John Gessner
Sarah Shook and members of her band, the Disarmers.
Feminist anthems have long been part of country music’s tapestry. In “The Pill,” from 1975, Loretta Lynn sang:
“All these years I’ve stayed at home while you had all your fun / And every year that’s gone by / Another baby’s come / There`s gonna be some changes / Made right here on Nursery Hill / You’ve set this chicken your last time / ’Cause now I’ve got the pill.”
More recently, Kacey Musgraves described the impossible contradictions facing women, in the first verse of her 2013 award-winning hit “Follow Your Arrow;” the song is also a nod of support to the LGBTQ community:
“If you save yourself for marriage / You’re a bore / If you don’t save yourself for marriage / You’re a horrible person / If you won’t have a drink / Then you’re a prude / But they’ll call you a drunk / As soon as you down the first one.”
But many country music fans have had fewer opportunities to hear these and other female narratives—at least on country radio.
Many country music fans have had fewer opportunities to hear these and other female narratives—at least on country radio.
Amidst the growing movements of #MeToo and #TimesUp, the country music industry is one of the last sectors in entertainment to fully acknowledge both the necessity and inevitability of gender equality.
In the 1990s, terrestrial country radio—broadcast from radio stations to AM/FM devices—began witnessing a decline in listenership, which meant stations were at risk of losing advertising dollars. As a response, country radio adopted gender-based airplay ratios of 85 percent male and 15 percent female artists.
This new standard was developed based on advice from radio consultant, Keith Hill, who in 2015 told Country Aircheck Weekly, “if you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out.” Female listeners make up 70 to 75 percent of the radio audience, he asserted, and “women like male artists.”
In the article, Hill described country radio as “principally a male format with a smaller female component.” He claimed, “[female artists] are just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban, and artists like that. The tomatoes of our salad are the females.”
His statements set off what would become known as “Tomato-gate,” as women in the industry pushed back.
Nonetheless, since the 1990s, radio stations have generally deployed Hill’s recommendation, offering country radio listeners playlists that never exceed 15 percent women artists. Hill has continued to claim that following his gender-based quotas will lead to greater advertising revenue, or at least prevent it from dropping, because, as he insists, country radio’s majority female audience doesn’t like listening to women.
However, there are plenty of women in the industry who dispute Hill’s assertions, and they are working hard to change country music from the inside out.
“The tomatoes of our salad are the females.”
Founded in 2017 as a response to the continued inequality experienced by women in the country music industry, Women of Music Action Network, (WOMAN), known as WOMAN Nashville on social media, “is an anonymous collective of change makers working to secure more market share, opportunities, resources, and equality for women in the music industry,” according to the group’s website.
Also leading the industry’s feminist movement is Change the Conversation, an organization founded in 2014 by Leslie Fram, senior vice president of music strategy for CMT (Country Music Television), along with A&R/publishing executive Tracy Gershon, and Middle Tennessee State University Recording Industry department chair, journalist, and music industry veteran Beverly Keel. They describe their organization as “dedicated to improving the environment for women in music.”
A win for the group this year was Fram’s work in creating an all-female lineup for the 2018 CMT Artists of the Year, a major shift from the previous year’s all-male line up. Gershon credits Fram for coming up with the idea and bringing it to fruition. Both, however, would strongly prefer it if their group didn’t have to exist.
“Our goal is to become obsolete and to never have this conversation again,” Gershon says, adding that she would “be thrilled if the industry put [Change the Conversation] out of business” by achieving gender equity.
Musicologist and country music scholar Jada Watson, a professor at University of Ottawa, Ontario has both challenged the data behind Hill’s proclamation that women are the “tomatoes” in country music, and has shown the impact of the industry’s adoption of such theory.
Watson’s own research, released in September, shows how gender-defined quotas have marginalized female artists in the industry. It revealed a significant decline, between 1996 and 2016, in the number of individual female artists played on country radio and the number of songs played by such artists. In addition, Watson found that it was more difficult for new artists to make their way onto the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart compared to established artists, the majority of whom are men. Because male artists are disproportionately represented on country radio, and therefore on the chart, she argues, female artists are faced with an innate disadvantage.
“We need to better understand women’s place in country music, and address assertions made about their marginal status,” Watson says.
One area of country music exemplifies this dynamic. Outlaw country, a sub-genre which came to epitomize the counterculture of the 1960s, has remained, largely, a boys club. Widely attributed to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, the name refers to their success in fighting major record labels and maintaining creative freedom over their work.
Outlaw country, which often combines traditional country and western sounds with southern and other forms of rock, eventually became a mainstay of the industry. Artists have included Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, and Hank Williams Jr., and more recently, Chris Stapleton, Jamey Johnson, and Sturgill Simpson.
A few women have risen through the outlaw ranks, notably Jessi Colter, Tanya Tucker, Gretchen Wilson, and Lucinda Williams.
Musician Sarah Shook is working hard to break barriers in outlaw territory. The North Carolinian and her band the Disarmers have played more than 100 shows around the country since March in support of their album Years, the follow-up to the 2017 reissue of their debut LP, Sidelong, and will soon be returning to Europe for another tour.
Derek Ketchum
Shook has been described as leading the way with forthright lyrics that refuse to give her a pass for the pain she’s caused others — or vice-versa.
In an email to me, she writes: “There are a lot of women out here touring incessantly, putting in the hard work, and having success, but we have to work twice as hard [as men] for less than half the recognition. It sucks but it will change, we're working way too hard for it not to.”
“I write from the heart from personal experience,” Shook relates. “I used to think I wrote songs for me, for catharsis, to exercise my personal demons. I’ve only recently come to realize how much these songs are for anyone they resonate with. If these songs can make anyone feel less alone in their personal struggles, dang. That’s really all I could ask for or want.”
In the uptempo “Good as Gold,” where the traditional country sounds of the pedal steel guitar are layered upon the cadence of a near-punk drum riff, Shook shares her vulnerability: “I'm afraid of losing / Losing everything to you / My heart my pride, a wreck inside / Nothin’ on this jukebox 'cept them blues / But baby, if you go it’s over for good / And I’m as good as golne / No, it won’t be long ‘til the wrong song comes on / at the right time / You’re as good as gold / And I’m as good as gone.”
Shook is optimistic about the future, though, which she believes rests at least in part on expanding the current boundaries of country music. “I never wanted to get pigeonholed as a country artist; we’re too rock ‘n roll for that. In ten years, I hope to see a lot more diversity in audiences in general, not just at outlaw shows.”
That desire for diversity is shared by singer-songwriter Erin O’Dowd, who released her first album Old Town in May.
Derrick Webber
“We have to, as feminists, be aware of each other’s experiences and be conscious of each other’s history,” says singer/songwriter Erin O’Dowd.
“I feel like Americana, where I’m more specifically identified, is more woman-friendly [than mainstream country],” O’Dowd says.
Having been in Nashville for about a year, she’s noticed that “there aren’t many female musicians being played on Broadway.” Also known as “NashVegas,” Broadway is lined with clubs and bars catering to the city’s tourists.
O’Dowd also noted the lack of racial diversity in country music, stating, “We have to, as feminists, be aware of each other’s experiences and be conscious of each other’s history.”
In her song “Wewoka,” the singer describes the Seminole Tribe’s forced removal from Florida to Oklahoma by the U.S. government, as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
In it, O’Dowd’s trademark ethereal vocals seem effortless against the somewhat haunting sounds of the electric guitar.
“Wewoka, we woke up to the sound of a horn / And horse hooves, and drum beats as they trampled our home / Wewoka, we woke up to the sound of hum / And train tracks, and smokestacks as they clouded our hope / It’s just a Wewoka Switch / So jump on it / It’s just a Wewoka Switch / So jump on in.”
That song definitely came from beyond the grave,” she says. The song was inspired by a map O’Dowd found while walking along the Arkansas River in Tulsa, outlining routes Native American tribes were forced to travel to Oklahoma from across the southern and eastern regions of the United States.
“It’s about helping people tell their stories,” O’Dowd says. “Country music, roots music. It’s all about storytelling.”
The goal is to have more of those stories told by women.