“There’s Something About the Women!:” Warmth pervades Irene Young’s book release at the Freight & Salvage

When looking back at my frantically scratched notes in a pocket-sized address book I had brought to the 7pm celebration of Irene Young at the Freight & Salvage on November 19, one sentiment stands out in particular. Warmth pervades, I had written in a shorthand I myself barely understand, but this phrase needed no elongation– to attend a Women’s Music show at the Freight & Salvage is to be filled with a spine-tingling warmth from your cheeks to your toes. For the entire five-and-a-half hours I was at the Freight, I felt a remarkable sense of gratitude settle over me. Warmth pervades, and so does the Women’s Music community. 

Irene Young

I arrived at the Freight & Salvage in downtown Berkeley at 5:45pm by way of Line 6, dressed somewhat nervously in a black turtleneck, brown corduroy slacks, a 1940s brown dress jacket and my trusty steel-toed boots. Pinned to my lapel was a badge I had found digging in a bin of old pins one afternoon; a hand-lettered “I Buy Women’s Herstory” against a white background, original from the women’s movement in the 1970s. Is this cheesy? I had asked myself many times over. I was acutely aware that the company I was going to be in was women who had begun attending Women’s Music events in the 1970s and hadn’t stopped since. This would be the first Women’s Music concert I ever attended– did I want to wear a badge that signified my eagerness to participate in a movement long behind me? Eventually, the badge won out, and there I was, standing chilled in a small queue outside the box office. 

What struck me immediately was the sense of community, even in a queue outside the concert venue. Women smiled at me, walked around with petitions they hoped to get signatures on, chattered brightly away with anyone and everyone who joined the line. Everyone seems to know each other, I scribbled down frantically, trying not to look like I was taking notes. This was no surprise to me, having researched and written on the subject of the Women’s Music community several times over the past year, but there was something uniquely moving seeing it in person. Being an indirect part of it, even as an observer, was better research than any online archive ever could be– the women around me spoke loudly, with great joy about the happenings in their lives, their mothers, their friends, the trouble they’d gotten into. 

You have some crazy Facebook friends, you know?

Oh, I know. That was insane!

Eventually I realized I ought to claim my ticket from the box office. I received my comp ticket (to my delight, with specification that I was on the “Guest List”), and was directed into a different line where I was outfitted with a Premium purple wristband. There was a group of women behind me with one man in the center– they joked that this man was probably one of five at the whole event. They were not wrong. Women’s Music seems to have remained a space almost entirely made up of women to this very day, and largely of lesbian-feminists at that. Then, the doors opened, and we were ushered into the venue itself; a wood-paneled, warmly-lit front room with a vibrant pride flag on the wall and tables filled with women getting a bite before the show.

I made a beeline for the seats, hoping to get one right in the front and center. I did this with some reservation– part of me felt that I should hold back, give the best seats to the women who had been there before me (and by “before,” I meant at all the shows I was not alive to attend), but my determination for good coverage pushed me to take a seat I could observe everything from. I settled down in the third row center, with a clear view of the stage and all its happenings, and waited for the show to begin as the rows slowly began to fill up with groups of women. A slideshow was projected onto the stage of Irene Young’s photography featuring images of Women’s Music’s biggest names, and I heard the crowd murmuring behind me as each new image appeared.

Oh, Holly Near. She was my first concert way back when!

Cris Williamson. Do you remember her? She was just gorgeous!

The Deadly Nightshade! Oh, I LOVE them. 

The show I attended was the second of two mini-fests in honor of Irene Young’s new photography book, Something About the Women, celebrating fifty years of her Women’s Music photography career. There were nearly forty performers of Women’s Music slated to appear, and you could tell the crowd was excited. 

With a bill like this, you know the show’s going to be wonderful. 

I agreed. I knew most of the names on the bill, and I was remarkably excited to see everyone perform. There was so much history congregated in one room, both in the performers who had started a movement, and the audience who had been there since day one, fighting for their voices to be heard. That factor is impossible to ignore. Yet, there was something else in the air, an aura of present togetherness that drew everybody in the intimate venue into it, whether you were in a group of friends, coupled with a partner, or alone like me– and my soon-to-be seatmate.

Skip The Needle

When Terri sat down next to me, short white hair and yellow jacket glowing under the dim house lights, I smiled at her, hoping my eyes conveyed the sense of welcome that my mask blocked. She looked curiously at my pin, then asked, “Did you go to the first show?” I responded that I hadn’t, and asked her the same. She said she had, and was only going to go to one show, but when she realized the bill of performers changed for the second, her friend had given her another ticket to stay all day. “You know, I cried at the last one,” Terri said. “Partly out of emotion for the performers, and partly out of grief that the time in which we had all this is over.” My mouth twisted under my mask and I nodded vehemently. It is hard for me, as a journalist, to spend so much time researching things I can’t bring back and was never present for in the first place. I cannot imagine the feeling of having been there and knowing that though a form of Women’s Music culture still exists (the emotion), you could not bring back the time, the people, or the person you were at the time it was in its prime (the grief).

“What brings you to this show, then?” I launched into my story, explaining that I was a Women’s Music student at Berkeley, and had written an article about the movement some months prior, which led to a miracle being pulled that allowed me into the sold-out show on a comp ticket. “Oh,” Terri replied, “So you’re going to be writing a story?” Something about that wording stuck with me. She hadn’t said “article,” “news piece,” or even “review.” She’d said story. I scribbled that down in my notebook as the lights dimmed in anticipation of the show. I had been overhearing stories from other women all night as a silent observer. Terri was the first person to share hers with me directly.

The show had begun, and I settled back in my seat hoping to absorb every last word sung or spoken. After the Freight introductions, Dr. Bonnie Morris, Women’s Music historian (and my professor at Cal), presented a piece she had written for Young. “For so many of us, the Women’s Music Movement was the soundtrack to our awakening,” she said, the women around me vehemently nodding their heads as she described the way one learned to love the parts of a woman that created music; the throat, the fingers, “a dyke in leather.” 

As Dr. Morris left the stage, a drum line of four women, Carolyn Brandy, Michaelle Goerlitz, Barbara Borden, and Debbie Fier, opened the show’s musical portion with pounding enthusiasm. As the audience clapped along, I noticed they were in perfect 4/4 rhythm with the women onstage; evidence of a lifetime spent in the presence of music. The complex patterns each woman played on their percussion of choice were unique, but always in tandem with the other musicians. This is a theme that would continue throughout the show; though each act was unique, no performer was trying to upstage another– the women clearly understood what it was like to work off of one another. 

Deidre McCalla was the next act, and she invoked audience participation almost instantaneously. “Let me teach you the chords to this chorus,” she said, grinning down at the audience from behind her acoustic guitar, advancing onto the “call and response” once she deemed us proficient enough in singing the chorus. She had noted, at the beginning of the song, that the irony of singing a song titled “I Do Not Walk This Path Alone” while alone onstage was not lost on her– but realized that by singing to an audience, she was never truly isolated. The feeling of singing “I do not walk this path alone / No matter where I’m bound / We all stand on someone’s shoulders / When we reach the higher ground” with hundreds of women around me, many who had already proved they were willing to let their sisters stand on their shoulders, was indescribable. This was the first moment I felt myself relax into the music, the enveloping sensation of belonging chasing away nerves wired tight with anticipation. 

Three acts later, Melanie DeMore took the stage, accompanied by Women’s Music luminary Mary Watkins. DeMore opened her song by simply stating that in times as hard as these ones, she found it fitting to sing. What followed was the most powerful rendition of “We Shall Overcome” I have ever heard. The acoustic guitars of protests past forgone, DeMore’s rich alto voice soared over Watkins’ melodic piano figures. Like McCalla, she implored the audience to sing with her, and within minutes, the entire audience was on their feet, voices rising alongside DeMore. The effect was enough to send chills down anyone’s spine, and as DeMore’s voice rose higher and higher above the crowd, unstrained in its finale, I was hit with a sense of belonging again. Warmth pervades, I thought to myself with a smile that kept creeping up under my mask. Warmth pervades.

Alive!

Next, Robin Flower and Libby McLaren with Sheilah Glover, Mary Ford, and Nancy Vogl. The quartet ripped into a good, old-fashioned blues that made me sit right up in musical excitement. Oh, they know what they’re doing, I thought, as a blues lick was played over a rousing piano vamp. It takes a profound sense of musical togetherness to play the blues in a group, and as the chorus to the song– “They called me an agitator!” repeated, I could feel the energy in the room lifting as the women around me clapped along, or, like me, tapped along like a metronome with their feet. 

One act later, The Deadly Nightshade (with Lisa Koch) would follow along in true country & western fashion. They played one song from their first album in 1975, “High Flying Woman” and one song from their final album in 2012, “The John Deere Tractor Song,” noting the fifty years of time that had passed in between the two. The trio’s energy was infectious, especially when a rousing fiddle was broken out in “The John Deere Tractor Song,” as the group gleefully sang of a woman who liked to ride naked on just that– a John Deere Tractor. The audience was laughing, stamping their feet, and the women on stage were grinning ear-to-ear; all in all, The Deadly Nightshade was the perfect, humorous closer to a stellar first half of the show. 

As the lights went up for intermission, Terri turned to me. “What did you think?” she asked. Truthfully, I had been rendered speechless, but I must’ve spluttered something out along the lines of, “It was fantastic!” (To me, the show was something in a realm beyond fantastic– perhaps even divine). “I’m so glad I got to be here,” I said and she smiled, pointing out the acts she had seen in the 1970s on the setlist, explaining what they had sounded like “back then” and how that had changed now. I had heard many of the artists several times before, digging out every scrap of their discographies that I could on the Internet, but once again, I was struck with the notion that online archives could only go so far. Here was someone who had been there, who had heard the artists’ voices change and watched them age with her, and now she was telling me exactly what about them had changed. “They were funny,” she went on, “The audience loved them. You can’t tell from a short show like this, but they used to tell stories and jokes in between songs. Really talked to the audience.” As I scratched something into my notebook on the way these artists established a community through song and speech, Terri got up for intermission, and I was quick to follow, weaving through the audience towards Dr. Morris. 

I spent intermission in a whirlwind, shaking the hands of what felt like half the women featured in or running the show; many of them backstage, where I was shocked to find myself less than a foot away from women I had written about in the article that got me to the show in the first place. I felt perpetually wide-eyed, trying to take in the Sharpie-signed plywood, the bustle of women around me, the people I was introduced to. Particularly notable was the way Rhiannon clasped my hand closely and complimented my gold pinecone necklace with a warm, knowing smile (“It was my mom’s!” I replied. Fitting for the occasion). I was staggered to then turn my body half an inch and find myself introduced to Holly Near, her soft-spoken “Nice to meet you” ringing in my ears as I rushed out from the backstage almost as quickly as I had come in. I felt electrified in a way that felt as if every cell in my body was standing on tip-toes, these ribbons of warmth linking everyone I spoke to together. Warmth pervades, as I shook a few more hands. Warmth pervades, as I left Dr. Morris for my seat as the lights began to dim. Warmth pervades, as Terri gestured for me to go in ahead of her.

Irene Young herself opened the second act, discussing the intricacies of her book’s process and the gratitude she felt for the Women’s Music community that allowed it to happen. “You showed up for me,” she emphasized again and again. The first run of her book had already sold out, and the audience cheered Young on louder than ever. She would be seen with a camera around

L-R: Barbara Higbie, Shelley Jennings, Ferron, Chris Webster

her neck for the rest of the show, as some women behind me noted with joy, not missing a second of documentation in fifty years. 

In radical departure from the sounds of the first act, Oakland legends Skip the Needle were the first musical feature of the second half, dialing it up with their hard rocking, funk-influenced sound. I was thrilled at the change; Skip the Needle knows how to rock, and they made no secret of the fact. The fast-flying electric guitar solos sung over the melodic, gritty bassline, and I was almost sorry to see the band go after their song– their energy was infectious.

The molecules in the air seemed to shake long after the band had left the stage, and I wondered how the next act would match the energy in the room. I needn’t have worried– multi-instrumentalist Barbara Higbie was up next, accompanying Margaret Belton in a Patsy Cline cover full of heart. Then, Higbie performed one of her original compositions alongside saxophonist Jean Fineberg, her vocals in a mesmerizing call-and-response with Fineberg’s soulful saxophone licks. 

All-female jazz quintet Alive! reunited on the stage not soon afterwards, creating a spiritual soundscape of lightly brushed cymbals, chimes, tinkling piano and a gentle smattering of hand percussion before launching into an enthralling song that was partly spoken word, partly vocal. In a hard-hitting moment, vocalist Rhiannon stared unflinchingly at the audience, eyes sparkling with mirth as she proclaimed, “Men, if you don’t want to be in this shit-ass situation, then EVOLVE! … We are the riot grrrls!” 

The second-to-last act was Ferron, accompanied by Shelley Jennings and Chris Webster, with Barbara Higbie on violin. Her stage presence was simple, but she needed no flourishes. She stood onstage with her acoustic guitar and sang “Testimony,” a song that got the audience up and singing with her– 48 years of history contained in the space between the song and its listeners. Ferron received two standing ovations– a feat she shared with many of the performers that had previously been onstage that night.

L-R: Tammy Hall, Emma’s Revolution, Holly Near

Finally, to close out the show, was none other than Holly Near herself. Near walked out to thunderous applause, and in her opening remarks, made a statement I will never forget:

“You know, when I’m performing, women will come up to me and say, ‘Oh, that takes me back.’ And that’s never my intention…my intention is to bring you forward. If you treat me and the other women up here as nostalgia, you will make us disappear.”

As Near launched into her song, “Something About the Women,” the namesake of Irene Young’s book, many of the night’s other performers joined her in one big, joyful crowd. As the song faded out, and the performers were saying their goodnights, I was thinking about Near’s statement, and how many of the women I had spoken to that night seemed caught between that nostalgia for a past time, and the present stage of Women’s Music they continued to show up for. There really is nowhere to go but forwards, and fortunately, the Women’s Music community embraces newcomers with open arms, even if it may be hard to let go of the past. 

I had been staring at the stage, watching the performers head backstage in deep contemplation of Near’s words. Terri turned to me and asked, “How did you like the show?” I had tears in the corners of my eyes, and all I could think to do was clasp my hands over my heart, and say, “I have no words. It was indescribable.” She smiled at me over her mask, and said “Yeah.” We exchanged names, and then she was gone as I gathered my things from under the seat, making a few more notes in my red book as I went. I was asked what I thought of the show by many of the women I met on my way out, and gave the same response every time. The feeling of being there, in that room, at the end of the show, was truly indescribable.

As I said my goodbyes, I headed out into the brisk night air, Irene Young’s first book clutched tightly at my side. I stood at a bus stop on Shattuck, slightly chilled from the 53 degree temperature I certainly was not dressed for, and fumbled in my bag for my Clipper Card. As I flipped open the top and leafed through the contents, I was struck with the strangest sensation– the inside of the bag was warm, having retained the heat from being inside the Freight all the way to the bus stop. I couldn’t help but smile as I flipped it shut again, recalling the very first thing I had written in my notes for the evening.

Warmth pervades! I thought, with great joy. As I got on the bus home, I knew I had to get writing– not an article, not a review, but a story that would link every woman I overheard, my seatmate Terri, and the performers together– hoping that I would finally be able to put the night into words that matter. Warmth pervaded Irene Young’s book launch, a tapestry of diverse artists celebrating the gutsiness of those who had created and contributed to Women’s Music, and warmth continues to pervade the Women’s Music community, in nostalgia, in present, and in moving forward.

Performers’ Finale

*Author’s Note: Many of the quotes in this piece are based on my direct recall– some words may have been lost in translation as a result. None of them, however, are embellished or otherwise edited.

Article and photos by Gianna Caudillo