Podcast Drop: Herstory and Popular Music
Music & Meaning checks in with three up-and-coming women songwriters
I’m old enough to have been a young man tagging along with his girlfriend (later wife) visiting women’s centers and bookstores back in the 1970s. I listened to women activist songwriters like Holly Near and Chris Williamson. I read Our Bodies Ourselves. Women were making herstory, not history.
As history, or herstory, proves, so much and so little has changed. Since March is Women’s History Month, I thought it might be insightful for the Music & Meaning podcast to check-in with three of Nashville’s up-and-coming women singer-songwriters, Erika Daves from the country trio, Daves Highway; Jasmine Mullen of the pop/R&B group, The New Respects, and Abby Siler, indie lo-fi pop artist and songwriter for Integrity Music. All three women are professing followers of Christ navigating musical integration with the Church and popular music. It is a vocation not for the faint of heart. I wanted to know their stories. For women in the music workplace, what has changed for the better and what hasn’t? Who are the trailblazers?
So, I asked lots of questions. All of them, some version of what’s it like in your world in 2024? What’s it like to be a talented twenty-something woman making your own music history? Who and what hinders you? Who and what is helping? Plus we laughed plenty and had a lovely time. Smart, imaginative, articulate—each gifted artist, not just making music, but making a difference.
Listen in, now.
Can we get a collective digital applause for this amazing baker’s artistic rendering of our new book in cookie form? This is a next level homage to Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much. A gift to Andi from author Claire Gibson and the Fence Jumpers book group. Lots of love there. Also, big ups to all of you that continue to post our book in action on your socials. So fun to see, and some of you are quite clever with how you apply the book to your environment (I’m thinking of Don’s placement of the book in the hands of a statue). Well played, all. Cookie art by
Great list of retailers for the book collected at CharliePeacock.com.
Have a great rest of the week. Guess what, I get to write some songs this week! I hope I remember how!
I am so enjoying this and your podcasts!