Women artists including Sarah McLachlan, Jewel and Paula Cole gather for the summer’s most successful festival

We’re sitting in a traffic jam behind a VW van smothered with Deadhead stickers on a dirt road outside the Gorge Amphitheater, 141 miles east of Seattle in a Godforsaken place called George, Wash. It can only be described as a moldy desert dotted with a few agricultural fields and irrigation machines that resemble fragile dinosaur skeletons. Photographer Merri Cyr and i are on a mission: We will follow the Lilith Fair tour for its first five days, traveling like its artists do, down the West Coast in tour buses; planes and automobiles; then we’ll disembark before it moves inward to spread its womanly goodness across the nation.

The fair is a 37-date extravaganza featuring a rotating roster of 64 female artists, among them Sheryl Crow, Shwn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls and Joan Osborne (Sarah McLachlan is the only constant performer). It’s the summer’s most popular, outselling Lollapalooza and H.O.R.D.E. It’s also a statement by its creator, the Canadian singer/songwriter McLachlan, that sisters, most of whom play a wafty blend of coffeehouse folk, are doin’it for themselves. “Three years ago, promoters were really afraid to put two women on the same bill”, said Mclachlan in an interview. “With Lilith, we just wanted to prove that the concept can be done.” They‘ve succeeded. Hugely. Lilith has sold out large venues across the country and is projected to sell more than a half-million tickets ($1 from each ticket goes to women’s charities). It has also raised the monetary consciousness of record moguls across the board by proving that an all-female tour can be viable, profitable and well-reviewed. There are already plans for Lilith ’98.

On this leg of the tour, the main stage features Suzanne Vega, then Paula Cole, Jewel, Tracy Chapman and McLachlan. The festivities will begin at 5:50 p.m. on the dot, after lesser-known artists do their thing on two smaller stages. But by 2:30, women are already pouring into the venue, which is perched on the side of a beauteous gorge carved by the Columbia River.

“I’m glad to see some men out there,” says McLachlan during a special acoustic set that will kick off Lilith Fair. She is on the smallest of the three stages as the Borders Stage and sponsored by the bookstore chain. McLachlan, barefoot and standing next to a carefully placed bouquet of wildflowers, strums her guitar and lilts lyrics, her gauzy red shirt and apricot-tinged hair blowing in the breeze. The predominantly female audience –clad in bathing-suit tops, cutoff shorts and flowing hippie garb that exposes primitive-goddess tatoos of suns, moons and stars looks transfixed.

Lilith is as safe and nonoffensive as it gets. No one shows up drunk or shags groupies backstage (“There aren’t any on this tour”, says Cassandra Wilson. “At least not on my bus”). No one gets held up at airports for smuggling drugs in body crevices, and no one trashes a hotel room. Compared with Lollapalooza, H.O.R.D.E and Warped, the Lilith Fair is this summer’s tour equivalent to Glinda the Good Witch. Even the crowd members are well-behaved, apologizing when they bump into one another, drinking bottled water rather than beer and swaying in seats rather that starting up a mosh pit.

There’s no Courtney Love brawling with members of Bikini Kill, no Salt-n-Pepa professing their need to shoop, no Liz Phair singing “Fuck and Run”. Lilith’s press release calls it “a reflection of women’s evolving role in popular music,” but as a wide range of people on the tour admits, it’s too one-dimensional, there’s nothing too risky or nongodesslike. Instead, women are represented as a whole by Jewel singing “You Were Meant For Me”, Tracy Chapman, performing with a didgeridoo and Mclachlan herself headlining all 37 night with a set that can be described as squeezably soft. It’s all smiles and serenity.

“I don’t remember who’s playing, but i came out to celebrate women in music,” says one cnocert-goer at the Shoreline Amphitheater, just outside San Francisco. “There’s been a boys’ club for long enough –now it’s timefor us to start our own.” I wonder whether everybosy has forgotten about the last 10 years in music, during which Hole, Björk, Alanis Morissette and TLC have eclipsed guys in the popularity and creativity departments.

But when you’re stepped in Lilithland, you can forget about the world outside and simply celebrate womanhood by purchasing free-flowing skirts in the Village area, dining at health-food stands with names like Wok on the Wild Side and standing in harmony woth other women in half-hour-long bathroom lines. Though the crowd is forced together as one, there’s little sisterly fraternizing backstage. Like high school society, a pecking order quickly forms: Suzanne Vega is the cool and distant art chick, Paula Cole the down-to-earth best friend, Jewel the stuck-up one, Tracy Chapman the respected activist and MacLachlan the peppy student-body president who wears weird-colored eye shadow. The second-stagers –Mudgirls, Leah Andreone and Cassandra Wilson – are like the stoners in the smoking area, possessing the coolest clothes, attitudes and tattooed backup dudes. The Borders Stage’s solo artists –Kinnie Starr and Lauren Hoffman – are the tag-along little sisters, still gawky, unpolished and apart from the social hierarchy.

Those extremes on the largest and smallest stages make the second stage the most interesting, with goofy punk-rock sets by Mudgirl (one of the few unsigned bands on the whole tour); weird, high-pitched Ani DiFranco yowls from Andreone; and a deadly cool set by jazz diva Wilson. When Vega starts up on the main stage, she does a spare set with just her bass player. It’s detached, arty and beautiful, and would have been devastatingly effective later in the evening. Her short set is a definite success with the audience, who get to sing do do do do’s of “Tom’s Diner”. Cole proves the most exhilarating – and sometimes ferocious- performer, shaking, dancing, whistling and making animal noises.

Then there’s Jewel’s set, during which she tells the audience how great it is not to be a waitress anymore. Meanwhile, a guy behind the mixing board in a shirt that reads, I LOVE THE SMELL OF DIESEL IN THE MORNING, keeps looking at his watch!; jewel’s backing band, an odd group that looks totally disconnected from her and one another, appears no more enthusiastic. Jewel attempts Patti Smith’s “Dancing Barefoot” all pouty and pigeon-toes, and sounds like, well, Jewel. The next four dates will consist of an unwitting game people play side-stage while Jewel performs. It’s called Is That a Cover or an Original ? “I think that’s Dylan’s ‘Tom Thumb’s Blues’,” comments another artist’s back-up musician. “But I think she just did another cover, of Blondie’s ‘Call Me’” says someone else. Meanwhile, I’m busy thinking how much her hit “You Were Meant For Me” sounds just like that sappy ‘70s hit “Danny’s Song” (“Even though we ain’t got money…”)

At this point I need ampage, screams, but Chapman comes out singing “Behind The Wall” a cappella, which echoes hauntingly across the stadium. Her set is spotless, perfect, supplemented by seven session musicians (A big problem here: most of the bands are precise yet robotic session guys, which results in little spontaneity on the main stage.) Chapman is a clear favorite with the fans and deservingly so, with a confident delivery and commanding presence.

Mclachlan comes next. A few more gauzy moments, and the show is over. Then begins my and Merri’s nightly scramble for a ride. Mclachlan, Jewel and Chapman send handlers to tell us we can’t go on their buses (Vega end Cole don’t have one yet), but Wilson offers to take us to Seattle. I wake the next morning in the Holiday Inn humming, “Tell me everything’s gonna be all right…”

According to Hebrew Folflore, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, but from there the stories vary, depending on just whom you talk to. Mclachlan says that Lilith didn’t want to take orders from Adam, so she dumped his ass. Kinnie Starr says that Lilith wasn’t subservient enough and was banished from the Garden of Eden. Even in the Old Testament, it’s unclear just what she did to cause such a stir. Isaiah 34:14 says, “Wild cats shall meet with desert beasts, satyrs shall call to one another; htere shall the Lilith repose and find for herself a place to rest.” Somehow it’s hard to imagine Jewel lying with desert beast in her red spaghetti-strap dress (“Herb Ritts gave it to me”), but at the Lilith Fair, we use our imaginations.

“What’s cool is, no one here acts like s star,” Jewel tells me in her dressing room on the San Francisco stop of the tour. “It doesn’t matter how many records you sell, even though I’ve sold the most”.

“WHEN MY ALBUM Fumbling Towards Ecstasy came out three years ago, a lot of radio stations said they couldn’t play the single because they had another woman, Tori Amos, on their playlists,” says Mclachlan at a press conference; these will take place every day for the first five days of the tour. “Like, ‘Go’way – we’ve alreday got our token female this week.’” Maybe the fact that there’s little air time allotted to women explains the underlying sense of competitiveness at these press events, which resemble the uncomfortable alliance of a NATO meeting. Answers are filled with the feminist-sounding words like empowerment, community and even germination, and the participants look as detached from one another as a seated row of subway riders. But at the press in Los Angeles, there is a moment of unification when a reporter asks why the lineup isn’t more diverse, with more rock and rap acts. McLachlan shoots back, “I think the lineup’s very diverse.” Andreone jumps in : “I’ve never seen so many different styles together.” Vega, Kim Bingham of Mudgirl and Kinnie Starr remain silent.

In Salem, ORE., we’re supposed to meet McLachlan for an interview, and we wait by her dressing room door for five minutes. When she opens it, she says with a grin, “You’re late –we have five less minutes now. I have to see Paula Cole play at 7:05, then from 7:30 to 8, I have to use my stair machine.” I feel so rushed, I ask stupid questions that result in answers with togetherness and community in them, and then go outside to watch Cole. There aren’t a lot of performers hanging out watching other’s sets, but when they do, they find, like it or not, Cole is the one supplying and stealing fire.

“There is a connectiveness with all the music on this bill,” says McLachlan at one point. “Just a vibe and energy. Everybody on this bill has a real gift of sharing”. But Bingham of Mudgirl, the only slightly punk-rock band on the tour, doesn’t exactly feel a oneness with the lineup today. “Our set was really disappointing,” she says, slamming her guitar case shut behind the second stage. You can hear Vega starting up on the main stage. “It’s like there were too many hippies out there, and they wanted something folkier. They just didn’t get it. I guess we were too rock & roll.” When I catch up with Vega, I ask whether she has been able to share with any of the artists. “I made an appointment to meet Tracy Chapman on Tuesday,” she says. Today is Saturday.

Lilith’s sponsors, all of whom have donated good amounts of money to women’s charities, are divided by McLachlan into such categories as spirit, shelter, learning and wellness (“Socially conscious business is what we wanted,” she says). Borders Books is in the learning category; Nine West Shoes in wellness (if you look good, you feel good).

I think of this earnestness as I share a plane ride from Salem to San Francisco with Paula Cole. She is dicussing how the artists have been talking to fans online at Microsoft booths. “One person asked me what I most wanted to take home from this experience, and I said, “Sarah’s underwear,” she says. “It went over like a lead balloon.” Remember, feminism is no joke. In the rare, uncomfortable interview I get with Chapman, all I want to do is break the Lilith seriousness with questions like, “What clothes do you bring on tour ?”
“I can’t believe I’m answering this,” Chapman says with a tinge of embarrassment. “I guess mostly all black stuff. It’s easier to match –like adult Garanimals.” Then she cracks a smile. “Is that it ?”.

Irvine Meadows, near Los Angeles, is the only venue that sports a cigar booth, a Mercedes-Benz giveaway and celebrities. Sharon Stone and Fran Dresher mill around backstage, while Matthew Perry dines in the catered area. Again, Chapman begins a cappella with “Behind The Wall”, and Stone bounces up toward side-stage like a teeny-bopper, as if to say, “Up with women!”

It is also in L.A that the veneer begins cracking. Word leaks out that Wilson is upset because she wasn’t asked to play main stage; another artist complains that McLachlan has been stealing her quotes to use at press conferences. When Bingham goes onstage, she announces, “I know you’re probably expecting something little folkier, but instead what you’re getting is ‘Sautée Onions’, then launches inti a power-punk number.

But as the show draws to a close, all is serene and calm, just like womanhood should be. McLachlan brings out her female dog, Rex, who sits on a Persian carpet; her husband, drummer Ashwin Sood, is by her side. Ad the band stands in a warm circle and performs McLachlan’s closing song, Rex lifts her leg, licks her crotch and falls asleep. And like the setting moon on a Celestial Seasoning box, Lilith is done for the evening.

[ back to articles ]