Issue #83: A Trip to Brandi Carlile's Girls Just Wanna Weekend
On finding community, safety and a way forward amongst the chaos through the power of music
If you know me – or follow me and my enthusiastic posting about it on Instagram – you know that my once-a-year treat to myself is heading to Mexico in January with my friend Sarah to attend Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend festival. We’ve been doing this for the past three years, and it’s the only time since I’ve had my first kid eleven years ago that I’ve left my husband and kids at home to do something for fun, just for myself (yes, I’ve left home for work assignments, book tour and for family emergencies, but I really don’t think that counts). That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to get on that plane: I still feel guilt as I head off, leaving a school schedule taped to the fridge and toting a backpack full of little notes my daughter made for me to take along. But I go, because in this day and age, it feels radical. Taking time for joy and fun as a working mother of two with no family help feels radical (what would J.D Vance say? Aren’t I supposed to be in the kitchen?). Spending time at a festival that prioritizes community and safe spaces and stages for every voice and type of person not usually priority platformed by the industry feels radical, especially if those voices are women and gender nonconforming folks and queer people and people of color. Packing my bikini to swim in the Gulf of MEXICO and not worrying or feeling the weight of men’s eyes when I walk across the resort alone in it feels radical. Safety feels radical. Music driving this all, led by a queer female rockstar: so very radical.
I have to confess that back in October when I thought about coming to Girls Just Wanna, and I was trying to be hopeful about things (there was a teeny tiny window there!), I’d let my mind wander and picture myself still on the beach on January 20th watching the first female president take her oath, surrounded by those very women and gender non-conforming folks and supportive dudes and allies, celebrating what the future might hold. In my fantasy version, the Jumbotron screens where we’d just watched Brandi Carlile, Shania Twain, Maren Morris, Muna, Brandy Clark, Lucius, Jensen McRae, Brittney Spencer and more would be live-streaming from Washington and we’d have delayed our flights home to see history being made together.
We didn’t get that outcome – I flew back home on January 20th desperately trying to avoid seeing the news, to the point where I had to dart folks in the airport watching the inauguration on their phones - and I won’t sugarcoat anything for shit. Things are bleak, as bad as we imagined and worse, already. But the thing is, this festival and this music (and others following a similar ethos, like Black Opry) is about celebrating what the future might hold, but specifically getting there together, in community, looking out for each other amidst an incredible amount of hatred and fear all around. In carving out safe and secure and supportive spaces together. I wrote about my first impressions of the festival, back in 2023, on my own newsletter (sorry to quote myself, but alas), and all of this held true again:
I have been thinking a lot about safe spaces, especially safe spaces to experience music. And I have been thinking a lot about what kind of work we have to do to make certain experiences a norm, not an aberration or tokenization, be it festivals led or dominated by women or gender non-conforming folks, or headliner slots held by Black roots musicians or trans artists or queer people. Part of the magic of Girls Just Wanna Weekend, as I imagine it was at Lilith Fair as well, is taking something that should feel like a niche, curated, specialized thing and seeing what happens when it becomes the norm, when we make it the baseline. When an all-women lineup just exists, plain and simple. When queer voices and queer leadership are centered. Nothing is perfect or a utopia, but it can mean you walk outside feeling safe, feeling secure and confident in your body.
Girls Just Wanna Weekend is both a safe space and refuge but also a step towards that baseline - towards making women as headliners, and women-led events, the norm. This work matters, as we head forward into this administration hell-bent on erasing the presence and power of anyone who isn’t a white, straight, cishet person.
And we need these things to be permanent - it’s why I can’t really be bothered to care anymore when a festival announces an “all women day” or edition or whatever the hell the new tokenization or TERFy special is. Did you come back in 2025 doing the same thing again? Are you platforming these folks permanently, not just one time for a couple of good news stories? Did you put a woman in charge of it for good? Because if not, I’m not interested. Make permanent investments in a new future, one we have to make ourselves. This is the sixth Girls Just Wanna Weekend. I don’t know if it’s profitable for Brandi but I based on concert overhead and whatnot I’m guessing it’s far from it. But in a world where basic human rights are quickly disappearing in front of our eyes, we have to find ways to built strength and coalitions, even out of joy. Mostly out of joy. And music is the perfect source. I know you want me to talk about Carrie Underwood - and believe me, I will - but right now I just want to talk about that strength and joy.
We have never needed these spaces more, these new paths, this reinforcement of community. I always cry when Brandi Carlile sings “Hold Out Your Hand,” but damn if it didn’t sting more when I heard it again this past weekend closing her festival set, knowing exactly what was ahead of us all - though looking around at the crowd, I knew there’s people out there to hold us up, me up, you up, my daughter up.
It’s Sista Strings turning our idea of who can play string and classical instruments on its head, as they did during their incredible poolside set and while backing Brandi. It’s festival opener Brandy Clark creating space in country music for folks who aren’t straight dudes only (with better songs than any of ‘em), and being backed by ace instrumentalist Ellen Angelico, who also found time while touring nonstop to create an entire podcast about a woman named Shelly Bush called Girl in a Hurry. It’s Maren Morris creating a lane outside of country music where she can work freely without the confines of genre and the oppression of Nashville - plus being called a “bisexual icon” on stage by Muna’s Katie Gavin (Maren also led the crowd in a “Fuck P-Diddy chant after changing the lyric in “Rich” to salute Dolly and not Diddy). It’s Muna themselves blowing the hetero pop rules on their head and also helping to bring back incredibly fun, melodic songs back to pop, hallelujah (and fundraising for LA on stage - please keep donating to GoFundMe’s and mutual aid if you have the means, I know Trump has taken over the news cycle but it is still sorely needed)! Muna is also not country but for the sake of this newsletter - some of their songs very well could be. It’s Brittney Spencer singing her ass off with incredible songs country radio is idiotic to miss - who even did a truly stellar cover of “How Do I Live” on the last evening, a nineties tribute night, and what on earth shows country cred more than that? It’s Lucius’ Jess Wolfe telling the crowd an extremely personal story about a miscarriage, with her brand new baby on the stage - cradled in the arms of none other than Brandi herself. Motherhood is supposed to cost you opportunities in the world we live in, and talking about miscarriages? Taboo. Here, it’s part of the fiber.
It’s night two headliner Shania Twain, who blew everything open for women in country music to be fearless and dress and write how they want, and she’s still under appreciated and under-respected. During her set she and Brandi did an acoustic set together where they worked out some songs on the fly - it was an incredibly raw moment, unlike how we usually see Shania, and I think it allowed people in the audience to appreciate her as a musician and not just a superstar. There is no other festival I’ve been to where artists feel this safe and secure to experiment and even fuck up on stage (yes, I know I need to get to Newport Folk festival - this year I hope!), and we need more spaces for women to not to have to exist in perfection, but be as free and loose and fun as their male counterparts are constantly allowed to be.
And I loved seeing Lindsay Ell up there, who is now playing guitar for Shania and making her own great music well outside of the Nashville machine, one that was probably threatened by how she could probably outplay any session dude. Watching her, I got a little teary: here’s someone with so much talent as a performer and singer and player and writer, but because of the domination of country radio and executives who bow to it, was never able to find the success she deserved. Felt vindicating to see her finding her own, new niche, completely on her own terms.
And last but of course not least, it was Brandi Carlile creating the space and the event and the magic for all this to happen. For seeing the need for something like this to exist and then sticking with it, and sticking with the people who make it stronger every year - and by that I mean both the artists and the fans who come. For being a leader in the importance of never giving up on this community or the need to use music as a vessel for change (because sorry “keep music out of politics” people, that ain’t a thing). For seeing her power not as something to accumulate, but disseminate. Call me hyperbolic about it all, but I don’t care - we’ve all seen the news, and hell, we’ve been living in America. Find your community, hold our your hand, fight for each other, and don’t forget to jump for joy whenever you can. Your happiness, above all, is radical.
Appreciate getting to attend vicariously through your festival recap.
Shania's country ballads we're just so good. The Woman in Me (both the song and the album) had a deep impact on me in middle school. Takes me back to driving through a gray northern Minnesota December day to my grandma's in the back of our pickup and playing that on the stereo. Just the best of 90s country. I found it again when I would rock my youngest to sleep for his nap.
And then Still the One would get played on TRL next to Brittany Spears!
Didn't know Lindsey Ell was playing with Shania. Always love her.
I stumbled into Ellen Angelico on social media. If you're any kind of guitar/pedal steel nerd, Ellen puts out really fun video content. Worth a follow.