Lilith Fair!
This week, Jill, Gabby, & Kate share some behind-the-scenes memories of this awesome tour to celebrate the release of the new documentary ‘Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery,’ which is streaming now.
Why was Lilith Fair the best tour?
Lilith Fair was a late 1990s traveling music festival featuring only female-fronted bands. It was curated by musician Sarah McLachlan and was hugely successful. Luscious Jackson had the opportunity to tour with Lilith Fair both ‘98 & ‘99, including a one-off ‘Winter Lilith’.
For context: we had also performed at festivals including Lollapalooza ‘94, Glastonbury (UK), Reading (UK), Big Day Out (Australia), and toured extensively, headlining and also supporting Beastie Boys, The Breeders, and REM throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan. We are the only band in the history of the universe that played both Lollapalooza and Lilith Fair!
Jill: Anyone who has been on the road with a rock band will tell you it’s usually pretty raw. You might not want to use the dressing room, any of the furniture, or the bathrooms.
Kate: We used to bring lamps, scarves, and Nag Champa incense to help create a vibe and cover up the dank backstage smells.
Jill: Lilith Fair had a really nice and different vibe than most tours. We arrived at the first dressing room tent to find a large basket of bath products from the Canadian company Lush. Soon, Sarah McLachlan arrived to greet us with a big smile and open arms in a golf cart. That was the basic welcome that all the artists received. These gestures created such a positive environment.
Next: no staff members were yelling. People were treating each other with respect. (In other venues, there was often rudeness between staff and bands, creating a cattle call vibe).
Kate: We did a big tour with a band (who will not be named) where our backstage passes only allowed us to be in our dressing room or on stage for our set. Basically, if we tried to go anywhere else, we would get yelled at by security and pushed back into our dressing room. The band we were opening for had been having some kind of security issue/threats, so they hired an intense outside security company to keep everyone in line. Part of the fun of being on tour opening for a bigger band is getting to watch their set. Not in this case because we weren’t allowed to!
Lilith Fair was literally the opposite of this, where people would raise eyebrows if you didn’t leave your dressing room door open (I’m looking at you, Dixie Chicks!).
Gabby: Well, the asshole in me first thought the idea of an all-women’s festival sounded lame. Truth be told, it was anything but. Just daily great vibes all around. Sarah McLachlan is one of the kindest souls you’ll ever meet, so she ran a loving and easygoing tour. All the bands and crew were a pleasure to be around. We all ended up playing on each other’s sets, which made for some sporadic fun.
Bonnie, Sarah, Emmylou, Sheryl, Oh My!
Kate: There was an open invitation to anyone to join your set.
\Bonnie Raitt played slide guitar with us on ‘Why Do I Lie.’
Sarah McLachlan sang with us every night.
Emmylou Harris sang with us- she had recorded the backing vocals on ‘Why Do I Lie’ and ‘Lady Fingers’. Jill has also co-written songs with Emmylou for her album ‘Red Dirt Girl’ and also for the Linda Ronstadt/Emmylou Harris album, ‘Western Wall.’
Drummers from all the other bands joined us on percussion.
Sheryl Crow played the squeezebox and harmonica with us. Mya’s guitarist played with us. I don’t remember her name, but she performed barefoot and always wore a backpack on stage!
Sing back-up vocals for The Pretenders… OR ELSE!
Gabby and Tia Sprocket (RIP, lovely Tia), our super-talented side musician who toured with us, got to sing backup vocals for The Pretenders!
Gabby: We were all big Pretenders fans, but Chrissie had a reputation for being pretty tough, so we were somewhat nervous to meet her. We were having lunch at a round table outside when she arrived for her first day on Lilith. In my recollection, she walked directly over and sat down with us like it was nothing. I can't remember the conversation, but we were no longer nervous after that. Except for this one time…
She and Bonnie Raitt used to pop into our backstage sometimes to hang out. One of those days, Chrissie came by, and our amazing side musician/vocalist, Tia, yells out to her. “Hey Chrissie! Gabby and I wanna sing backups on ‘Kid’ tonight!” Chrissie said they hadn't done that song in a long time, but ok, they’ll pull it out that night.
First of all, Tia and I never discussed that. It was just an idea she came up with on the spot. A great idea, but man, was I scared! Tia was trying to teach me the harmonies of the verses, but I was worried I was gonna fuck it up live and go off-key.
A little while later, Chrissie pops her head in and Tia shouts out, “Hey Chrissie! Gabby says she’s not gonna come out and sing tonight!!" Without missing a beat, Chrissie says, "Oh yeah?!!! Well, if you don't, I'll come back here after and rip your fucking heart out!!!”. Of course, we did the song. I just made sure I wasn't too close to the mic, as you can see in the photo:
Gabby: Sidenote- I’m far more confident now in my harmony abilities. lol
Sarah McLachlan on the drums!
Gabby: Sarah McLachlan sat in on drums for part of our last song, “CitySong,” and Kate came out front on tambourine, which everyone loved, of course.
Kate: We would usually close our set with “CitySong”, and typically at the end of the song, I’d get up and run to the front of the stage and dance while Tia Sprocket took over on the drum kit for the last 8 bars. We started having guest drummers from the tour take over the kit- Brady Blade from N’Dea Davenport and Emmylou Harris’s band, Ashwin Sood from Sarah McLachlan’s band, etc. We started to get quite a line of drummers waiting on the side of the stage, holding drumsticks, waiting for their cue from me to take over. It wasn’t unusual to see Sarah and other artists watching us from the wings, so when I spotted Sarah side stage at the end of CitySong, she started waving at me. I was like, ‘Hi Sarah!’ How cool is that - she’s waving to me!? Am I the teacher’s pet right now?!
We finished the set and walked off stage, and Sarah stops me- SHE’S HOLDING A PAIR OF DRUMSTICKS. DOH! She says to me, I wanted to play drums! I was waiting for you to wave me over… Needless to say, the next show, she got up on the kit and rocked the ending of ‘CitySong’ and everyone went wild. Everyone is used to seeing her sing beautiful harmonies and play piano or guitar, but this was special. I doubt she got on the kit for any other band on Lilith Fair. N’Dea Davenport also sat behind my kit a few times on ‘CitySong’.
Sheryl Crow foiled by a sampler
Gabby: One show, Sheryl Crow agreed to play harmonica on our song “Country’s a Calling”. When we normally played the song live, our DJ Alex Young started the song with a sample of a harmonica and then mixes the harmonica throughout the song. So instead, Sheryl was going to play harmonica live so she’d start the song. The problem was that we forgot to tell Alex. So there we are, about to start, and Sheryl’s mouth is inches from her harmonica, ready to blow. Suddenly blasting out of the speakers is the harmonica sample Alex is playing. The look of confusion on Sheryl’s face was hysterical.
Jill: I just remember having an altogether good time on this tour. We hung out with Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, N’Dea Davenport, Mya, the Pretenders, and the Indigo Girls. Every night, Sarah McLachlan came out on stage to sing with us. At the end of the night, all the musicians got together for a grand finale where we sang “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”. Here we are working on the song with Jill, Sheryl, Sarah, Bif Naked, Kate, and Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer. This is a clip from the new documentary, ‘Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery’:
Kate: “Big Yellow Taxi” was the song the year before! Sarah left in everyone’s dressing room a printed set of lyrics to whatever song we were going to do that said, "Hey, we're doing a sing-along. Please come and be part of it, kumbaya, etc”. True camp counselor vibes. They brought out a bunch of percussion instruments and an extra drum kit that all the tour drummers would take turns on.
Gabby: The last song of the night, she’d get as many who wanted to join on the final song. I loved playing guitar all the way in the back with the guys.
Jill: The entire tour was like “floating on a cloud of good vibes”.
Bonnie Raitt is a hoot!
Kate: Often times before the show, there would be a big round table press conference where all the artists would sit together and be asked usually dumb questions - ‘Why do you hate men?’ A couple of times, I sat next to Bonnie Raitt, and she was a hoot! She was very observant and had a lot to say about everyone, in a good way. I remember her whispering to me in the middle of the press conference in her best Bonnie Raitt drawl, “I love the way Sarah McLachlan’s nose moves up and down every time she talks…”
One day Bonnie says to me, “Kate! It must be so much fun for you to play drums with those big boobs!” Lol.
Bonnie takes us on a tour of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum
When we had a day off in Cleveland, OH, Bonnie arranged a private tour of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Museum and brought us and our crew along with her as her guests. It was so fun, touring the museum with Bonnie, as she shared all her knowledge about the roots of rock ‘n’ roll and R&B. In fact, she gave the museum shit for not including more of the original Black rhythm and blues artists who created rock ‘n’ roll. She made the museum staff promise they would try harder. She has also campaigned for years to secure proper royalty payments for these artists.
Jill: I remember Bonnie asking her team if the Hall of Fame tour was a “hair and makeup day”, to which the team said “No”. Meaning Bonnie could do the visit in her regular clothes and a baseball hat. So Bonnie did the baseball hat, and I think the museum asked for photos anyway. That’s the way it goes when you’re Bonnie Raitt– everybody loves you and wants a photo. Nice folks over at the Hall of Fame Museum.
Now back to Lilith Fair…
Kate: I remember being so excited to be around all these incredible artists that I could hardly sleep at night. Not only were the performances incredible and inspiring, but the backstage scene was also amazing. We’d play hacky sack with Sarah McLachlan, do yoga with Sheryl Crow, force Beth Orton to play basketball (she’s tall!), play fetch with Sheryl’s dog, Scout, tell bad jokes to Sandra Bernhardt, search for N’Dea Davenport’s missing tour cat, and discuss protein bars with Chrissie Hynde. And I remember an especially fun afternoon commandeering (aka stealing) a golf cart with Leisha Hailey from The Murmurs at the Gorge in Eastern Washington, one of the most picturesque venues in the US.
Sheryl Crow blew us away
Kate: Sheryl Crow BLEW OUR MINDS. She was such an incredible musician, performer, and all-around stand-up human being. We would watch her set every night in awe. Like us, she produced her own records, and also like us, most people thought there must be some MAN behind her music. Needless to say, we looked up to her, and she couldn’t have been nicer and more welcoming.
One evening, I was hanging out in Sheryl Crow’s dressing room just before her set. She and her band were warming up, blasting Supergrass on a boom box, and having some drinks. Sheryl usually wore tight pants and some kind of tank top, but today she had her bass guitar strapped on over a skintight, long dress. She turned to me and said, “I’m not sure where I’m gonna put my [in-ear monitor] pack because I’m not wearing any underwear…” This was too much for my little lesbian brain to process. I TURNED BRIGHT RED. I had to excuse myself and leave the dressing room. She wasn’t coming onto me, but there was something about her hairstyle that year that made her extra appealing to all of us gay gals on tour…
Gabby: Before the tour, I only knew Sheryl’s hit single “All I Wanna Do,” but I soon became a big fan from watching her shows. Globe Sessions is a great record.
Friends and collaborators for life
Kate: We made many friends for life and cemented future musical collaborations with several of the other artists on these tours. I became particularly close with Amy Ray and Emily Saliers from Indigo Girls. The first Lilith Fair show we did was actually a one-off ‘Winter Lilith’ in West Palm Beach, Florida, in December 1997. It was a preview of the coming summer’s lineup, which we were a part of. Missy Elliot performed that show in this iconic outfit:
The Indigo Girls were one of the headliners. From what I understand, they were really the ones who spearheaded the ‘everyone plays with everyone’ ethos at Lilith. Right after Winter Lilith, Amy Ray invited me to be the touring drummer for their Suffragette Sessions tour, during my off time with Luscious. That tour was like taking the finale song of Lilith and turning it into a touring socialist experiment. A whole bunch of female artists came together and played on each other’s songs, including Amy & Emily, Josephine Wiggs (The Breeders), Thalia Zedek (Come), Jane Siberry, Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie), Lordes Pérez, Lisa Germano, and Jean Smith. We covered ‘Under Your Skin’ and the Dusty Trails song, ‘Roll the Dice’.
Lillith on Letterman
The Indigos also called Luscious Jackson to be the backing band for a special Lilith Fair promotional appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. We backed the Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, and singer-songwriter Rebekah for a beautiful cover of the classic Gladys Knight and the Pips song, ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’.
We’ll leave you with this:
Thank you so much for sharing this. I can't wait to watch the documentary later tonight. Also loved the stories about Bonnie Raitt. I saw her join you on slide guitar for "Why Do I Lie" and remember thinking how great it was that she was on stage with you.
Top post once again ladies - the things i'm learning!
Oh, and Sheryl Crow...I'm with you Kate! <heart eyes emoji><lol emoji>