Making it in music is tough. It can be the most wonderful experience you could hope for, but surviving, let alone flourishing, is an elusive bulls-eye for musicians and music professionals everywhere. This theme comes up in every episode here on Southern Songs and Stories, in some way or another. Artists of all kinds are self employed and are walking a hard road to travel, especially financially. But not all artists are walking that same hard road -- some are walking one even steeper, and more dangerous. And when you are talking about making it in music, it becomes clear pretty quickly that being a woman puts you on a journey lined with pitfalls and roadblocks. In this episode of Southern Songs and Stories, we map out what that road can be like, as we hear from Amanda Anne Platt of the Honeycutters, Natalya Weinstein of Zoe & Cloyd, Hannah Kaminer, Alexa Rose and Ygerne Moonie, telling us about their experiences, both good and bad, as we question what makes music so male dominated in the first place, what preconceptions do to hold women back, talk about some of their musical heroines, and much more.

(L to R) Natalya Weinstein, Amanda Anne Platt, and Hannah Kaminer on set at IAMAVL for the video which serves as the starting point for our podcast episode.

Thanks for visiting Southern Songs and Stories, and thanks to the Women Of Music Action Network for their Breaking The Bowl article, which was my source for the facts about and recent history of how much country radio is ignoring women artists. I also referenced a industry-gender-study-women-artists-producers.html">New York Times article from January 2018 about gender diversity in the music industry to get a lot of the statistics mentioned in this episode. Thanks to our supporters on Patreon. Thanks to both the Osiris Podcast Network and to Bluegrass Planet Radio for carrying the show, and to everyone at I Am Asheville for producing the video which got the ball rolling for this episode. I encourage you to spread the word about this podcast and the great musicians we profiled, and consider helping us by subscribing and commenting on our show, and by becoming a patron. This is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it.