strong moral center and the desire to get hers.

Lizzie No explains perhaps better than this writer can.

“I feel my most feminine when I am in some way using my physical body to achieve political ends,” she says. “To me, that’s my ideal of femininity. It’s like the women who lured Nazis to their death by being hot. When I want to post about taking down the government, you know, I will always use a bikini pic. … Because it’s like, hey, look over here, you’re going see my midriff and you’re going to learn about how capitalism has alienated us from ourselves.”

Photos of Lizzie No by Cole Nielsen.

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Basic Folk: Taylor Ashton

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Canadian-born, New-York based banjo person Taylor Ashton’s second solo album, Stranger to the Feeling, was recorded on a coast-to-coast road trip in 2021. These were the two weeks post-vaccine where we thought everything was A-OK, so Ashton and producer Jacob Blumberg set out on a recording adventure that included collaborations with friends new and old.

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Ashton, who’s since become a new parent with wife Rachael Price (Lake Street Dive), wanted to create an album that “meditates on the meaning of closeness and connection in an age of increasing isolation.” The energy of the new album is just that and it is palpable alongside its use of space and natural sound (gotta love those birds and room noise).

In our conversation, Taylor expands on the making of the album while addressing questions on the difficulty of reconnecting after the pandemic and how the music helped break that barrier of social isolation. We also go through a lot of the album’s songs and get to topics like crying while playing your own song, struggling with expressing feelings, and both being and not being cool. Taylor also graciously shares their thoughts on gender expression and walking the line of benefiting from the patriarchy and not feeling exactly like they embody the male gender all of the time. Being 6’2 and crying while listening to your own song maybe sums it all up? Or maybe you can’t summarize Taylor Ashton? I’m very grateful to welcome him back to Basic Folk!

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez