Claiming ‘Our Rightful Space’: Women of Blue Ox Discuss Triumphs and Challenges
Wisconsin’s Blue Ox Music Festival had more women acts than ever this year. We spoke to some of the artists about their experiences and the industry at large.
Big Richard performing at Blue Ox. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2023.
Equity for women in the country/Americana/bluegrass world is an incredibly complex topic, as it is in other industries and parts of societies. Thankfully it’s something that’s being talked about more in recent years, with notable flare-ups such as the massive public discussion of women’s airplay on country radio in 2019 and 2020, or superstar Shania Twain’s recent declaration that the industry had actually regressed in the decades she’s been part of it.
Contrary to Twain’s statement about the broader industry, Blue Ox Music Festival, the iconic three-day annual June event outside Eau Claire, Wisconsin, has made dramatic progress in recent years in bringing more women acts—both regional and touring—to their three stages. An unscientific survey of past lineups revealed that female or women-led acts could be counted on one hand at each festival prior to the pandemic. Beginning in 2021, that number rose to double digits. And 2023’s lineup boasts the most women-fronted acts yet—13, with still more bands containing women musicians.
In the days leading up to and during the festival, we sat down with 14 women from 5 Blue Ox acts, ranging from brand-new bands to seasoned main-stage performers, for a series of wide-ranging conversations about their experiences and perspectives.
A Necessary Conversation
There was nearly unanimous consensus among the artists I spoke to: Focusing on bringing in more women is important, but they hope at some point it’ll become unnecessary because women artists will be represented, accepted and respected equally in the music scene. “Men aren’t male musicians, they’re just musicians,” says Bonnie Sims of Big Richard, a string quartet that took the Blue Ox main stage by storm this year. “Our goal is one day we can be just musicians and it’s not gender-based.”
Nikki Lemire of The Foxgloves echoes that sentiment: “It’s kind of a tough thing because there’s this aspect of being a novelty, and we also wanna be seen as equals and not as novel.” So does guitarist Yasmin Williams: “I would like to hope that one day we can just be invited because we're as good as anyone else.”
But they all agree we won’t get there without acknowledgement of the problems and conscious work to overcome it. Midwest folk rocker Jerrika Mighelle not only played this year’s Backwoods Stage but was also one of the festival emcees for a second year. “I appreciate that Blue Ox makes a calculated effort to play a role in empowering women,” Mighelle says. “And they do a great job of booking queer acts too. I hope it’s inspiring other festivals as well. I’m sure Blue Ox was inspired by something else and now they’re doing it, which will then in turn inspire more. We just gotta keep doing this to make it bigger and bigger until it’s not an issue anymore.”
Lemire agrees. The Foxgloves won Blue Ox’s first Virtual Band Competition in 2021—an award they call “a huge stepping stone”—and were notably also the first all-woman act to appear at the festival. Lemire says it was a little shocking to find that out and wonders if Blue Ox organizers felt the same. “Maybe it was kind of a call to action for everybody that realized we were the first all-female band. Like, wow, maybe we’re a little bit behind, maybe it’s time to start mixing it up more. If you’ve been doing this a long time, you’re gonna know a lot of people who are like you. And then last year they had Joseph, another all-female band, and this year even more acts. So we really praise the organizers for stepping outside of their zone.”
Big Richard. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2023.
Reclaiming History
Many of the artists emphasized that women have always had a strong presence in country and roots music from the beginning; it’s just been devalued. “This goes way beyond country and bluegrass and Americana,” says Maura Dunst of The Foxgloves. “Women's contributions to music in general have been ignored for pretty much as long as women have been contributing. Bach’s wife wrote some of his most famous pieces and wasn't credited for it. Same with Fanny Mendelssohn. Fast-forward 200 years to Jimmie Rodgers’ sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams writing some of his songs and not getting credit for them. Even with Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, he’s often credited with the composition even though they wrote as a team.”
Dunst continues: “This may seem like a silly example, but I remember when I was a kid someone talking about Dolly Parton and one of my uncles saying well, she does write pretty good music, but what she’s really known for is …” Dunst mimics the gesture he made. “I think that’s a perfect example of how women get devalued in the music industry; you have a woman who wrote some of the bestselling songs of all time mostly known for having huge tits.”
It’s not just women being devalued, says Joy Adams of Big Richard. “So much of the roots of this music come from Black people. The banjo comes from Black people. Many of the old tunes we play come from Native American and Black musicians, and nobody tells those stories. It’s literally been whitewashed. People don’t realize that most of what you hear is influenced by someone you’d wrongly call a minority.”
Emma O’Shea of rising Wisconsin folk duo The Spine Stealers makes a similar point. “You can look back to a lot of songs being taken from people of color, specifically Black women,” she says. “Like Elvis took ‘Hound Dog’ from Big Mama Thornton, made millions of dollars, and now hardly anyone knows her name.”
The erasure of women (especially Black women) from history can hold back progress today, Williams says. The virtuosic fingerstyle guitarist, whose dazzling, imaginative set wowed the crowd at the Blue Ox main stage, didn’t discover the music of her heroes Elizabeth Cotten and Sister Rosetta Tharpe until she was an adult. “Had I known about them earlier, I feel like my whole world would’ve changed, because I would've seen people who look like me doing what I wanted to do and being successful at it.”
“It’s a chronic issue throughout the music industry,” Lemire says. “We’re drawing on centuries of the path being paved by people who came before us who had to work really hard to climb that hill.”
Progress
No one knows about that hill better than the members of Big Richard. “We’ve been women in the scene forever and we've experienced that our whole lives,” says Emma Rose. “Festivals often only book dudes, and will then make up for all their dudes by having a supergroup of women. A couple years ago, one festival asked Eve to put a girl band together. I’d been dreaming of this project for years, but we had the intention of just playing one gig. Then we were like, whoa, this is really fun and really powerful.” Adds Sims, “I always said, the only way I want to be in a bluegrass band is if I come in doing a power slide with my middle fingers up. I feel like Big Richard effectively does that.”
Since then, says Sims, “I do think there’s been significant progress. We’ve seen more women-led acts at festivals and shows that aren’t designated for women, which is awesome, because our goal is to just be part of the whole.”
“It definitely feels like we’re just received as fellow musicians by a lot of people,” says Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers, a relatively new act that won Blue Ox’s Virtual Band Competition this year. “There’s some structural things that still can be remedied by people having a more inclusive point of view and not having these ideas of what women can and can’t do. But for the most part, it feels like we’ve been on an equal playing ground.”
O’Shea says, “I think there’s still times it can feel a bit like, oh, we’re adding a woman to the show so it’s not all the same thing that you see every day. But we’ve been pretty well-received just based on people really liking the sound of our music and not solely because we’re a two-woman duo, though that is definitely a factor too.”
Adds Rose: “There’s a wonderful thing happening in the world; people are just recognizing people as people instead of the gender binary that’s been created in the past. That’s being broken down in many ways right now; in music, pronouns, the things people wear and how they express themselves. I think more people are trying to recognize everyone else as just another human and stop putting women and men into boxes. That’s being reflected in music too. It’s slow-moving—it’s taken fucking forever to get things rolling. But now I feel like we’re at this point where things are moving really fast in that direction. It’s about time.”
“I’ve definitely seen progress,” Williams agrees. “Bluegrass events are particularly white-male-dominated, but there’s way more women in these festivals; some are almost all women now. It’s really cool to see and to be a part of. But there’s still a long way to go. For example, we still have panels of women talking about discrimination and being underpaid. That shouldn’t be happening.”
Thinking about her unorthodox playing and sound—and about how enthusiastically the Blue Ox crowd responded—I wonder if getting less rigid about genre lines is helping. Williams concurs: “I’m definitely seeing a good amount of festivals starting to do that because I think they’re understanding that their audience is more open-minded than they gave them credit for. That means their bookers become more open-minded. Which is good for me because I can now play bluegrass festivals!”
The Foxgloves. Photo credit: Christina Wolff, 2023.
Her Stories
Big Richard opened their Blue Ox set with an intense rendition of Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer,” a unique take on the traditional murder ballad hailed by many as a feminist triumph. In it, a woman saves herself from a would-be rapist. The Foxgloves’ “Unhinged” is also a murder ballad with a feminist twist, featuring a narrator enduring domestic abuse until she snaps. I asked everyone what they think is unique (or universal) about the stories that women songwriters tell.
“A woman came up to me once and said, you know, I love your music, but you guys are kind of hard on the guys,” says Steph Snow of The Foxgloves. “And I was kinda like, are we though? Was that because of ‘Unhinged’? I think if you take gender out of it, our songwriting can speak to anyone, man or woman. It’s really just a murder ballad, or a heartbreak song. We should be able to tell everybody’s stories. Men have told our stories without our permission and through their own lens forever. But songwriting and storytelling can really come from anybody, and it’s our time to do it. What’s nice about our songs is that there are stories that can speak to everybody.”
“But it’s so important, too, to say yeah, we are writing for women,” adds Nyssa Krause of The Foxgloves. “It can be both. Some of the things we’ve gone through are also very specific to women, which is also important.”
“I think the way women experience things is ultra unique,” O’Shea says. “Being able to write songs about it and get exposure might be a relatively new opportunity. But it’s always been there, that ability to tell those stories and share the perspective of very specific things women experience that no one else can really know about.”
“I think every human being has their own unique story,” Mighelle says. “For most of history, women's voices have been secondary to men’s. It’s so important for us to use our voices and, as a queer person in this very divisive world we’re living in right now, I find it my honor and duty to share my story. My personal struggles and my struggles as a musician trying to be accepted in this industry are completely connected. I identify as non-binary, but I present as a woman, and people see me as such. When I came out, I was like, how am I gonna be accepted in this community as a queer person, let alone a woman? You hear that in my lyrics. I’m singing about wanting so hard to follow my dreams, to find the path that takes me there.”
“In the past it’s always seemed like there’s a niche role for women to fill and only certain subjects that you can cover in your songs, whereas there’s a plethora of debauchery men can partake in,” O’Shea says. “Women haven’t really been well-received when they write songs about the same things. But I feel like now there’s a lot more space, a lot more women in the audience and more women trying to support each other.”
“I definitely think there are universal stories to be told,” says Eve Panning of Big Richard, “but there are also songs like one Bonnie wrote called ‘Deal Me In’ that she calls a sex-positive female liberation anthem. Accurate, because women haven’t necessarily been allowed to express sexuality as much as men in our music.”
Adds Adams: “It turns out, we’re all kind of living the same life and feeling the same feelings and going through the same strengths and weaknesses. But it feels profound just for people to hear female stories because we haven't had too many of them.”
Yasmin Williams. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2023.
Ongoing Struggles
“I do see progress, but it’s extraordinarily slow,” Mighelle says. “Back when I started being a musician, there weren’t playlists specifically for queer people. It was so hard, like diving down into the darkness to try to find some light. But now it’s so much easier to find these artists because people are working towards helping to empower us and bring us to the forefront. Same with women. It’s getting better, but being a woman has definitely worked against me.”
“It’s hard to not have the thought in the back of your head that you’re being booked just because you’re women, because historically it’s just a reality of having to accept that role,” Ruland says. “In Madison there’s a pretty good scene and community, but there’s not a lot of women we’ve been able to play with. I’d like to see more ladies. Things are progressing, but there's still some of these harsh realities.”
Even if outright exclusion is dwindling, women artists still face a myriad of challenges that men don’t experience. Sara Tinklenberg of The Foxgloves recalls something that made them laugh initially but pointed to the heart of the problem. “We did a video for Radio Heartland and the very first comment online was like, ‘Wow. I’m pleasantly surprised at how good they are for a bunch of hot moms.’ It’s like, maybe don’t say that. Maybe just say you guys rock or whatever.”
Liz DeYoe of The Foxgoves chimes in. “Just last year my boyfriend was helping me carry my gear in for a show. I was holding my guitars, he was holding my amp, and a guy in the band playing before us looked only at my boyfriend and said, ‘oh, hey dude, you can set your gear here.’ Just straight up assumed that my boyfriend was in the band and that I was just the girlfriend helping. I thought we were past that, but as far forward as we are, we’re still not there yet. There’s still work to be done.” Snow adds, “We played a show and we were talking to this older gentleman and he was like, ‘So how did you get into music? Your husbands?’ It’s still prevalent.”
Dunst adds, “I heard Big Richard talking on a podcast about how when they first started playing under that name, which is obviously a dick joke, they had several people come up to them and be like, ‘You can’t be serious with that name. That’s just not decent.’ Meanwhile think of the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies or Barenaked Ladies. They said once at some festival, the person telling them that they needed to be more decent about their band name was standing next to an all-male band’s poster that featured a scantily clad woman.”
Added to the whitewashing of history, all of these moments can cause real psychological damage for women artists, including imposter syndrome. As Williams puts it: “I didn’t really feel comfortable saying I’m a professional anything until a few years ago, to be honest.”
Mighelle agrees: “It’s pushed me down internally where I didn’t believe in myself because I didn’t see myself reflected in the industry. I saw no path for me. I started to believe maybe it wasn’t for me; maybe I’m not good enough. Imposter syndrome crept up and became incredibly debilitating; the feeling that I don’t belong, because there’s not many avenues that show me I do belong.”
“I’ve internalized a little bit of sexism and ageism, feeling like I’m getting too old for this or that people aren’t gonna wanna watch me,” Tinklenberg says. “But then I think, how many old dudes are still playing music full time? So I have to just get over that. That’s my internalized issue to some degree, but I think there’s a reason for it.”
Jerrika Mighelle. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2023.
Intersectionality and Allyship
These conversations underscored the fact that the issues faced by Black, queer and older artists have a lot of parallels with the struggles of women, and artists that fit into multiple categories can be discriminated against for more than one factor.
The term intersectionality originated in 1989, but the concept’s been kicking around longer than that. The Rainbow Coalition united Blacks, Latinos and working class white folks in 1969, and in 1970, Black Panthers co-founder Huey P. Newton said, “The women’s liberation front and gay liberation front are our friends, they are our potential allies, and we need as many allies as possible.” He brilliantly sums up why it’s both practical and ethical, if you’re fighting for the equality of one group, to also fight for other oppressed groups.
The concept can feel hard to put into practice in a meaningful way, but the simplest acts can have an impact. At a show, I saw one Black Opry performer gently and affectionately call out a sexist remark made by another on stage, for example. Maren Morris has been valiantly trying to speak out for trans rights (and getting better at it). For me as a queer woman, one of my standout moments at Blue Ox this year was when festival mainstays Them Coulee Boys wished the crowd a happy Pride from the stage and emphasized that their shows were a safe space where everyone is welcome.
The artists I spoke to were somewhat optimistic about the increasing occurrence of intersectionality in the country/bluegrass/Americana field. “As a white woman, I don’t wanna take up too much space speaking to intersectionality,” cautions Sims. “I’m listening and learning. But you see more BIPOC and queer folks in this scene than you did 30 years ago for sure. That’s to be celebrated and supported, and we love being on bills with those folks. Bluegrass is an especially white conservative genre of music, so it’s cool to see it step into this century.”
“It’s inevitable in my mind that intersectionality is going to happen and is happening,” Rose adds. “The world is full of more people of color and queer people and women than there are straight white men. Society’s just been shoving those other people down for so long. I’m privileged to live in this time versus fifty, a hundred years ago. It feels like stuff is really progressing and we’re starting to realize that we’re all just people and we’re all on the planet doing the same fucking shit.”
“I think we’re starting to see intersectionality happening,” Adams agrees, “but it’s not nearly enough. I read in an NPR article that if there’s a meeting of ten people and three of them are women, the rest of the people in the room view it as equal even though it’s not. It’s like the presence of one woman feels bigger than it actually is. I feel like festivals are giving a good honest try, but still, how many Black people are playing, or Asian people, or literally anybody but a white person? The Newport Folk Festival was amazing because artists of color and queer performers outnumbered the straight white acts and it was such a vibrant weekend of music. I think we’d all be better off to keep increasing it until lineups represent the population of the world, where people of color largely outnumber white people and have incredible stories and voices that we would benefit from listening to. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re starting.”
Mighelle cites Alison Russell as an inspiration in how she ties together the aspects of her identity: “Being queer, being a woman of color, being raised poor, she’s such a great example of how all of us artists could help lift each other up and share space. I feel like it’s a very masculine thing to take the space and own it. A lot of us are working to share the space, and I love it. Brandi Carlile broke the ceiling and she's been bringing people up with her, breaking it more and more wide open. I feel like that’s happening more and more, and I’d like to see that trend continue. Blue Ox inviting this diverse group of artists to come in is a beautiful example of that.”
“We’re pretty vocal about wanting to be in spaces with not just white men,” Snow says. “When we did a residency, we were intentional in who we tried to book, because we know from experience that giving platforms to under-represented people is really important. I think a big layer of intersectionality is being intentional about the spaces that we're occupying.”
“Us Black artists definitely band together for support,” Williams says. “And I’m noticing some white artists help lift up artists of color, like when Jason Isbell invited eight Black artists to his residency two years ago. It’s so cool to see, but it’d be great if one day we don’t have to do these things anymore.”
Adds O’Shea, “It seems like things are becoming more inclusive in a way where it doesn’t feel so much like people are used just because of their identity. Country music and Americana can sometimes do that because of how censored and exclusive it used to be. I think it’s come a long way, and you see mega stars like Yola making amazing music about their specific experience. It’s such a great genre, and the more voices and different stories we can have just makes it that much sweeter.”
The fact that Blue Ox tripled the number of women or women-led acts in 2021 and has stayed to that amount shows a promising level of commitment. I was also encouraged by audience responses that indicated this isn’t just a top-down effort; many attendees seem hungry for these changes and excited by the range of performers and styles they get to see there.
Case in point: At The Foxgloves’ set (they secured a spot on the larger Saloon Stage this year), Snow talked about winning the Virtual Band Competition in 2021 and about being the first all-female Blue Ox band. The crowd erupted in cheers, and she shouted “And this year we’re one of several, so, progress!” The band then led fans in a brief chant of “More chicks! More chicks!” As they prepared to launch into their next song, I heard a male voice behind me say quietly to a friend, “It’s better now, but still…”
The Spine Stealers. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2023.
The Long Game
Expanding a festival lineup to include more women can seem like a no-brainer, just the right thing to do on principle. But the results can have a powerful and lasting impact.
Mighelle brought up an experience at last year’s Blue Ox that has stuck with me, when I woke up to the news that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. One of the first acts of the day was Minneapolis singer-songwriter Humbird. Despite (or because of) the raw emotions, being in that crowd felt exactly right. As Mighelle puts it, “At Blue Ox, you literally get to escape the world and be immersed in the arts and the love, and it’s healing. So many people I talked to were like, we know what’s happening, but it felt okay to enjoy this and deal with it later because of Humbird. She helped me feel okay about that. It was not irresponsible; it was actually taking care of our mental health.” It’s hard to imagine feeling as good had we spent the entire rest of the festival listening to only male voices, so the work Blue Ox had done to diversify their lineup was incredibly significant in that moment.
The effects can be even longer-term and farther-reaching. Says Tinklenberg, “One of the most memorable and touching things about our first Blue Ox was the little girls that came forward and hung onto the rail. They really loved us and were so happy to be there.”
Krause adds: “So many times we're playing and there's young girls in the crowd and it's like, you can do this, you can write songs, you can play instruments, you can be a badass.” Lemire agrees: “It’s so exciting to be a part of showing the world that women can be killer soloists, women can be incredible composers, women can be super original.”
“It starts early,” Tinklenberg says. “I think the reason you see so many men playing music is that they were given guitars for their birthday instead of a Barbie. We want to inspire young girls to pick up instruments sooner. There’s a pipeline issue and that's how to correct it. It’s a long game, not a quick fix.”
Tinklenberg continues, “Hopefully that will continue to shift and all that old baggage is not gonna be there for the next generation. That’s the hope. I want those little girls to not have any question about that. They can do it.”
The Foxgloves’ final song of their Blue Ox set was the crowd-pleasing “Maybelle.” Each verse is about wanting to emulate a female country legend—Loretta Lynn, Maybelle Carter, Dolly Parton, Tanya Tucker—and for this performance they interspersed fragments of each artist’s most iconic song. Near the end of the song they sing a capella, accompanied only by stomps and claps, lyrics that call out Jimmie Rodgers’ unheralded songwriter sister-in-law and never fail to give me chills and get the crowd roaring:
Gonna see our rightful space get claimed
No one’s gonna forget our name
Elsie can you hear me now we’re in the game
Gonna see our rightful space get claimed!
Gallery: Women of Blue Ox 2023
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the main music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
