In the past few years, Milwaukee’s music scene has become much less of a boys club than ever before. In 2014 alone, close to half (11, to be exact) of the acts we considered to have made the 25 best Milwaukee albums of the year featured at least one female member among their ranks. That’s just a sample of the feminine representation, as women excel in literally dozens of other projects in town. After two successful camps, Girls Rock Milwaukee is thriving. Additionally, the inaugural Ladies Rock Milwaukee camp just concluded, and the first Riverwest FemFest kicks off tonight (and goes through tomorrow).
While the presence of women in local music has clearly grown, the scene is far from perfect. In hopes of gaining some first-hand perspective on the state of women in Milwaukee music, co-hosts Matt Wild and Tyler Maas invited Ladies Rock Milwaukee organizer Mary Johnson (who also plays in The Olives and Fox Face) and FemFest founder Olivia Doyle into Milwaukee Record’s warehouse headquarters to discuss their respective events, difficulties and misconceptions female musicians face, and improvements that still must be made in Milwaukee (and beyond).
As always, this episode of On The Record is sponsored by our brewery buddies at Ale Asylum (whose beer all four guests enjoyed on air). Fittingly, musical portions of this episode are provided by The Olives and Fox Face. You can subscribe to On The Record via iTunes here.