SHEROES

SHEROES

Inspired by creator and host Carmel Holt’s own 25 year career in radio, and lifetime devoted to music, SHEROES is a podcast that amplifies the voices of women and gender expansive folx in song and conversation. Hear a wide range of guests spanning genres and generations sharing their experiences in the male-dominated field of music, exploring perspectives of new voices and womxn who paved the way. SHEROES podcast is a companion to the weekly syndicated public radio show SHEROES Radio which includes interviews from the radio show, live tapings, roundtables and more.

  1. She Was Right There With Us

    -6 J

    She Was Right There With Us

    The two guest interviews featured in Episode 7 with Bruce Hornsby and Béla Fleck were recorded back-to-back by host/producer Carmel Holt. As it turns out, the threads that connect the two artists to each other and to Joni, make the conversations a perfect pair. Joni's then-husband, Larry Klein, played bass on and co-produced several of her albums in the '80s and '90s. He would also bring the two guests in this episode closer to each other and to their shared SHERO, Joni. Pianist and genre-blending musician Bruce Hornsby sings us through his Road to Joni, which includes Joni's first live album Miles of Aisles, a revelation that led him to devour her entire early catalogue, becoming a "complete Joni Mitchell devotee." In the 90's, Hornsby would go on to play on Shawn Colvin's second album, Fat City, produced by Larry Klein. Bruce ends by giving us a hint at a new project that he considers a "Paprika Plains"-like opus. Banjo player and fellow breaker of genre-boundaries Béla Fleck's Road began with a birthday gift from his stepfather: a copy of Blue that he would wear out that summer. Béla recounts how "The Last Time I Saw Richard" taught him entirely new emotions as a teenager. Later on, he tells us how he, too, played on Shawn Colvin's album with Hornsby and Klein, and got to record in Joni's house. He also shares the story of a terrifying overnight hospital stay his son and family endured, where they played Night Ride Home on repeat to get them through.

    1 h 4 min
  2. There Is More Freedom To Explore

    11 OCT.

    There Is More Freedom To Explore

    For Episode 6, we continue a thread from last week as host Carmel Holt talks with three “boundary dweller” artists about their Roads To Joni. Each of our guests this week are visionaries who push beyond their comfort zone. They are producers, singers, songwriters and instrumentalists. Like Joni, they are multi-Grammy nominees and winners who do things on their own terms.   Grammy award winning artist Arooj Aftab spent her teenage years in Lahore, Pakistan listening to American folk music. She found Joni Mitchell’s Blue and from there she was “all in.” Arooj takes us through her guest DJ set that spans Joni’s earliest recordings through to her jazz-influenced and more contemporary work. She sites “Black Crow” from Joni’s 1976 album Hejira as having a powerful impact on her.  Singer-songwriter, guitarist, multi instrumentalist, producer and Grammy award winner Brittany Howard sees Joni as “someone who wouldn't let any confines stop her from expressing herself.” We would say the same about Brittany, who has not allowed herself to be defined by genre. She has explored pop, punk, lo-fi garage, glam and folk along her sonic path to her current album, What Now.  Finally, we meet up with three time Grammy award winning artist Annie Clark aka St. Vincent for a conversation in Minneapolis/St. Paul with Carmel and public radio station The Current in front of an audience of their members. Annie says that Hejira was the portal through which she fell in love with Joni. She credits Joni for being a trailblazer who makes only the music she wants to make. She says, “she did whatever the F she wanted and people were there for it, because it was just that good.”

    1 h 5 min
  3. The Boundary Dweller

    4 OCT.

    The Boundary Dweller

    The title of this week's episode comes from a term that legendary rock photographer Norman Seeff uses to describe a truly innovative artist, one who is willing to risk sacrificing their career in order to expand beyond their creative comfort zone. He calls these people “boundary dweller artists.” Norman says that he sees Joni as the archetype of this concept. Her evolution to incorporate jazz influences in the 70s, threw some of her fans for a loop, but as we’ve heard in previous episodes, Joni was not concerned with what others think. Working with the likes of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Charles Mingus, Joni pushed her own boundaries. She pushed Norman’s boundaries, too. His photo sessions with Joni Mitchell spanned over 15 years and 12 sessions, and his photography of Joni has appeared in the album packaging and covers for Court and Spark, Hissing of Summer Lawns, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Hejira, Dog Eat Dog, and her Hits and Misses compilations. Norman Seeff tells host Carmel Holt that Joni is one of the most courageous people he’s ever worked with, and in this fascinating episode that traces Norman's road to Joni and where it led him, we learn how the process of writing and compiling his book Joni: The Joni Mitchell Sessions he realized that he had not only captured Joni's metamorphosis but he also had been led to the guiding philosophy about creativity and the artistic spirit that has guided his work, and his personal evolution.

    1 h 7 min
  4. The Bridge to Joni

    27 SEPT.

    The Bridge to Joni

    SHEROES is on The Road To Joni, but in this episode we discover that sometimes that road is a bridge. A bridge to healing. A bridge to holding your own. A bridge to a new creative path. A bridge from one generation to another. Episode 4 of the Road To Joni begins at the SHEROES studio in upstate New York with 5x platinum recording artist and activist Natalie Merchant. A long time friend of host Carmel Holt, they discovered that they were both Joni Mitchell fans at a 1999 at breast cancer benefit concert that Carmel organized and Natalie headlined. The closing song from that show was a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want.” 25 years later, Natalie Merchant sits down with Carmel to reflect on her road to Joni, talks about crying at her kitchen table after missing Joni's return at Newport Folk 2022, and shares an exclusive listen to a previously unreleased recording of her cover of "All I Want" from her personal archives. Then, it's on to Newport Folk Fest 2024, where 4x Grammy Award Nominee Madison Cunningham (who also missed Joni's 2022 Newport performance) recalls listening to Court and Spark and feeling like Joni was looking into her soul. The self-taught guitar and songwriting prodigy tells us that her road to Joni is more of a bridge, partly because of all the literal bridges she crossed while listening to Joni’s music, but the deeper metaphor she uncovers during this conversation reveals that Joni Mitchell provided Madison a bridge to cross the “moat” of her religious upbringing to a place that opened up not only her musical world, but made her available for all the opportunities that found her.

    1 h 26 min
5
sur 5
33 notes

À propos

Inspired by creator and host Carmel Holt’s own 25 year career in radio, and lifetime devoted to music, SHEROES is a podcast that amplifies the voices of women and gender expansive folx in song and conversation. Hear a wide range of guests spanning genres and generations sharing their experiences in the male-dominated field of music, exploring perspectives of new voices and womxn who paved the way. SHEROES podcast is a companion to the weekly syndicated public radio show SHEROES Radio which includes interviews from the radio show, live tapings, roundtables and more.

Pour écouter des épisodes au contenu explicite, connectez‑vous.

Recevez les dernières actualités sur cette émission

Connectez‑vous ou inscrivez‑vous pour suivre des émissions, enregistrer des épisodes et recevoir les dernières actualités.

Choisissez un pays ou une région

Afrique, Moyen‑Orient et Inde

Asie‑Pacifique

Europe

Amérique latine et Caraïbes

États‑Unis et Canada