Journal

5th March 2021 On March 8, 2021, we celebrate International Women’s Day. One hundred and ten years ago — in 1911 — one million women and men gathered at IWD rallies around the world, demanding equal rights for women to work, to vote, to hold office, and to be free of gender-based discrimination. This is a moment to consider how far we’ve come… and where we are today. And also to ask: what’s next? Visit my YouTube Channel for an audio-visual blaze of forward momentum, set to my song, “We Shall Go Forth!” In celebration of this year’s International Women’s Day, I share a memory from forty-four years ago… It… Read More

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7th February 2021 What extraordinary nerve she had, risking her career to record my song, “Beautiful Soul,” in 1974. How was it that Dusty Springfield became acquainted with this lesbian love song? I performed the song for the first time in concert as part of a day-long event called “Woman-Made Day” at the Los Angeles Women’s Building, celebrating publication of Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie’s New Woman’s Survival Catalog. An audience member recorded my set on a small cassette recorder and shared it with her friend, Dusty Springfield. This is how things “happened” in the early Women’s Music movement: word of mouth — while passing bootleg cassette tapes from woman… Read More

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22nd January 2021 On June 6, 2010, Phyllis Lyon and I came together for an NPR StoryCorp program and, as always, our conversation shifted effortlessly between the personal and the political. We talked about The Daughters of Bilitis and The Ladder magazine, their revolutionary book, Lesbian/Woman, gay marriage, activist burn-out, changing one’s mind. While we were at it, we shared our “origin stories” with each other. Phyl’s recollections of her first encounters with Del Martin, the love of her life and comrade-in-arms, are vintage Lesbiana. That’s just the first ten minutes of our conversation, posted on my YouTube Channel. It was a remarkable gift to come out as a lesbian in… Read More

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1st January 2021 IN 1975, Meg Christian, Cris Williamson, Holly Near and I put together a concert event called “An Evening of Women’s Music,” blending our individual performances with musical collaborations that blew the roof off the early Women’s Music movement. One of these concerts was filmed during that extraordinary time. After methodically tearing my office apart, I finally laid hands on a DVD copy of this concert and watched it straight through. One performance in particular, “Best Friend — The Unicorn Song” made me smile. My desire to share the performance is as much about the “cut-aways” to the audience as it is about offering my young self, singing… Read More

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3rd December 2020 This gradual surge of gratitude started in my imagination… an overwhelming impulse to venture down into the basement… to root about in my audio-visual “archives” to see what’s there… to see what I might like to share — in gratitude for so many gifts that have come my way throughout my life in music. Oh, here’s an interview I did with my dear lesbian mother, Phyllis Lyon for NPR’s StoryCorp. Ah-hah! There’s a great conversation with Studs Terkel. And then there’s that environmental justice collaboration Honor Moore, Susan Griffin and I created back in the 80s… and what about those earnest “young Margie Adam” video performances from… Read More

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