The Sisters do it for Themselves

Virtually unknown in these parts, Sarah McLachlan, a Canadian singer-songwriter with a New Agey tint, has won Grammys and got a house full of platinum discs. She’s also organized herself North America’s most popular travelling festival. Forget about Lollapalooza, HORDE and ROAR, the Lilith Fair’s “celebration of women in music” was the one that burned the credit cards last year and 1998 sees them selling out virtually every show on the 57-date tour of amphitheatres and stadia in Canada and the USA.

At 29, Sarah McLachlan has accomplished much, both as an artist and industry mover. Most of it has been on her own terms. Lilith was her imaginative response to the fact that she was pissed off at the way promoters and radio producers treated women artists.

It’s about halfway through this year’s Lilith journey on a humid Maryland lunchtime and with a bit of blagging, Hot Press manages to get a some backstage time with McLachlan (who maintains a very hands-on role over this massive roadshow) at the Merriweather Pavilion, a leafy wooded amphitheatre halfway between Washington DC and Baltimore.

Despite her many responsibilities for the day, McLachlan is relaxed and polite and when she talks about how much fun it is, she’s instantly believable. She chats about the overall vibe, how the artists have been hitting it off together, playing in each other’s sets and at the show’s finale, when she invites all the performers onto the stage. For some of the singer-songwriters on the bottom part of the bill this is one hell of a climb-up from bar-rooms to appearing on a stage in front of 18,000 people. Talk to Beth Orton about it and she’ll list doing backing vocals for Emmylou Harris at last year’s event as one of the most memorable moments of her career.

However despite the commercial success of the Lilith Fair tours, there’s been a fair amount of griping and bitching in the US press about the lack of musical diversity on offer. The line runs that McLachlan, handpicks other women artists who, well, sound just a bit like her. She’s also had to put up with some moronic punsmiths coming out with names the Lick-It Fair and Vulvapalooza.

“For the most part I definitely say fuck it,” she retorts. “We ‘re selling out every show so we must be doing something right. We’re just trying to put on as best a musical bill that we can. Last year we got ripped apart by the media on just that one thing ’cos they couldn’t find anything else to rip us apart on even though they tried really hard. The press generally focus on the main stage and they don’t even look at the B stage, but the B stage is really really important. There’s some really established acts like Morcheeba who are fantastic, Rebekah, N’Dea Davenport of the Brand New Heavies; some of these people are really well known except that they’ve got a cult following and it’s frustrating that the press never focus on them.”

You’ll notice that Sarah has reeled off a list of black artists and that brings us to the new media gripe that she’s being tokenistic.

“Oh, that makes me really say fuck ’em, definitely,” she asserts. “We asked everyone last year and we asked everyone this year. The saddest thing is that a lot of the L7s, the Sleater-Kinneys and your harder bands don’t want to come because they are saying we’re ghettoising the music to the point where women’s music is all the same. They’re furthering the ghettoisation by not joining it and not making it bigger. We want to bring everybody in and make things bigger, to promote the understanding that there are all different types of music. Hell, it’s a music festival – music that happens to be made by women made by women.”

The prevailing mood is actually one of calm celebration rather than some doctrinaire quasi-feminist event (most of the various band members are actually men). Middle America is out to (try to) enjoy itself. The beer is 1.5% and a lack of a liquor licence means the margaritas are made from wine. To get drunk here you’d need to go through two livers first, and anyway a festival without macho lager boys is no bad thing at all.

Stalls in the amphitheatre grounds reflect issues like breast cancer and voter registration as well as local groups, like the battered wife’s refuges to which Lilith give $1 on every ticket sale. A few guys, mostly ones with girlfriends, wearing “How Dare You Assume I’m Straight” badges, wander around and get congratulated by women. There are a few women with hockey hair holding hands, but the PDAs (Public Displays of Affection as the Yanks call it) are pretty subtle. It’s all done in a rather bashful way – there’s no didactic holier than-thou attitude being pushed.

What’s more, there’s no-one carrying a big frown or a bad vibe about them here. Sure, the line-up is not exactly cutting-edge but at the end of the day, to fill venues of this size you have to give people what they want and by the looks on people’s faces, they’re getting their $50 worth.

What we get at the Merriweather Pavilion is admittedly a bill that’s strong on stuff that fits right in with the American AAA radio format. The three main acts are McLachlan, Natalie Merchant and the Indigo Girls and while each have their moments – such as Merchant’s great closer of ‘Kind And Generous’ and the Indigo Girls pumping out a fine cover of ‘The Weight’ – it’s not the most enlightening three hours of music to be heard this year.

Liz Phair should have provided a harder edge to the bill but opted for a mushy backing band of sessioneers. It’s only the R&B hip-hop of Missy Elliott that lights up the main stage with her mob-handed extravaganza of dancers (in skeleton outfits amongst other guises) and rappers. The minor stages were filled with Merchant or McLachlan wannabes (Rebekah, Kacy Crowley etc.), though diminutive Canadian Emm Gryner added a pleasant summer feel with her piano pop.

With Beth Orton pulling out, those clubland mavericks Morcheeba are the only Europeans on this leg. With their forays into hip-hop, ragga and even country, they’d stand out in most line-ups, but at Lilith they present a new dimension of blissed-out calm and are easily the tightest band on the day. It’s easy to gripe that there should be more like them and Missy at Lilith, but overall the billing backs up McLachlan’s original concept of providing a platform for all her peers.

“I didn’t think it was making a huge feminist stance,” she reflects. “It was something I wanted to do but it was fun and I’m proud of it.” She’s got the right to feel that way . . .

LILITH SOUNDBITE

Liz Phair: “As a woman out on tour you are surrounded by men and it’s not easy. This is such an enriching experience. I wouldn’t have missed it.”

Amy Ray (the Indigo Girls): “It’s great because we’re fans of each other’s music. This is like summer camp. A special time.”

Paul Godfrey (Morcheeba): “I think it’s funny that a white bloke from a seaside town comes over to America and these people say wow what are those weird things you’re doing with the turntables? Well like it was invented here about 20 years ago.”

Skye Edwards (Morcheeba): “ People think that Morcheeba is actually my name. Everyone’s really surprised that I’m only 5’2”. They think I’m going to be some six foot Zulu called Morcheeba. But that’s cool.”

Jay Rosen, 16, Washington DC: “It’s not really my type of music but I also came here for the atmosphere and Morcheeba and Missy Elliott. It’s like a totally different festival from the ones I usually go to – they’re really harsh with all that moshing.”

Imogen, 21, Brighton, England: “It’s more relaxed in that you don’t get the fights but no-one’s having a joint and people are so much more friendly at English festivals. I prefer English festivals but this is a good line-up.”

Joan Norris, 22, Aberdeen, Scotland: “All the kids here are really rich and tend to meet the European stereotype. It’s really sterile.”

Who’s Who at Lilith

• Ireland’s contribution to Lilith’s massive success this year came in the form of the Sinéads, O’Connor and Lohan, who played several of the June dates on the tour.

• Other key artists number Imani Coppola, Luscious Jackson, Queen Latifah, Drugstore, Joan Osborne, Meredith Brooks and Lucinda Williams.

• Lilith herself is a figure in Talmud legend. Apparently she walked out on Adam in the Garden of Eden after he tried to dictate that sex should be performed in the missionary position.

• For full details check out the Lilith Fair website at http://www.lilithfair.com