Woman; 349; Chris Williamson and Women?s Music

When in. A chain. Good evening and welcome to woman. Tonight our topic is women and we have a

very special guest with me. It's Chris Williamson who has been a singer songwriter for the past 13 years. Chris is currently recording with Olivia records and recording company. Her latest release is the changer and the changed Kris welcome to woman. Thank you. I can't sing. You can see I think everyone can. People been told they can't. I've been discovering it in audiences. I do a lot of sing a longs and I spend a lot of time in current I have my whole life I was a song leader in camp and things you know. Trying to convince people that they can sing and singing is really a joyful noise I want people to really make a note even if it's a noise I don't care you know people are so concerned about. Perfection and singing and thinking I know I've heard people tell incredible stories of teachers who said just you shut up and the saying just move your lips you know. So all their lives they've grown up not being able to

feel good about singing but I've seen them singing at stop lights with their windows rolled up and I know they sing in the showers when they're feeling good and not too self-conscious because when people are self-conscious their throat tightens up physically. That is exactly what happens. You think it's especially important for women. Yes it's a healing. It's incredibly healing music yes. I discovered doing concerts especially for women with almost totally women audiences. This is almost like over a thousand. I just got off a tour of California with mei Christian and Holly Near and Marcie Adam. And we did a tour to over 10000 women mostly all women. There are few men but mostly women. And the it's an experience that is incredible. Women tell us. And men too that their lives have been changed by this music. That we're calling women's music now for lack of a better title.

What is it exactly what do you mean by when it's music you don't well mean with music played by women or song. No I think what. You know I'm not sure we have enough data accumulated yet to know whether or not. We can define say that it has a different melodic structure or lyric structure. I think we're just kind of getting at it and also because we don't have access to a lot of our own history or musical history as well as you know other kinds of history as women. For instance a song that. Was written by Mrs. Bach in between having 30 or 40 children she had time to whip out a little tune. Yeah. And see there we don't know. Yeah I know. I think we're all trying I'm trying to define what it means and for me it has a lot to do with the kind of image of woman that is being projected. And also not only in the lyrics and in the music itself but by the performers

themselves. A strong a new we need new role models as women and. As an entertainer being incredibly visible and being watched and seen by many people. I find that I have a lot of power given to me. And so then you have to be real careful about what you do with that power. My favorite thing is to give it back I was talking that singalongs before to give it back to the audience so that they can sing and hear themselves sing and feel what that feels like kind of sharing and ritual. When did you first begin to notice that women didn't seem to be getting a fair shake in the music industry because you were recording before you started with a Livia you were recording with a so called i don't know where I was in company or I when I was with Yeah I made an album for Ampex records about five years ago. And went through that whole scene which is there. Your basic industry trip and. I had didn't really have any

idea what goes on how the record is made what its aspect was on people. But with this album. I am connected immediately too. I mean I get instant feedback. You know I get letters I'm accessible and that's part of what they knew. I think a new image for women as a performer is that she is who she shares her power. She acknowledges it and she is willing to share it and talk about it and be accessible to people. Which means that I'm real concerned that I continue to be responsible politically and Except it's really hard on me though. And I suspect it is on a lot of other performers as well because I have no private life. And unless I guarded it real carefully. But everyone pretty well knows my whole life. It's really the books are open so that means I have to be really

unafraid about my life and and that's given me a lot of courage in that way. And you didn't have a big horrible experience or big controversy that made you say well you know I've got to change this image that I know what happened to me was that I met made Christian in Washington D.C. who was a feminist and avowed feminist that's what she called herself. And I I certainly thought I probably was an instinctive feminist that's what I called it. But I didn't have any politics per se. I didn't know how to speak political language. Or didn't like to go to those meetings or any of that processing political processing. But then when I discovered that the personal is indeed political how you live your life personally you know is a real political move and so the life I live on you know at home and in my personal life is the same that I speak about on stage. There isn't any kind of that while I'm on there I'm a different person I'm that same person and I'm learning

more and more to be relaxed about my work and just speak from my heart. What were the themes then as compared to now I mean the things that you were writing about when you were recording for Ampex as opposed to what I was saying actually Sandy that I didn't have a context in which to place them. Came up to me. She'd heard my Ampex album and was the first person ever to do my songs you know. Yeah she was saying I heard that there was a woman out there singing my songs. I did a concert there she came up to me and said What do you think about women's music and I went and. I didn't know what she was talking about. So. For the next two and a half years we struggled over what that meant and the fact that I was still saying check at the time and I was coming out of a hippie culture which into which I had dropped after I was an English teacher. And then I dropped out where I really really dropped into this other culture and in California because it was free. It was a

freer kind of lifestyle that I had never experienced before. And so then I became politically aware of how. My my life and the way I and a lot of people watch me and so if I do and say certain things that could be real offensive to a lot of people I sure don't want to be offensive you know so I began really observing my behavior and observing myself more and others as well and cleaning up my act a little bit more and becoming politically aware and aware that what we do over here in this little corner does have a large affect on the globe and on the world and the fact that I've connected up with the women's movement in United States is incredible because I think it's the best in the world right now and I think the women's movement is. The most important movement going on in the planet today and I think through women we will hopefully achieve humanism and that the wars will stop all that that will turn around 180 degrees

from a lot of the things that are going on now in music is a beautiful thing because it is so flexible and it travels really well I can carry the word everywhere I'm like a message we're going messenger going out there being just looking strong. And people come up to me all the time and just because I look strong you know and and move and a strong sort of fashion in my life. They tell you your problems and things like that. Yeah it's incredible. I just want to try to pin down a little bit more you know exactly what women's music is. Does it express rage. It does. I you know I'm only barely into my own rage in my life. I always thought why I'm not angry but I am angry. I just didn't know how to express it very well because if I expressed my anger everything would go. And I preferred to reserve that for the music. That energy you know put in into healing which is what I'm more interested in than rage. You can get stuck in

rage we need to express it as women. And I think it's real valid and real important we need to be more positive than we I think to go past ranged into healing. That's that's really what I'm after. And I don't know maybe I was just born without a lot of it. I didn't I didn't have I've never had a lot of horrible things happen to me in my life I'm very I feel very blessed very lucky as though the goddesses are smiling on me you know that I'm supposed to do what I'm supposed to do. And so as a result I do get a lot of healing them and it. Do you think Women's Music is also meant to celebrate. Yes yes. In the ritual that I was talking about before our concerts have become social gatherings and rituals for people to meet each other and share this kind of. I know we're on the verge of so many things you know when his music also talks about it changes the lyrics to changes solutions to it posits new solutions into the old well it's like a love song that talks a 43 instance almost of the image in women

is if women are singing about it it's you're my man. Stand By Your Man. As long as I have my man I am everything. Well once again we have women being defined by her relationship either to her home to a man to things to a place but not to herself. And what the women's movement has given me and what I think women's lives about is affirming and reaffirming constantly our love for ourselves and that we have to learn to be with ourselves individually and really care about ourselves as women and our sisters you know to have real concern for each other and not. I mean traditionally women are pitted over competing over a man and almost all the songs talk about that or you're a mean old Daddy but I love you the blues. Right. Well I'm tired of singing the words you know nothing my baby she's having my baby right you're having my baby right there. Right right. I mean

and there's our definition what does that leave this reserves no room to grow. But. Songs which I say mean a lot of the new songs. Meg writes and HAWLEY And Callie is this Holly Near. Speaking of has this. Song about a mother mother see in the world for the first time with her own little girl as a child and she's hooked up with this man who's They're living together obviously in the ride in the pickup and everything and there's a line in here about in a song about when your gone song about stand by the fire but when you're gone The fire still cooks do you know which is you know if you go I'm going to be OK because I'm really getting strong. It's hard to be strong. You know it's really let's let's use the tape that we made earlier today as an example of women's music what is the song I take the name of the song a sister.

I originally wrote it. As a. For me the proposed musical on the life of sister Amy Macpherson who was a white evangelist the musical didn't happen. But the song remained and women took it up as a hymn. For themselves. Were.

You. You're. Right. We'll. Show you. Yes. You assume.

It was. Me. Thank you.

Chris thank you. I see our crew really appreciate it. I want to ask you a question that I'm sure you've been asked before but lots of women who are now doing things with all women crew movement companies this kind of thing. People say the product is not it's good. If you had been recording with RCA for instance as with a Livia as you are now could. Is that true I mean do you feel that you're compromising either your hard or anything by knowing that. Depends on what you're looking for you know what I got with the live it was complete artistic control. Plus I could produce my own album. You know how long it would take me to be able to be asked to produce my own record in a major label. It would be yours. You know what it's like working your way up through an industry that is run by men that they have all the money they have all the tools and what surrounds all of that is a mystique. That women don't know how to operate machinery. They can't learn as well as a man how to do it. It's simply not true.

It just means we haven't had access to it. And if we have access to those tools we will do something different. It won't sound the same. And this album of mine doesn't sound like any other and there's some magic to it which is the magic of women's music which is what happens when women work together you know. I mean for years I have tried as a performer to get booked with other women to sing on the same girl and with like Tracy Nelson I have sung with and Mimi Farina and a lot of other really great women. But traditionally men think we just can't put two women together. I mean I don't know what they think we're going to do to each other. But do they think maybe the audience is right. I guess that will be just be two but the two men together and I don't think a thing about that. You know so it just doesn't it doesn't hold water that's all. And. So we're looking for. I mean I think if we do new things if we if women do things it's going to be different it's not going to be a formula where we're looking for new forms.

Do you think it would be different if more women were in the recording industry and more women were playing songs on the radio for women yes. Oh yes I do. I never hear you know you and some of your friends on the radio right. Well those that have they have things like call play lists and if you don't get on a playlist you don't get played nor to get on a playlist. You have to have a lot of money to hassle hassle hassle hassle and we don't have a lot of money but we have. We're on our second 10000 pressing already. We have an audience. Fifty two percent of this population you know and I'm headed for all those women those women out there in the suburbs. Our music Women's Music has to do with women's lives with the realities of their situation. A lot of which is very painful. And when women I have seen women sitting in audiences with tears streaming down their faces car no one has ever spoken to these things of my heart you know. How did you know about them. I said because I'm a woman. It's like if you go to a woman doctor she touches you and treats you

differently because she's a woman because she knows what it feels like. So. It appeals to different places and spaces. You know we are different creatures and so we're apt to make different music and music that's I mean most people will say the product isn't as good and most of those people are men. I would say you don't really feel you've compromised or you don't feel you make it harder for yourself. No I chose to do this. And I knew as soon as I figured as soon as I chose to go with an independent label I would get an offer from a major label which would really make me lay it on the line as to where my heart was. And I looked around and here are these wonderful women who let me have my power the power which is mine which I just have which we all have. And it was nothing to them to give that to me. But for me you know I would have to work my way up through who knows what devious methods

or you know I have to be such an incredible star that they would have hand that power to me. CHRIS Tell me about Deadwood South Dakota. I was born in Deadwood South Dakota and raised in the Rockies of Wyoming and Colorado. And this song that I want to sing you talks about a woman who was buried there in South Dakota. Her name is Calamity Jane. And I wrote the song about her it's called The Ballad of Calamity Jane. It's Women's Music. I believe it is it's it's a folk oriented song and it's a ballad you know and it's also like a cowboy song which you don't hear many of you know her as a real strong woman in the fact that her best friends you know only companions mostly were beside her horse and the animals that she worked with were whiskey which eventually took her life.

And when hanging out in the bar rooms in the mining towns of South Dakota. Thank you very much. Yes. Chris what do you think is going to

happen. Do you think you really think women's music is going to catch on. I think it's going to. It's going to be incredible. I mean I try to look into the future a little bit and I see I have great hopes for it for changing many people's lives and minds and. For it to be taken seriously because people don't know who we are because we're not shown in the media or played on the radio. I work all the time. I mean I'm hardly ever home I work so much but. Which shows that there is an audience there and great appreciators of music. And they will carry it. Why aren't some of the big names Joni Mitchell. Some of those women why aren't they really pushing for women's music. And I think they're afraid of being connected with the women's movement. For all kinds of reasons Johnny is still caught up as far as I can see according to her music in needing a man. So it's going to be like a lot of other things having to do with the women's movement is going to be a grassroots thing

from the people. That's what makes it strong. Because it comes from the people's need and from the women from women's need to assert themselves and be real strong. So they have chosen us to be there and speak you know. Chris thanks. Thanks for telling us about women's music. Thank you for watching and good night. A. Woman was produced by w n e d TV which is soley responsible for its content

and was funded by a public television stations of the Ford Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. You.