Musicology Co. and Edmonds Live Music held the first Women Rock Day at the Edmonds Opera House Friday to recognize local female musicians and professionals who work behind the scenes in the music industry.

Musicology Co. owner Rachel Gardner said she started Women Rock Day in Edmonds because she wanted to help build a community event that would be open to everybody. She also said “it was a sign” since her birthday falls on Women Rock Day.

“I started doing more research and saw that the reason that they had designated this day was because Arethra Franklin was the first female inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [on Jan. 3] in 1987.”

Gardner also pointed out that less than 8% of those inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are women.

A 2023 study by Communications Professor Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative showed that women made up 30% of the artists on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Chart in 2022, marking an improvement from 23.3% in 2021 and  22.7% in 2012. 

In the past 11 years, women have accounted for just 22.3% of artists featured across 1,100 popular songs from 2011 to 2022. For every 3.5 male artists, one artist is female. The study also found that female artists were more likely to appear in pop songs (33%) and least likely to appear in hip-hop and rap genres. (13.4%)

“But when you look at music, that’s not necessarily the truth, right?” Gardner said. “You see a huge amount of women in the music industry. I wanted to get a chance for a lot of these women [whom] I have met throughout my career to be able to speak about their experiences and hopefully inspire future generations.”

Edmonds Live Music co-founder Nikki Glaros worked with Gardner to create Women Rock Day in Edmonds. She said there are many people in the music industry who call Edmonds home. 

“I think there’s a scrappiness about choosing to perform here,” Glaros said. “You can go to Seattle. There are wonderful venues in Everett. But you know, if you’re gonna play an event, you got to find a [local] venue. We have a few wonderful ones, but we don’t have many. So there’s sort of a homegrown gustiness about it because you have to make things happen here.”

After performances by Seattle’s Trash Panda Go Kart and Edmonds’ Beclynn, five women in the music business shared their experiences of working in the music industry that is dominated by men. Seattle singer-songwriter and podcaster Jess Pillay moderated the panel.

Sound engineer Rachel Field said there weren’t many women in her profession when she started more than 15 years ago, but she has seen more female sound engineers since then. Even so, she still gets mistaken as “a secretary” in the music industry.

“And then [they] greeted me with skepticism that I am capable and knowledgeable and know what the heck I’m doing and trusting me with their art,” Field said. “Because part of the job is earning that trust…in the end, [I’m] just learning how to remind myself and recognize that I’m actually the expert on the matter.”

Seattle musician and filmmaker Drea Marilyn said that one of her major challenges is to overcome her self-doubt and self-criticism. She added that she felt that self-doubt when she read about who was on the panel on her way to Edmonds.

“It’s hard to get past that. You have to be really intentional,” she said, telling herself that Pillay “wouldn’t ask me to be on this if I wasn’t doing anything cool. I know the things I’ve done, and that’s cool.”

Rock-and-roll photographer and Edmonds resident Karen Mason-Blair said that to be successful early in her career, she had to “get a million no’s” first. She said her male photographer colleagues would get a phone call for a gig while she had to make 30 cold calls before she got one.

Mason-Blair relaunched her brand in 2018 and self-published The Flannel Years, which showcases photos that she took of the early grunge movement in the early 1990s. Since then, Mason-Blair has toured her work in the greater Seattle area.

“The point is that you just never know, but you just keep going because you love what you do,” she said.

Kim Virant, former frontwoman of Lazy Susan, recalled a talk with the band’s male guitarist that she was not being included in the group’s business decisions, which included making deals and hiring. “Just keep persevering because I’ll be 60 this year, and I’m not done,” she said.

Liv Lazaga, who co-founded the record label Friend’s House Records in 2020, said that although she has been in the music business since she was 13, it’s hard to be taken seriously at age 19. Sometimes she does not get paid for booking her musician friends for a gig.

“A lot of it might have to do with my age, but I’ve seen a lot of people my age get what they need faster than I do,” Lazaga said. “So it’s me being a representative of [a] young person representing another young person. I don’t want to have to prove myself every time. And so that kind of sucks. But the more you expand your horizons, the more people you’ve shown that you can do something, too, then you don’t have to do that as often.”

After the panel, singers Matney Cook and Kate Berreth finished the night with several songs.

If Gardner could time travel, she would go see Janis Joplin. “She was a pioneer in getting blues rock out into the world,” she said. “And also you hear her performances on live recordings, and she feels it…it’s so authentic, listening to how she portrays emotions into the music.”

Gardner and Glaros said they would love to see Women Rock Day grow and continue in Edmonds annually to build a community where people support women of rock music of all genres and backgrounds. 

“I think a lot of times, if you’re interested in the music industry, it can be really intimidating,” Gardner said. “So having a way for individuals who may be starting out in their careers, OK, you know, I really want to get into this, but I can’t see myself doing it. If they can see somebody out there doing it already, it makes you know that goal feels a lot more attainable.”

– Story and photos by Nick Ng