Here is the text of my cover story from the January/February 2010 edition of LoneStarMusic Magazine. If you’d like to view the pretty version instead, give it a click.

Where the girls are

Women are well-represented throughout every aspect of Texas Music with one exception. Where are the female artists?

There’s an old exercise in logic that goes a little something like this: Imagine you flip a coin 100 times in a row and on each one of those flips the coin turns up heads. What are the odds that the coin will land on heads on the one hundred and first flip?

The logical answer is 50%, but our instinct takes over and we look for the reason why it came up heads 100 times in a row and wager that it will be heads again. Is the coin heavier on one side? Is it a two-headed coin? Is it rigged in some other way?

So, when we go out to watch live music in Texas and see that the audience is evenly split between male and female, when we look at who is buying Texas music and see that it’s evenly split between male and female, and when we look at the people working in the Texas music industry and see that even there, if not quite equally split, women are well represented, we can’t help but look up at the stages of Texas’s dancehalls and honky-tonks and wonder where the female artists are.

Miss Leslie

Houston-based Leslie Sloan, a fan of 1960s country music (and fashion), began playing violin before she attended kindergarten. She sang along to the radio obsessively as an adolescent – paying attention to every note, phrase, and nuance. Her Aunt Erma would claim Leslie was “ate up with music”.

Sloan entered the Texas Music scene at the age of 14 via her family band (her two siblings also began learning their instruments as toddlers), and played oprys and bluegrass shows around Houston. Leslie continued to play and sing with her family throughout college and her initial foray into the day job scene, but the lure of leading her own group had grown.

In 2004, she and then-husband Randy Lindley assembled a seven-piece honky-tonk band led by Leslie on vocals and fiddle and including upright piano, bass, pedal steel, drums, and acoustic and electric guitar. They hit the Texas circuit as Miss Leslie and her Juke Jointers, and built a following through live shows along with garnering critical acclaim for their debut CD, Honky Tonk Revival. Miss Leslie infused the group with a sound more reminiscent of the nickel jukebox at a diner than the two-bit pop being served up at mainstream country radio.

The breakup of her marriage in late 2006 along with shifting musical directions led to the big band becoming a more standard four-piece. The change also led to a much heavier reliance on the songwriting of Miss Leslie and in 2008 the group released Between the Whiskey and the Wine, with all thirteen of the album’s tracks written by Sloan. The reviews were positive once again, but even with three albums under her belt (the band released a live record between the two studio albums), and a tighter live show, Miss Leslie and her Juke Jointers still faced road blocks reserved solely for “girl-singers” in the honky-tonks and dance halls of Texas.

“There’s a club in the Houston-area that will only allow one female artist a month. There’s another club in San Antonio that not only refuses to book ‘girl-singers’, they won’t even play songs by female vocalists through their PA system. And this is a so-called honky-tonk,” Miss Leslie exclaims.

Venues that refuse to book girl-singers, or suppress female appearances to one a month, claim that their crowds don’t support female-led bands. On the surface, this sounds ridiculous – like saying that no one will show up for a band with a red-headed guitarist who plays left-handed. But there is a talent buyer who sees the truth behind the claim, and she’s been booking artists at the oldest dance hall in Texas for close to three decades.

Tracie Ferguson

Few people have impacted the Texas Music landscape while remaining anonymous to the extent that Tracie Ferguson has. Artists who can credit Tracie with some of their first gigs include Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Nanci Griffith, Hal Ketchum, Lucinda Williams, and many more. Her collection of demo tapes and correspondence belong in an exhibit of Texas Music history.

Ferguson got her start in the music business by booking Beacon City Band, a group featuring both male and female lead vocalists, and a frequent performer at Gruene Hall. When the band broke up, Tracie volunteered to take over the talent buying from Gruene Hall co-owner Mary Jane Nalley for only $50 a month. “The reward was I got to book who I wanted and get to go to these great shows,” Ferguson explains. “And now I’m up to seventy-five dollars a month,” she adds with a burst of laughter.

When Tracie first took over the booking, Gruene Hall’s only regular live music was on Saturday nights. Between her skill at choosing blossoming artists and Pat Molak’s (Gruene Hall’s other co-owner) realization that beer sales were always better on live music nights, the calendar quickly expanded. “Eventually I was also booking Fridays and Sundays, then it grew to Thursdays and weekends,” Tracie recalls. More than a quarter of a century after she took over Gruene Hall’s one night of music, the venue now hosts ten shows a week.

Ferguson admits to noticing a drop-off of female artists at Gruene Hall over the past several years, but when she discovers one that can “bring the goods” at the historic dance hall, she doesn’t hesitate to give her every opportunity to shine. Fiddle phenom Ruby Jane serves as the prime example for 2010. “I’m not really into booking fourteen or fifteen year olds, and I never have been, but Ruby is so together and has such a great band of seasoned veterans. I figured if she’s good enough for Willie Nelson, she’s good enough for Gruene Hall.”

Tracie’s expertise and experience have taught her what works for Gruene Hall and what doesn’t. She observes that many female artists write songs that are slower placed and more introspective than their male counterparts. “It seems they have more victim-mentality, slow and pretty songs, but when a guy sings ‘my girlfriend doesn’t love me’ it also has ’so I think I’ll go get drunk’ and can still be upbeat and feel-good.” While that kind of show works well at places like Cactus Cafe in Austin or the Mucky Duck in Houston, it makes for a slow night in Gruene.

Even the female vocalist that started Tracie in the business is caught in the circumstance. “Denice Franke from Beacon City Band went the folk route – listening rooms and coffee houses. Her music is very introspective – beautiful and poetic. And there’s a certain audience that likes it, but I don’t book her at Gruene Hall because it puts people to sleep here.”

There is a Texas female artist who has been so successful at knowing how to play for whatever audience she is in front of that she’s been able to have a twelve year career, release eleven records, tour extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, and have her songs covered by numerous other artists. All while remaining 100% independent.

Terri Hendrix

“Sister Song is great for the Cactus Cafe, it’s great for the Ann Arbor folk festival, but it doesn’t work at Gruene Hall. When you play Gruene Hall, you need to boogie,” Hendrix states. “If you’re going to strum-a-dum and stare at your feet and you’re a woman, you’re going to have a harder row to hoe.”

Terri Hendrix did not arrive on the scene with this knowledge intact. Like everything else in her career, she claimed it through an unmatched work ethic and an unrelenting desire to improve some aspect of her career every day. Her musical career launched at the age of 4 when she appropriated the acoustic guitar her sister received as a birthday present. Hendrix hit the hill country open-mic circuit at 19 and had never taken more than two days in a row off until 22 years later when health issues (Terri suffers from epilepsy) forced her to step back for several months in late 2009.

The much-needed break recharged Hendrix and she states “the kid gloves are now off,” as she prepares her next studio album with musical partner Lloyd Maines. It’s a bold declaration for an artist who has remained fiercely independent despite numerous offers from record labels. Early in her career she passed on a contract offer from Sony’s Lucky Dog Records the same year the label signed Charlie Robison, Bruce Robison, and Jack Ingram. The only people she wants to answer to when it comes to making her records are her fans.

An early preview of her new record shows Terri backing up the claim. Always an eclectic artist (and eclectic is a word Terri uses a lot), her song mix on this album contains no back-to-back songs of the same style. In a lesser artist’s hands this might sound like a wishy-washy mess, but with Terri and Lloyd at the helm the result convinces you that no other approach would make sense. The record also finds Terri muscling her musicianship.

“It’s the most exciting time to be a female in Texas Music, but you’d better know how to play,” Hendrix says. “Up and coming musicians that I’m running across these days are making me practice. If I want to stay employed and I want to compete, then I know I have to get better. I don’t want to be on stage and not be able to keep up.”

Many of those musicians pushing Hendrix were inspired by Terri’s example. In a scene with a limited female lineage, Hendrix stands out to anyone who pays attention. Terri builds her link in the chain of Texas Music not only through the music she writes and performs herself, but also through the music she teaches aspiring artists via her workshops.

For the past decade, Hendrix and Maines have hosted three day workshops imparting their knowledge of music, songwriting, performance, and “the part that ain’t art” to female and male students alike. Terri mentions that the female attendance has grown noticeably over the years, but cautions that is not what the workshops are about. “We had a guy call one year and say, ‘If I don’t make the workshop, you can keep the money.’ I asked him what was up with that and he said he had cancer. Making it to the workshop became a goal, and he made it and eventually beat the cancer. It’s way beyond anything I can put into words.”

Though Hendrix bristles at the suggestion of being a trailblazer for Texas female artists (“I don’t see myself that way. I would hope I’ve been a kind hand to others, but I just love to play.”), the evidence speaks for itself. A read through of liner notes from Texas women releasing new CDs, finds that evidence beginning to pile up.

At a Cactus Cafe show eight years ago, a girl only ten years old came up to Terri between sets and proclaimed that she played mandolin too. Terri gave her a few words of encouragement, gave her a mandolin pick, then later in the night gave her a chance to join Terri in a song up on stage. It would not be the last time that 10-year-old girl charmed the crowd at the Cactus Cafe.

Sarah Jarosz

Founded in 1867 just off of historic Tremont Street in Boston, the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) was the first independent school of it’s kind in the the United States. The Grammys, by contrast, are a relative newcomer on the American music scene with only 52 years under their belt as compared to NEC’s 142 years. Yet in their half-century of co-existence, an attending NEC student had never been nominated for a Grammy until eighteen-year-old Sarah Jarosz of Wimberley, Texas received the nod. She did it in her very first semester.

Jarosz stands straight and confident, and she is uniquely beautiful – something of a cross between Liv Tyler and a cherub. Along with being an NEC freshman, a Grammy nominee, and a recording artist on musician’s favorite label, Sugar Hill Records, Sarah Jarosz is also the face of Texas female artists for the 21^st century.

“This flame burns brighter with every poem read.
This bird flies higher with a song up in her head.”
~ Song Up In Her Head

Video exists of Sarah’s first performance, singing “Grand Ole Flag” at the age of 2. Vocal lessons followed and Sarah added piano lessons at age 6, then mandolin at the age of 10. At 12 she took up the banjo and began writing songs, by the age of 15 she received constant requests to record an album, and at 17 she signed a recording contract with Sugar Hill.

Though she has won multiple bluegrass awards and holds a Grammy nomination due to her prowess on the mandolin, the instrument she truly shines with is the one she displayed first – her voice. Her control, nuance, and feel for what the song needs is uncanny, making vocalists who are decades her senior sound like unruly adolescents. No showy, Idolesque vocal acrobatics blemish the songs on Jarosz’s debut CD, Song Up In Her Head.

Another surprising example of maturity on the disc reveals itself in the depth of perspective in Jarosz’s lyrics. It’s clear in many of the 11 songs she penned for this album – she also recorded 2 covers: Tom Waits’s “Come On Up To the House” and “Shankill Butchers” by the Decemberists – that Sarah realizes her current place on the map in the journey of life. Despite recording this album when she was 17 and in the middle of senior year at Wimberley High, there are no throw away lines about cheer captains and bleacher creatures. Instead we’re treated to gems such as these lines from “Edge Of A Dream”, her song about crossing the threshold of adulthood: “Almost eighteen, a real lady now / I’ll keep trying to figure this life out / I want to figure it out / Step to the left, step to the right / The middle of the floor feels safe tonight”

She credits her perspective to how supportive her parents were in encouraging her to explore musically and geographically. “My parents made it possible for me to travel a lot as a young child and as a young adult. When I was fifteen I was in New York City by myself for the first time. I feel my perspective springs a lot from those experiences of being able to see a lot of different people and places. And there’s so much more yet to discover.”

“I have just begun
A long journey that will run
The length and width of summertime
And the cool fall air will blow me home”
~ Long Journey

While her time in Texas gave her the foundation for developing and exploring musically, it was her time out of the state that established her as a bluegrass star on the rise. Every summer for eight years Jarosz attended the week-long RockyGrass academy in Lyons, Colorado. “Not only did it have a huge impact on me in learning a lot about music,” Jarosz explains, “but also in meeting and making connections with a ton of people in the music scene.”

Colorado is where Jarosz met Gary Pacosza, who co-produced the record with Sarah, and it’s also where she met many of the peers who contributed to her debut. It’s an impressive list that includes musician’s musicians such as Chris Thile, Darrell Scott, Tim O’Brien, Abigail Washburn, Jerry Douglas, Mike Marshall, and many more. It’s also where Sugar Hill and Jarosz built the foundation for her record deal.

All of the work and connections came together in her Grammy nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance for the track “Mansinneedof”. The tune is the musical equivalent of a black and gray peregrine falcon – soaring with raw speed and precision one minute, only to rest for a moment on the soft breeze below it. A skeptic might believe the song to be a mere creation of the studio; the precocious artist propped up by the veteran musicians accompanying her (Mike Marshall on second mandolin with Alex Hargreaves on fiddle and Paul Kowert on bass). That is, until the skeptic watches Sarah play it live. Unaccompanied.

“Left home / Two weeks gone by
Returned / The rosebuds had already given their time”
~ Left Home

In a continuation of the path she started with her first vocal lesson at the age of two, Sarah delayed the lure of a professional career in order to further her musical education. She spent much of her senior year in Wimberley deciding between competing scholarship offers from two Boston schools – NEC and Berklee. She ultimately chose NEC for it’s more intimate setting (about one-quarter the size of Berklee), and it’s contemporary improvisation program.

The first semester of finals for a freshman can be a nerve-wrecking time, and many students spend the week leading up to them in multiple, sleep-deprived cram sessions. Jarosz spent much of her last week before finals on a plane between Massachusetts and Texas. Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch had requested Sarah as the opener for their two sold-out shows in mid-December at the Parish. The opportunity to play with two of her heroes presented too great a temptation for Jarosz to pass up.

As she took the stage to open the show, the Parish Room didn’t have the look or feel of a listening room like her Austin home, the Cactus Cafe. All of the chairs had been cleared out, and in anticipation of the wall-to-wall bodies for the sold out show, Parish management had cranked the AC despite the chilly temperature outside. It was a wise choice as the restless crowd had shed their coats while waiting for the show to start. The murmur of chatter hung over the room as Sarah stated how honored and humbled she felt to open for Dave Rawlings Machine and Gillian Welch, and how happy she was to be back in Texas, if only for a few days. As she started to pick out her first song on banjo, the murmur evaporated and before the song ended, Sarah Jarosz had converted the Parish to a listening room. By the time she switched to acoustic guitar for album standout, “Edge Of A Dream”, the footsteps of Sixth Street pedestrians were audible.

“She’s like a hawk when she plays – totally focused and ferocious,” Terri Hendrix says. Abigail Washburn adds, “You hear Sarah Jarosz sing or play even a note and the relevancy of time and space goes on hold.” Any sense of timidness or awkwardness that naturally inhabits an eighteen-year-old vanishes once Sarah begins to perform.

“Fly a little higher than the rest / Make your journey last
Soar a little longer than the best / Leave your worries in the past”
~ Little Song

For years people insisted Sarah record an album. More recently they suggested she not worry about school in order to take advantage of the momentum her career had built. Throughout it all Sarah ignored the helpful advice of others and remained focused on her own vision of how her musical adventure should unfold. “I don’t think anything along my journey so far has felt forced. It’s all felt natural and has fallen into place really beautifully,” Sarah states.

She returns to the studio in January to begin work on her second record, and though she steadfastly refuses to be rushed into anything, she’s excited to start. “On the first record I had so many things that I knew I wanted to accomplish, and with the help of Gary Paczosa I was able to fulfill a lot of those dreams. Now this whole other world of discovery is opening up for the second record.”

As part of that discovery process, look for Sarah to spread her wings further on the next album. Though bluegrass (“newgrass” might be an even better term) has shaped her career to this point, she doesn’t plan to let it define her as an artist. “I’ve always been open to all sorts of genres, any music I find inspirational. I realize with the industry and the way it is, that’s naturally going to happen, but at this point I don’t consider myself to be a bluegrass artist,” Jarosz states. In fact, there are moments on Song Up In Her Head where Jarosz hints at what’s to come – most notably on “Edge Of A Dream” and “Long Journey”.

Between the demands of school, an occasional festival performance, her first Grammy ceremony, and recording her second album, Jarosz’s 2010 appointment book is filling up fast. “It’s always a challenge balancing school and shows, but now that school is based around music, it’s pretty cool. It gets really busy sometimes, but when I think about it, I like being busy. That’s just my nature.”

It is Jarosz’s nature, beginning with that very first pre-school performance, that has led her to this point in her career in an as-the-crow-flies direct line, where other artists may have taken a more circuitous route. Some not even beginning their journey until they were at the point in their lives that Sarah is now.

Jamie Wilson

If Jamie Wilson tells you something, you can absolutely guarantee it’s exactly what she feels. She’s not concerned with your feelings if they come at the expense of her honesty. That’s not to say she’s ungracious or rude, just direct and unflinchingly true.

Wilson sang around the house growing up (when no one else was around the house, that is), but didn’t start playing music and writing songs until she was a college sophomore at Texas A&M. “My cousin and I went to go see the Dixie Chicks in Houston during their Fly tour. There was a part in the show where the other girls went off and Natalie stayed on stage and played ‘Cold Day in July’ on guitar by herself. I was watching her and I told my cousin, ‘I just need a guitar; I could do that. I’m musical enough.’,” Jamie remembers.

Later that month, Jamie’s cousin and mother went in together to buy Jamie her first guitar as a Christmas gift. She first learned to play by printing out lyrics to songs and learning the chords by ear. Wilson quickly learned every song on both Dixie Chicks records, all of Phil Pritchett’s Heritage Way album, and all of the tunes on Bruce Robison’s Long Way Home From Anywhere. She wrote her first song a couple of months later and was in a band, the Sidehill Gougers, within six months of receiving that first guitar.

“We would have practice every Tuesday at Shane’s [Shane Walker, Sidehill Gougers founding member] house, and nobody, except for Shane, knew what they were doing. I could barely even play guitar and Shane had me playing banjo too,” Jamie recalls. It didn’t take long for the band to get up to speed, and within a year they had released their first CD, Runaway Scrape, with Walker and Wilson sharing the vocals and splitting the songwriting duties. The disc includes “Ill Made Illusions”, among the best songs penned by a female artist in Texas during the last ten years.

The group had the usual difficulty getting gigs, but it had nothing to do with having female vocalist in the band. “It was hard, but I don’t know of any time we didn’t get booked because there was a girl. Nobody knew we had a girl in the band from the name,” Wilson remembers. “Sometimes after the gig I’d get a comment like, ‘I don’t like girl bands, but I like you.’ I’m not a girl-power kind of a person, so I’d just laugh it off.” She specifically remembers one venue where the band sat down for the free meal that was part of the gig and was told by the waiter, “I’m sorry, but girlfriends don’t get free food.”

The Gougers (after dropping “Sidehill”) would go on to release an EP and another full-length record before musical and personal differences resulted in the band parting ways over the course of 2009. As the Gougers were winding down, Wilson found a side project – originally envisioned as a one-time only performance – taking off.

The Trishas

One of the biggest Texas music festivals every year takes place in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Early each January, thousands of Texans cross the Red River and make the trek up the Rockies to enjoy five days of Texas music, friendship, and skiing (not to mention hundreds of gallons of Jaegermeister). A staple of recent MusicFests has been a tribute to a Texas artist, with many of the festival’s performers doing a song or two of the featured songwriter. In 2009, the artist honored was Kevin Welch. The star of the tribute show was Wilson’s new group, the Trishas.

Liz Foster, then of the husband and wife duet Liz & Lincoln, is credited with putting the group together to play two songs for the tribute. A natural for the band was Kevin Welch’s daughter Savannah. Foster also enlisted another member of a male-female duo – Kelley Mickwee of Jed and Kelley. Jamie Wilson was the last one to join, getting the call because “they needed someone who could play guitar,” Wilson speculates.

Though the other three women had previous experience as artists and performers (like Wilson, Mickwee also began playing and writing while in college and credits Terri Hendrix with convincing her to play mandolin; Foster grew up singing on the Opry circuit and in Motown revues), this would be Savannah’s first musical effort after years of resistance – the pressure of following in her father’s legendary footsteps acting as the main deterrent, but not the only one. “Guys can get up and do it whether they’re good or not,” Savannah says. “For me, growing up around the songwriters I did – I didn’t show my dad anything I wrote for a long time. It took realizing that it was okay to be terrible for a song or to have a terrible song-writing idea before I could really start.”

They originally dubbed themselves the Fat Trishas (in jest, each one of these girls could stand a second slice of pie) before shortening the name to the Trishas. The group was the buzz of the five-day festival and before they realized it, this one-night only group was offered gigs that none of its members had been able to score in years of trying with their other efforts. Wilson sums it up. “I guess it’s easier to have four chicks in a band than one.”

The instant attention allowed the group to bypass the usual due-paying three hour gigs. Instead they play 50 minute slots at festivals and high-profile opening sets, and focus on making those 50 minutes as tight as possible. “Having four girls in the band might get people out to see us once,” Wilson explains, “but they’re not coming back unless the music is really good.”

They’ve also been invited to record backing vocals on songs for artists such as Ray Wylie Hubbard and Raul Malo. They secured management and a booking agent in late 2009, but still approach things with a side project mindset, giving them the freedom to turn down offers that they would have jumped at in the past.

The band plans to ramp up their opportunities and their profile even more by recording a debut album early in 2010. Many producers have already expressed interest in working with the group on the record, but no concrete decisions have been made as the girls finish rounding the material for the sessions into shape.

In January the Trishas return to the place where their career started one short year ago. They will be one of seven female acts playing at MusicFest, which has 38 acts overall. Close to 20% is an impressive number of females for a Texas Music festival; even more impressive though is that Jamie Wilson represents almost half of those acts.

Jamie Wilson

Along with performing in the Trishas, Jamie also has a set with Johnny and the Footlights, a county classics cover band that she fronts along with Jason Eady, and one set for an artist she rarely appears as – Jamie Wilson.

After years of only being identified by the band she played with, Wilson has recorded her first solo record, Dirty Blonde Hair, an EP which will be released in early 2010. “I was in a band almost as soon as I got a guitar. Then before the Gougers were even done, this thing with the Trishas was taking off. I wanted to at least get some of my own music out there. Something that’s just me,” Wilson states.

In addition to releasing the EP and recording a full-length album with the Trishas, Jamie has another big project on her plate for 2010. One that will have an impact on her career, and one no male artist, of any genre, will ever have to undertake.

Jamie Wilson and husband Roy are expecting their first child in June of 2010. A near-obsessive planner (She presented Roy with an elaborate travel plan for her gigs along with a detailed list of who could help care for the baby in each city where Wilson has regular gigs. Roy listened patiently before responding, “You know this baby is going to have a dad, right?”), Jamie has scheduled all of her 2010 to fit around the time she’ll need to take off. “We’re recording in April or May, my baby’s due in late June, we can do all of the artwork and publicity through the summer, and then try to release the record in September.” Wilson plans to hit the road with the band in support of the record immediately after the release, bringing along a merch person/nanny in tow.

Even the most detailed plans have little chance of coming off perfectly, and recently some high-profile women in the Texas Music scene have taken significant time off from their career for their families. Kelly Willis is one, – and Wilson has benefited from her absence by being asked to sing harmony vocals with Bruce Robison on occasion – but the most notable is the woman whose performance launched Wilson’s career: Natalie Maines. While Natalie remains at home in 2010, the other Chicks, sisters Martie and Emily, – fresh from their own temporary “downshifts” – plan to launch a side project with an album due in the first half of the year and a featured slot on the Lillith Fair summer tour.

Even if the reality of 2010 doesn’t match her exacting plan for it, Wilson will make it through fueled by the excitement over the possibilities the year promises. An excitement unmatched since she had that realization over nine years ago that this was something she could do. When asked why she thinks more women in Texas don’t pick up a guitar and write songs, Wilson’s fierce honesty returns to the forefront. She pauses in consideration of the question before answering. “I’m the wrong person to ask. I don’t know, because I did.”

“You’ve got to own your own universe”
~ Wallet by Terri Hendrix

When we look to the stages of the Texas dance halls and honky-tonks and wonder where the female artists are, we come to the realization we aren’t looking in the right place, not for this century anyway. Some still battle for a foothold there, like Miss Leslie and Her Juke-Jointers, but many more are in the listening rooms, playing at festivals across the country, honing their skills at workshops and academies, taking advantage of competitions such as Nashville Star, and building their audience via social media online and good old fashioned word-of-mouth.

There have been great female Texas artists in the past. Cindy Walker leaps to mind, but her brilliance shined in an era when it was almost impossible for a woman to build a name for herself as an artist without doing it all in Nashville. She remains thought of as the greatest female songwriter in country music history, but the nature of her work was mostly behind the scenes, and while her work has undoubtedly influenced them indirectly, she’s rarely cited as an influence by female artists of this era. The lineage for female artists in Texas Music is being built now, gaining momentum with each new generation.

Like any art form, music is subjective, emotional, and an unfriendly fit with logic. Yet, we can’t help but believe that the next 100 coin flips will be far less one-sided.