The Return of Lilith
Sarah McLachlan On Why She Brought Back Her Influential Festival Tour
by Alex S. Morrison
Arguably the biggest news of the 2010 summer tour season was the announcement that Lilith Fair would be returning after laying dormant for 11 years. Co-founded in 1996 by singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan to celebrate women in music, the seminal tour brought top-notch female artists such as Emmylou Harris, Fiona Apple, Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman together to defy critics’ expectations, emerging as the year’s top-grossing festival tour. In its 3-year run, Lilith Fair raised over $10 million for women’s charities and helped to carve out a solid niche for female musicians around the world.
Now, Lilith Fair is back with a remarkably diverse lineup ranging from R&B/soul divas Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige to jazz-pop singers Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae, from country stars Sugarland and Loretta Lynn to rock legends Sheryl Crow and Heart. The international tour is scheduled to hit over 30 cities in the US, Canada and the UK, seeking out undiscovered female artists along the way via the Lilith Local Talent Search.
We recently spoke with McLachlan about the tour as she put the finishing touches on her eagerly anticipated new album, her first since 2006’s Wintersong.
It's been 11 years since the last Lilith Fair. Why did you stop?
We always planned to do three years, and at the end we were all tired. I needed to make a new record, so I couldn't go out again. My managers and agent, who were partners in Lilith, had full-time jobs. So at the end of three years it was like, “Let's take a break,” because we wanted to end on a high note. A lot of other summer festivals kept going out year after year, and they lost their luster. We wanted Lilith to be special, and leave people wanting more.
What makes this the right time to bring it back?
A lot has changed for all of us, and in the music industry. It just felt like the right time to try it out again. There's a whole wealth of great new talent out there, and we just thought, “Why not bring it back?”
What was your original mission in founding the tour?
I wanted to do some summer shows and didn't want all the responsibility [for selling tickets] to fall on my shoulders. I thought it’d be fun to get other female artists on the bill. We talked to promoters and they were like, "What? No! You can't put a bunch of women on the same bill! People won't come!" Which, of course, I thought was asinine. As soon as someone tells me I can't do something, I want to do it twice as bad just to prove 'em wrong. We did four shows in 1996 to see how it went, and everybody loved it. If you put a bunch of musicians up there playing really good music, gender doesn't matter.
You were determined to get artists from the original tours back this year, including Emmylou Harris, Erykah Badu, Indigo Girls and Sheryl Crow. But were there any new artists you especially wanted to have on board?
I'm very excited about Mary J Blige, because I think she's SO talented. We also got Loretta Lynn: I think she hasn't toured nationally in 30-something years. I also love Court Yard Hounds, which is Emily Robison and Martie Maguire from Dixie Chicks. Oh boy, it's a long list… (Laughs) Everybody wants in on it now. So as opposed to trying to find people, now we're overwhelmed with artists. But it's a lot trickier to get people to commit because everyone has busy schedules in the summer.
How has the position of women in music changed since that first Lilith tour?
I think it changed the industry’s perception of the power we had. It gave all of us a platform that was bigger than we could’ve had on our own. Women were getting a lot more airplay on the radio, so it helped a lot of us– myself included– to take our careers to a different level. When Lilith ended, there was this big surge of boy bands and the door slammed shut on singer-songwriters. In came the bubblegum pop. But music is cyclical, and out of that came this surge of quality male singer-songwriters, like David Gray, Ray LaMontagne, Damien Rice and Rufus Wainwright.
How you feel about the music industry changes over the past decade?
It's progress. Downloading changed everything, but the record companies put their heads in the sand, and I think it really hurt them. They've got to change and grow with the times. I'm incredibly lucky because I write and sing my own songs and I play live. Even though I sell a quarter of the records I used to sell, it's okay because I have fans who come to my shows. I think everybody still wants to go see music. They want to hear music, and as long as that’s the case I think music will endure.
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