Lifetimes of Achievement
Last September, as the world was doing its Autumnal turn, an honor was bestowed upon me and upon Judy Dlugacz, by the Americana Music Association. An email from the AMA asked me if I would accept this award – along with Judy – as an honoring of our work all those years ago, establishing the first woman-owned, woman-run, woman-centric national recording company, Olivia Records. I was surprised and deeply honored, and I know Judy D. was, also. No matter how long it takes, being recognized for one’s work is such an important thing.
We went to Nashville where the ceremony was held in the Ryman Auditorium, and I thought to myself as I sat there, that this may be the only way I’d ever get to this revered theatre.But what a way it was! Olivia was recognized that night for its original purpose and her Legacy:to make music/art by women, for women, distributed by woman (after creating the distribution network!), with a deep and abiding feminist spine that held all of us true to our course. It held us then, and it holds us now. I saw with new eyes how brave and forward-thinking and smart we all were to have done this amazing thing. I thought about the original “Olives”: Ginny Berson, Kate Winter, Jennifer Woodul, Meg Christian, and eventually joining the collective, Teresa Trull. We all became such good partners and such strong friends. We had to in order to accomplish this miracle. We knew we didn’t know how to do it, but do it we must! Women’s lives depended upon us…even more than we knew. This music changed and saved lives, ours and theirs, and honestly, it continues to do so today.
Judy represented the business part of our adventure, and I stood for the music…especially The Changer and the Changed, the little album that could. In 1975, Olivia and I set out to record the songs I’d brought to the project. Joan Lowe was our engineer, and she meant so much to all of us. I say this even as she passed from this world just recently at the age of 90. We all did the best we could with what we had, and as it turned out, what we had was golden!
The award was presented that night by Ann Powers, a good friend and cohort, an author and music critic for NPR. Her skillful words ushered us in, and from the interior of that moment, standing there in the lights, I felt the truth and power of what we’d done all those years ago. In the audience that night were artists I cared about, people I always thought of as my peers. But, in that funny way of the world, our roads led us differently, and most importantly, to the places we all needed to be. But that night, I felt as though all the roads of all the artists there were meeting together in the Ryman, in Nashville, Tennessee. And there they were: Rosanne Cash, Emmy Lou Harris, John Prine, and several Sisters whose names I just had to say: KD Lang, Brandi Carlile, Mary Gauthier, and hometown gal, Dianne Davidson. Judy and I were thanked endlessly that night. Somehow, once again, we had made a difference in the world. Thank you, AMA. You made a huge difference in our world.