Sarah McLachlan Leads Lilith Fair Into Its Summer Sunset
On eve of 'final' tour, singer brushes off
conservative critics, says festival opened doors
for female musicians.
Staff Writer Chris Nelson reports:
As Lilith Fair heads off this week on what may amount to its
final run, singer/songwriter and tour founder Sarah McLachlan
says she has more than proven her point when it comes to
women's place in music.
"Certain old rules don't apply anymore, like you can't have two
women on the same bill, or you can't play two women
back-to-back on the radio," McLachlan said while taking a
break from gardening at her Vancouver, British Columbia,
home last week.
If she chose to, McLachlan could argue that her
female-centered Lilith Fair festival has spawned such
noteworthy offspring as the summer's Alanis Morissette and
Tori Amos tour and 1998's Suffragette Sessions outing with
the Indigo Girls, Lisa Germano, Ann Wilson and others.
But Lilith has had a much broader impact, McLachlan
suggested.
She contended that Lilith which kicks off its third and
possibly final run Thursday in Vancouver overturned
some of the unwritten tenets of the concert industry.
That change was one of the tour's original goals.
"We've proven [the old tenets] wrong time and time again,"
she said. "There's a huge audience out there that enjoys
hearing not two, but many women back to back. So I think
it's definitely opened up some doors."
Lilith Fair's '99 incarnation boasts the annual festival's most
varied lineup to date. In addition to McLachlan, the event's
three stages will feature, on various dates, hard-rockers Hole,
singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, country's Dixie Chicks and
rapper Queen Latifah, whose song "Life" (RealAudio excerpt
of live version) appears on Lilith Fair: A Celebration of
Women in Music, Volume 2.
R&B singers Monica and Mya, folkies Beth Orton and
Suzanne Vega, and indie rock's Liz Phair 霠whose "Never
Said" (RealAudio excerpt of live version) is on Lilith Fair ...
Volume 3 霠will also perform at various stops on the festival's
40-date North American swing.
As the tour has evolved from a novelty to a summer staple
over the past two years, some say the broad range of artists
霠not their sex 霠is what continues to draw people to Lilith
events.
The 17,000-seat PNC Bank Arts Center on New Jersey's
shore has played host to the fair each year since its debut in
1997. This year, for the first time, the venue will hold two days
of shows rather than just one.
"It's a lot of great artists on one bill, just very talented
musicians," Krista Newbert, marketing assistant for the Arts
Center, said.
"We just had to stick to our guns and try our best to get every
different kind of music that we could," McLachlan said
(RealAudio excerpt of interview). "It became easier. [Now],
as opposed to us chasing artists down, their managers were
calling us and saying, 'Hey, we'd really love to come and do
some dates.' "
On its two previous outings, one of rock's most successful
summer festival tours drew barbs for focusing too heavily on
singer/songwriter acts.
In recent weeks, Lilith has sparked more criticism for
everything except its talent roster. In May, the anti-abortion
group Rock for Life called for a boycott of Lilith, charging that
the tour gave money to the pro-choice organization Planned
Parenthood. Tour spokesperson Ambrosia Healy denied the
allegation, saying that proceeds from the Lilith Fair albums
benefit a rape counseling hotline and a safe-sex group. She
added that Planned Parenthood has been allowed to set up
information tables on the tour.
Then, in June, the Rev. Jerry Falwell's National Liberty Journal
decried not only Lilith's support of Planned Parenthood but the
tour's namesake as well: It blasted Lilith, a character who,
according to Hebrew folklore, was the biblical Adam's first
mate but was banished from Eden before Eve's creation,
subsequently returning to the garden to tempt Eve. Falwell's
publication claimed Lilith is an icon of lesbianism.
McLachlan said she found the criticisms in Falwell's
publication "mildly humorous. It was a chance [for Falwell] to
jump on someone else's platform and make some noise," she
said (RealAudio excerpt of interview). "I'm not really
interested in commenting too much, because it will just give
him more fodder."
Nonetheless, offering booths to Planned Parenthood and
helping both the AIDS awareness group LIFEBeat and the
Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network hotline are among
the clear highlights of the tour for McLachlan, she said.
"I [support these causes] in my private life, and this is a way
to further that," she said. "Not in the sense of shoving it down
people's throats, but ... this information is there, if you want to
come and get a little education on it."
According to current plans, this will be the last time that fans
can get that information through Lilith. During an April press
conference to announce the tour, McLachlan said the outing
is going on hiatus and may return in three years, 10 years or
never.
Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert trade magazine
Pollstar, said Lilith has built a reputation for offering hitmaker
lineups 霠alumni include Lauryn Hill, Lucinda Williams, Jewel,
Tracy Chapman, Paula Cole and Joan Osborne 霠for relatively
affordable ticket prices.
"The tour is capable of coming back, if they can put together
the right combo," he said.
But don't hold your breath for the return. After Lilith closes up
shop in North America with an Aug. 31 show in Edmonton,
Ontario, McLachlan is taking a few weeks off. She'll then
mount a solo tour of Australia in late September and October
and is holding out the possibility for some benefit shows in
November.
Come the new millennium, she plans to duck the spotlight for
a while, she said. "I'm going to continue writing and just sort
of slow things down a bit. I'm going to do some traveling for
pleasure."
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