SHEROES

This year during Pride month, trans rights are especially top of mind, as trans-phobia, discrimination, and anti-trans violence is at an all time high, as well as a growing wave of anti-transgender legislation. So we wanted to kick off our celebration of Pride with an encore presentation of our recent conversation with UK trans-femme artist jasmine.4.t, who put out one of our very favorite albums of the year thus far, called You Are the Morning. The album was produced by all three members of boygenius - Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker, and released on Phoebe Bridgers' label Saddest Factory Records. Carmel Holt sat down with Jasmine before she opened for Lucy Dacus at Radio City Music Hall back in April for a super moving and inspiring conversation, which, like her album, has also become one of our favorites of the year. Jasmine's story of trauma, bravery, and transformation thankfully, has an uplifting and heartwarming new chapter, brought about through support from community, PTSD therapy, and music. PLEASE NOTE: if topics of suicide and gender-based violence are triggering for you, please listen with care.

Carmel Holt sits down with all four members of Lucius - Jess Wolfe, Holly Laessig, Dan Molad, and Pete Lalish - at Public Records in Brooklyn, NY to discuss their brand new self-titled album, the love and loss that informed their new songs, and getting back to their roots as a band while simultaneously settling down with their growing families.

Merrill Garbus returns to SHEROES this week to chat with Carmel about the brand new Tune-Yards album Better Dreaming, motherhood, and stepping into her power as an artist with nearly two decades and six albums under her belt.

Maren Morris returns to SHEROES this week to discuss her amazing new album Dreamsicle, a new era of musical liberation, embracing her queerness, and discovering the calm that has found her after the storm of several big life changes over the last three years.

As The Head and The Heart returns today with their highly anticipated sixth album, Aperture, Charity Rose-Thielen joins Carmel Holt to talk about the band's return to their roots as a collective, communal project, the freedom of working without external industry pressure, becoming a mother, and so much more.

UK trans-femme artist jasmine.4.t sits down with Carmel Holt for a deeply moving and inspiring conversation ahead of her second night at Radio City Music Hall opening for Lucy Dacus, who co-produced her full length debut, You Are The Morning, with Lucy's boygenius bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker. Please note: if topics of suicide and gender-based violence are triggering for you, listen with care.

The 18x Latin Grammy and 4x Grammy Award winning Mexican singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer Natalia Lafourcade returns to SHEROES to talk about her newest chapter: her twelfth studio album called Cancionera.

Carlotta Casials and Ana Perrote are best friends and co-founders of the Spanish garage-punk-pop band Hinds, and they join Carmel Holt this week to share their story, which saw them rise to stardom, release three albums, and then suddenly find themselves without a label, or management, and the dissolution of their lineup as their drummer and bass player departed the band. Their latest album Viva Hinds! is the result of their recommitment to each other and to the spirit that originally inspired them to start the band over a decade ago.

This week producer, audio engineer, singer, songwriter and founder of nonprofit Gender Amplified, Ebonie Smith joins Carmel Holt to talk about the evolution of Gender Amplified, how she views the statistics of women and gender expansive individuals in the recording industry, and how Gender Amplified is approaching equalizing the space, as well as sampling Gender Amplified's newly released EP called In Bloom, born from their CTRL Room series of production camps.

Yukimi Nagano is best known as a founding member and lead vocalist of Grammy-nominated Swedish band Little Dragon, but after two decades and seven albums, she has stepped out on her own for a solo debut called For You. Yukimi sits down with Carmel Holt to discuss the new album, infusing her work with more feminine energy, and the newfound freedom of calling the shots.

In this not to miss episode, singer, songwriter, producer Caroline Rose returns to SHEROES to join Carmel Holt in conversation about their sixth album, Year of the Slug, which sees Caroline taking a "experimental year" to do things in a much simpler, more grassroots way. No fancy gear, no label, no streaming platforms, no big productions on tour. Just Caroline, a microphone, a guitar, and a desire to find a way to be a modern day musician that makes sense.

Jessica Dobson aka Deep Sea Diver returns to SHEROES to talk with Carmel Holt about her fantastic fourth full length album (and first for indie stalwart label, Sub Pop) Billboard Heart, and the hard-won journey it took to get here.

Today Polaris Prize and Juno Award nominated Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer Basia Bulat returns with her seventh studio album, Basia's Palace, and returns to SHEROES to sit down with Carmel Holt to discuss the new album, the importance of staying in touch with her inner child, and how becoming a mother herself brought Basia to some unexpected new sonic landscapes.

We love St. Vincent! To celebrate her recent three Grammy wins in one night for her first fully self-produced album All Born Screaming, it's an encore episode of SHEROES with Annie Clark recorded live in conversation at The Current in St. Paul, Minnesota in September 2024.

Spanish-American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Victoria Canal joins Carmel Holt to discuss her full length debut album, Slowly It Dawns, and they have a fascinating conversation about gender, identity, and being perceived, beauty as currency, and the many factors that may be playing into gender imbalances in the recording industry.

Just in time for the Grammy's, nine-time Grammy Award nominated mastering engineer Emily Lazar joins Carmel Holt to talk about her journey to becoming the ceiling breaking audio engineer she is today, what led to founding her nonprofit We Are Moving The Needle, who have recently launched their new microgrants supporting creators who have been affected by the L.A. wildfires, and what she believes is the solution to getting more cis and trans women and nonbinary folks hired as engineers and producers.

One of the year's most anticipated albums is out today - Humanhood, the seventh studio album by The Weather Station - and Carmel Holt helps celebrate its arrival by welcoming the brilliant singer, songwriter, producer and musician at its center, Tamara Lindemann for a fascinating conversation about the making of the new album, how learning about differing skull shapes between men and women changed her life, and revelations that have come from teaching songwriting to others.

We've dressed up and lit 84 birthday candles for Joan Baez this week with a newly refreshed version of our interview at Newport Folk Festival six months ago. Newport was where an 18 year old Joan Baez got her start in 1959, and where she returned last summer for the first time since 2009 to share some of her poems from her new poetry book, When You See My Mother Ask Her To Dance. She reads from her book during our conversation, and treats us to a powerful impromptu a-capella song.

Singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist and producer Amy Helm recently returned with her fourth solo studio album called Silver City, and joins Carmel Holt to discuss the album's central themes of generational women's voices, and her own journey as a single mother, touring musician, middle age, love and divorce. Amy reflects on her path of revealing more of her own inner world in her songs, and discovering how much she has to share that can inspire and uplift others.

Singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards returned with her first album in eight years in 2020 called Total Freedom, only to have her comeback thwarted by the pandemic. Earlier this year in Austin, Texas, Kathleen sat down with Carmel Holt to talk about that experience, as well as her then-upcoming series of cover songs she was recording. With a whole lot planned for 2025, including her sixth studio album, produced by Jason Isbell, we get a sneak peek at the newest addition to that series coming on December 11th, and hear why, when she quit music, she wanted to talk to Joni Mitchell.

We just wrapped our limited SHEROES series called The Road to Joni. The road was both a metaphor for artists' paths that led to Joni Mitchell and where those roads led them - and it was a literal road to Joni, as simultaneously, host Carmel Holt travelled across the country from New York to Los Angeles to see Joni at the Hollywood Bowl and back again, while on a tour of public radio affiliate stations who carry SHEROES each week. At the very start of the journey back in September, I visited The Current in St. Paul, Minnesota, and hosted a one hour interview with St. Vincent, recorded in front of a live studio audience of public radio members. A portion of that interview focused on Annie Clark's road to Joni and aired as part of episode six of The Road to Joni series. The rest of the hour centered on St. Vincent's now four-time Grammy nominated, seventh studio album, All Born Screaming, and the interview has been in the SHEROES vault until now. With The Road to Joni freshly in the rear view window, we take one last look back to the beginning of our SHEROES Radio tour, and bring you St. Vincent as this week's SHERO in the Spotlight.

We've reached the end of The Road - the one that leads our host Carmel back home and to the finale of our special 10 episode series. It is also Joni Mitchell's 81st birthday. From Newport Folk Festival 2022 to the Hollywood Bowl on October 19, 2024, we've watched the remarkable comeback of our SHERO, and in the past ten weeks, we've heard from a group of artists who shared their roads to Joni with so much love and reverence that it was rare to end a conversation without tears. We set out on this journey not only to celebrate Joni Mitchell, but also to explore the immense power of music and community to heal, unite, inspire and crack us wide open… which this experience certainly did. For this final episode, Carmel talks to 7x Emmy award winning journalist and senior culture and senior national correspondent for CBS News, Anthony Mason. He tells us about his decision to get to Newport when he heard that Joni was going to be there in 2022; and camping out in an Airbnb during the festival, hoping that he'd get “the call.” When that call came and he was summoned to rehearsals at an old church at Fort Adams State Park, the site of the Newport Folk Festival, he knew that his patience had paid off. Anthony got 15 minutes with Joni and with that, he secured the first televised interview with her since her aneurysm in 2015. Anthony says that the experience of seeing Joni perform at Newport 2022 was “everything we've waited for and so much more.” FInally, we hear from a listener that Carmel met on night two of the Hollywood Bowl Joni Jam shows. Our new friend, Cory Reeder, is an award-winning director, producer and screenwriter. The heartfelt story of his road to Joni leaves us, once again, in tears. He says that “Joni Mitchell is courage” and that “she is the hero that we need.” Cory says that he is forever grateful for living in this time of Joni. We can't think of a better sentiment to end on. It has been an honor and a privilege to have you on this journey with us.

The penultimate episode of the Road To Joni series packs in more conversations than any episode so far. As host Carmel Holt heads east toward home and the finale of the series on Joni's 81st birthday, the throughline of “Both Sides Now” continues on with four artists whose creative path would have been very different if not for Joni Mitchell. Sylvan Esso's Amelia Meath was introduced to Joni's music at the age of 12 by her dad. They listened in the car on cassette until she knew the songs by heart. Amelia cites Joni's freedom with her voice and her ability to talk openly about the challenges of living inside the music industry as core inspiration for her own creative journey. She tells Carmel that she thinks that the celebration of Joni should go on forever. Multi-grammy award winning and nominated singer, songwriter and Tony award winning playwright and author Anäis Mitchell says that Joni is in the DNA of what she does as an artist. She talks about the impact of Hejira and the powerful example it set for her to witness a woman genius (Joni) doing it on her own terms. Anäis shares that she can relate deeply to the duality of “Both Sides Now” - how revisiting something in her 40s that was written in her 20s can mean something totally different. Next we hear from Allison Russell about how her “Once & Future Sounds” set at the reemergence of Newport in 2021 came about, and how it led her to being on stage with Joni Mitchell the following year, as well as The Gorge in 2023, and most recently, at the Hollywood Bowl. She pinpoints hearing the clarinet in “For Free” for the first time as a pivotal moment that led her to playing clarinet with Joni as part of the Joni Jam. Our final conversation in Episode 9 is with Grammy nominated Irish singer, songwriter, multi- instrumentalist Andrew Hozier Byrne, aka Hozier. He talks about how Joni's music cracks open the hearts of anyone who listens to it… and we can attest that in this episode, even stories about Joni's music will crack some hearts open. Andrew tells Carmel about a meeting with Brandi Carlile in LA that led him to Joni's living room as part of an early Joni Jam. He emotionally tells the story of how Herbie Hancock started playing “Summertime” and Joni started singing along. He says about Joni, “It's like being in the presence of something mythical.”

This week's episode comes to you in the afterglow of two sold out Joni Mitchell performances at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, where molecules were rearranged, hearts were broken wide open and 17,000 fans basked in her brilliance. Though she has a bit of FOMO over missing out on being part of the Joni Jam, this week's first guest, Shawn Colvin, has plenty of Joni stories. After initially discovering Clouds as a teenager at church camp, Shawn found herself many years later recording her 2nd album at Joni's house with Joni's then-husband Larry Klein, and Episode 7 guests Béla Fleck and Bruce Hornsby. Shawn says that she learned everything she could from Clouds, including a percussive approach to guitar, and it set her on a path to a solo approach to performing and writing songs which would not have happened without Joni Mitchell. She tells host/producer Carmel Holt about her “big brother” relationship with Bruce Hornsby and how he helped her overcome the heartbreak of a terrible New York Times live show review by sharing a folder of his own scathing media clips, one of which called him a “gherkin” (UK speak for pickle). MUNA guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and writer Naomi McPherson grew up in a family of jazz musicians. Like several of our guests, their gateway to Joni Mitchell was Blue and then the fretless bass of Jaco Pastorius on Hejira locked them in. From there, they went hardcore into 70s and onward Joni while listening to cassette tapes of Turbulent Indigo, Night Ride Home and Miles of Aisles in their 1998 Honda Accord. Naomi says that they are still learning from Joni's music and that because of her, they play exclusively in open tunings. They talk about how Joni's music spans genres and how much sonic exploration there is to mine in her catalog - from folk to the jazz era to 80s pop influences. Naomi thanks Joni for her fearlessness and considers her to be the greatest songwriter of all time.

The two guest interviews featured in Episode 7 with Bruce Hornsby and Béla Fleck were recorded back-to-back by host/producer Carmel Holt. As it turns out, the threads that connect the two artists to each other and to Joni, make the conversations a perfect pair. Joni's then-husband, Larry Klein, played bass on and co-produced several of her albums in the '80s and '90s. He would also bring the two guests in this episode closer to each other and to their shared SHERO, Joni. Pianist and genre-blending musician Bruce Hornsby sings us through his Road to Joni, which includes Joni's first live album Miles of Aisles, a revelation that led him to devour her entire early catalogue, becoming a "complete Joni Mitchell devotee." In the 90's, Hornsby would go on to play on Shawn Colvin's second album, Fat City, produced by Larry Klein. Bruce ends by giving us a hint at a new project that he considers a "Paprika Plains"-like opus. Banjo player and fellow breaker of genre-boundaries Béla Fleck's Road began with a birthday gift from his stepfather: a copy of Blue that he would wear out that summer. Béla recounts how "The Last Time I Saw Richard" taught him entirely new emotions as a teenager. Later on, he tells us how he, too, played on Shawn Colvin's album with Hornsby and Klein, and got to record in Joni's house. He also shares the story of a terrifying overnight hospital stay his son and family endured, where they played Night Ride Home on repeat to get them through.

For Episode 6, we continue a thread from last week as host Carmel Holt talks with three “boundary dweller” artists about their Roads To Joni. Each of our guests this week are visionaries who push beyond their comfort zone. They are producers, singers, songwriters and instrumentalists. Like Joni, they are multi-Grammy nominees and winners who do things on their own terms.   Grammy award winning artist Arooj Aftab spent her teenage years in Lahore, Pakistan listening to American folk music. She found Joni Mitchell's Blue and from there she was “all in.” Arooj takes us through her guest DJ set that spans Joni's earliest recordings through to her jazz-influenced and more contemporary work. She sites “Black Crow” from Joni's 1976 album Hejira as having a powerful impact on her.  Singer-songwriter, guitarist, multi instrumentalist, producer and Grammy award winner Brittany Howard sees Joni as “someone who wouldn't let any confines stop her from expressing herself.” We would say the same about Brittany, who has not allowed herself to be defined by genre. She has explored pop, punk, lo-fi garage, glam and folk along her sonic path to her current album, What Now.  Finally, we meet up with three time Grammy award winning artist Annie Clark aka St. Vincent for a conversation in Minneapolis/St. Paul with Carmel and public radio station The Current in front of an audience of their members. Annie says that Hejira was the portal through which she fell in love with Joni. She credits Joni for being a trailblazer who makes only the music she wants to make. She says, “she did whatever the F she wanted and people were there for it, because it was just that good.” 

The title of this week's episode comes from a term that legendary rock photographer Norman Seeff uses to describe a truly innovative artist, one who is willing to risk sacrificing their career in order to expand beyond their creative comfort zone. He calls these people “boundary dweller artists.” Norman says that he sees Joni as the archetype of this concept. Her evolution to incorporate jazz influences in the 70s, threw some of her fans for a loop, but as we've heard in previous episodes, Joni was not concerned with what others think. Working with the likes of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Charles Mingus, Joni pushed her own boundaries. She pushed Norman's boundaries, too. His photo sessions with Joni Mitchell spanned over 15 years and 12 sessions, and his photography of Joni has appeared in the album packaging and covers for Court and Spark, Hissing of Summer Lawns, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Hejira, Dog Eat Dog, and her Hits and Misses compilations. Norman Seeff tells host Carmel Holt that Joni is one of the most courageous people he's ever worked with, and in this fascinating episode that traces Norman's road to Joni and where it led him, we learn how the process of writing and compiling his book Joni: The Joni Mitchell Sessions he realized that he had not only captured Joni's metamorphosis but he also had been led to the guiding philosophy about creativity and the artistic spirit that has guided his work, and his personal evolution.

SHEROES is on The Road To Joni, but in this episode we discover that sometimes that road is a bridge. A bridge to healing. A bridge to holding your own. A bridge to a new creative path. A bridge from one generation to another. Episode 4 of the Road To Joni begins at the SHEROES studio in upstate New York with 5x platinum recording artist and activist Natalie Merchant. A long time friend of host Carmel Holt, they discovered that they were both Joni Mitchell fans at a 1999 at breast cancer benefit concert that Carmel organized and Natalie headlined. The closing song from that show was a cover of Joni Mitchell's “All I Want.” 25 years later, Natalie Merchant sits down with Carmel to reflect on her road to Joni, talks about crying at her kitchen table after missing Joni's return at Newport Folk 2022, and shares an exclusive listen to a previously unreleased recording of her cover of "All I Want" from her personal archives. Then, it's on to Newport Folk Fest 2024, where 4x Grammy Award Nominee Madison Cunningham (who also missed Joni's 2022 Newport performance) recalls listening to Court and Spark and feeling like Joni was looking into her soul. The self-taught guitar and songwriting prodigy tells us that her road to Joni is more of a bridge, partly because of all the literal bridges she crossed while listening to Joni's music, but the deeper metaphor she uncovers during this conversation reveals that Joni Mitchell provided Madison a bridge to cross the “moat” of her religious upbringing to a place that opened up not only her musical world, but made her available for all the opportunities that found her.

Episode 3 of The Road To Joni picks up a thread from our conversation with Don Was… and leads us to esperanza spalding. In 2021 esperanza collaborated with her mentor Wayne Shorter on Iphigenia, an opera with a revisionary take on Euripides' Greek tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis. It was Ipheigenia that led esperanza to Joni's living room, though her path on the road to Joni started years prior with a track from the 1976 album Hejira. esperanza tells host Carmel Holt how, at a recent Janet Jackson concert, she was reminded that Joni Mitchell has “literally influenced everyone.” Joni's influence on powerhouse string players and Joni Jam members Chauntee and Monique of SistaStrings began with “the lady that sings on the Janet Jackson song. (‘Got Til It's Gone').” A move from their hometown of Milwaukee to Nashville immersed the sisters in the Americana scene… which led them to a place in Brandi Carlisle's touring band… which led to that fateful Newport 2022 performance when Joni took the stage. SistaStrings credit Joni for being an example for women to “stand on your own, be who you are, make weird music and be loud about it.”

We travel to Los Angeles for the first half of Episode 2, where Carmel talks to legendary producer, bassist, and Blue Note Records president, Don Was about his first gig ever at age 12 opening for Joni Mitchell. Don also shares how he learned an important life lesson from listening to Blue, and discusses the sophistication of Joni's harmonic and poetic compositions, and how this naturally intersected with some of the greats of jazz, including their mutual friend, the late Wayne Shorter. Next, in a heartfelt conversation, host Carmel Holt tells Bonnie Raitt that her own road to Joni began with cassettes of Blue and Bonnie's 1974 album Streetlights, and we learn that her version of "That Song About The Midway" also holds a very special meaning for Bonnie, including performing the song in Joni's living room at one of the Joni Jams. Bonnie shares how inspirational and important Joni has been for her, and the ways she has impacted her work.

Episode One takes us back to South By Southwest 2024 in Austin, TX where an interview with Kathleen Edwards takes an unexpected and affirming turn, and Kathleen remembers how a case of mistaken identity temporarily changes the backstage rules at Toronto's Massey Hall. Then we travel to Newport Folk Festival 2024, where Joni Mitchell made her big comeback in 2022, and Carmel meets up with Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes who shares how talking to Brandi at Newport a few years ago led him to getting the invitation to jam sessions at Joni's house and getting to play his favorite Joni song with his "forever north star." And Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius tell us of the first heartbreaking missed opportunity to go to Joni's house, which soon would turn around into an unforgettable Christmas and six year journey of witnessing the incredible healing power of music and community of the Joni Jams, from living room to stage.

Grammy-winning artist Arooj Aftab returns to SHEROES this week to discuss her fourth solo album, Night Reign, and her journey of the last two decades, staying true to her vision, and pioneering a sound that she wanted to hear.

Singer, songwriter, playwright and author Anaïs Mitchell returns to SHEROES to discuss her newest album with Bonny Light Horseman Keep Me On Your Mind / See You Free, the threads that runs between her solo work, her Tony-award winning Broadway musical Hadestown, and writing with Eric D. Johnson and Josh Kaufman in Bonny Light Horseman, and the importance of passing the flame from one generation to the next - and back again.

On release day of the new album Milton + esperanza, bassist, composer, singer, songwriter, and producer esperanza spalding returns to SHEROES to discuss the two decade long journey she has been on since her college days at Berklee when she first heard Brazilian legend Milton Nascimento singing on the Wayne Shorter album, Native Dancer, and the full circle moment that brought her to working with Milton to produce this collaborative new album.

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and bandleader Shana Cleveland returns to SHEROES to celebrate the release of the fifth full length album from her longtime band La Luz, called News of the Universe. Carmel Holt and Shana discuss the themes of change on the new album, the first following her cancer diagnosis and treatment, birth of her son, and departure of two of her longtime bandmates.

SHEROES returns to Newport Folk Festival this year for an on-stage conversation with none other than SHERO of SHEROES, Joan Baez, who has just published her first book of poetry, When You See My Mother, Ask Her To Dance.

The trailblazing artist, electronics instrumentalist, composer, and producer Yuka C Honda, has made a career of making music that doesn't necessarily subscribe to rules and genres. Widely known for her band Cibo Matto, Yuka's career now spans over three decades. Carmel Holt sat down with Yuka at Wilco's Solid Sound festival in June to discuss her journey thus far, and her brand new EP under her moniker eucademix, Farm Psychedelia, released just before performing at Solid Sound.

Cassandra Jenkins joins Carmel Holt this week to discuss her third album, My Light My Destroyer, her third full length album and follow up to her 2021 breakout, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature - an album that despite its widespread acclaim, was also nearly her last.

Now that we are officially halfway through 2024, the first wave of "Best Albums of 2024 (so far)" lists are here. So this week, host Carmel Holt brings back one of her favorite episodes of the year so far, in conversation with one of her favorite artists discussing her then-new album that is now newly anointed as one of the best of the year by critics (and was immediately put on our own). The album is Brittany Howard's sophomore solo album, What Now, and Carmel sat down with Brittany back in February when it first was released to talk about what is her most free and fully realized work thus far.

Singer and guitarist Teresa Williams joins Carmel Holt to talk about her new album with husband and musical partner, guitarist/songwriter/producer Larry Campbell, All This Time. Teresa shares her journey from growing up in the deep South where "things don't change much", to chasing her dreams of being an actress and singer in New York City, meeting her future husband, Larry Campbell, and after years of being apart while Larry was touring with Bob Dylan, finally getting to join forces in Levon Helm's band. Now with four albums together as Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, Teresa reflects how music was what brought them together, and has remained the glue that has kept their love alive for nearly four decades.

Bridget Kearney and Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive return to SHEROES to discuss their brand new album, Good Together. Now twenty years in, their eighth album simultaneously highlights the unity and togetherness of this extraordinary band with their most collaborative collection to date, with songs that are intended to bring audiences together in "joyful rebellion".

In this episode of SHEROES, host Carmel Holt welcomes fellow public radio SHERO and music critic Ann Powers to discuss her latest book, Traveling: On The Path of Joni Mitchell, her nearly decade-long journey writing it, her own story building a 30-year career, and the evolution of her relationship to Joni as an artist, and to her music.

Host Carmel Holt takes SHEROES on the road to Brandi Carlile's Mothership Weekend in Miramar Beach, Florida. Through conversations with Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, S.G. Goodman, and Brandi's co-curators and festival organizers, Topeka, we continue the ongoing conversation and inquiry into lack of inclusion on festival lineups (see last week's episode with Book More Women), discussion about touring artists who are mothers and how to make working conditions better for them, and what queer identity and visibility means in both music spaces and to the artists themselves.

The popular Instagram account Book More Women began tracking the statistical data for gender inclusivity on U.S. music festival lineups in 2018, and has grown to a following of over 16k over the last six years. The account has become hailed by the likes of Brandi Carlile, who says that founding her own festival (Girls Just Wanna Weekend) was directly inspired by seeing the data that Book More Women posts. The identity of the woman who runs this account and handles the hefty task of tracking this data has mostly been a mystery, and it took us five years to finally convince Abbey Carbonneau to join us for a SHEROES interview. In this not to miss conversation we learn about the methodology and inspiration behind Book More Women, and find out a bit about the passionate music fan that has single-handedly built it from the ground up, completely on a volunteer basis.

Colorado-born and Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Jobi Riccio released her critically-hailed debut album Whiplash last September and has just been nominated for her first Americana Music Award as Emerging Artist of the Year. She sits down with Carmel Holt to discuss the path she has been on since her early teens as a guitarist, the crucial mentorship and influence she has received from artists like Sarah Jarosz, her experience as a student at Berklee College of Music, and how she has finally learned to take up the space she deserves.

Australian singer-songwriter Grace Cummings joins Carmel Holt this week to talk about her stunner of a third album, Ramona, and her journey thus far. A self-taught guitarist who is also an actor, Grace was encouraged by a fellow musician friend to share her mighty voice on stage, and though at first reluctant, she discovered a love for performing and music that quickly landed her a U.S. record deal, and a newfound musical soulmate in producer Jonathan Wilson, who produced her new album.

Guitarist Gabriela Quintero joins Carmel Holt to discuss the latest Rodrigo y Gabriela album, In Between Thoughts... A New World, their sixth studio release and first since their 2019 Grammy-winning album Mettavolution. Gabriela takes us back to her earliest days of teaching herself to play guitar, discovering her love of rock and metal bands, and the chance meeting at fifteen with Rodrigo Sanchez that would eventually lead to forming their metal-influenced acoustic duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and traveling around the world to playing some of the biggest stages.

Guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer, activist, and founder of She Shreds Media, Fabi Reyna joins Carmel Holt to discuss Malegría, her full length debut as Reyna Tropical - now a solo project she initially started as a duo in 2016 with producer and dj Sumo Diaz in 2016, who passed away in 2022. Fabi shares her journey from picking up the guitar at age nine, to learning about activism through music at Girls Rock Camp as a teen, touring in femme and queer bands, founding She Shreds Magazine (the world's first and only magazine focused on women and gender nonconforming guitarists and bassists), and the journey she has been on since meeting Sumo of writing and singing with new purpose and connectedness to ancestral roots, land, queer love, and self-love.

Sarah Jarosz joins us on SHEROES and reflects on her journey thus far, including starting her career in her teens and early 20's, the importance of joining forces with Aoife O'Donovan and Sarah Watkins to form I'm With Her, and how her new album, Polaroid Lovers, her seventh studio release, finds her both breaking new ground by deciding to invite co-writers to work with for the first time, while simultaneously bringing her full circle to her early days when the world had crowned her a bluegrass prodigy and she had just barely graduated high school.