Latest / Women's Writes / Episode 2: The Rising Tides

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Episode 2: The Rising Tides · Women's Writes

• 0:12
  Hi, I'm Parker Welling and this is Women's Writes..
• 0:26
  I've spent my career writing songs in Nashville,
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  and on these many episodes, I'm taking with me
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  on deep dives behind songs and songwriting, stories,
• 0:34
  questions, history, and creative mysteries I
• 0:37
  can't stop thinking about. Let's get into it.
• 0:40
  Women's Rights is really a podcast about the
• 0:42
  relationships behind great songs, how collaborators
• 0:45
  find each other, why some combinations last for
• 0:47
  years, and what has to happen in order for people
• 0:50
  to make something together that none of them
• 0:52
  could have made alone. So if it's for everyone,
• 0:55
  why is it called Women's Rights? And why is the
• 0:57
  first season exclusively highlighting female
• 1:00
  collaboration? The short answer is simply that
• 1:03
  it's a nod to the first place Lydia and I really
• 1:05
  understood just how powerful friendship is to
• 1:08
  creativity. And the long answer, well, that's
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  a rabbit hole I just fell into. Lydia and I both
• 1:13
  had male collaborators who we'd worked with for
• 1:16
  years, and they'd become some of our closest
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  friends. What neither of us had really experienced
• 1:21
  was the same kind of closeness with female collaborators.
• 1:24
  And then Lydia and I started writing together.
• 1:27
  The first song we wrote took us two sessions
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  to finish. The second day we were writing at
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  my house, in this very room, and I happened to
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  be having a bunch of women over from the music
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  industry for dinner and drinks that night. So
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  when we finished writing, I asked Lydia if she
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  wanted to stay. And she did. She was literally
• 1:44
  the last person to leave. One of our mutual friends
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  was there that night, too, an artist who would
• 1:49
  end up being pretty important to this whole story,
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  because sometime after that, she invited both
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  of us on a writing retreat. It wasn't supposed
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  to be all women. A male writer dropped out at
• 1:58
  the last minute. Another woman took his place.
• 2:00
  And completely by accident, it was. It was also
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  the first time either of us had been in an all
• 2:06
  -female writing retreat. And afterward, Lydia
• 2:08
  and I got to talking and realized, oh. This is
• 2:12
  what the guys have been doing the whole time.
• 2:14
  Hunting, golf, fantasy football leagues, Bible
• 2:17
  studies, group texts about watches. It wasn't
• 2:19
  just something about work at all. And it wasn't
• 2:22
  setting out to exclude women either. It was just
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  friendship. We weren't watching this from the
• 2:27
  outside. Some of those guys are our close friends
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  and collaborators. We had benefited from the
• 2:31
  exact same thing. And once somebody becomes your
• 2:34
  friend, of course you want to work with them.
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  So Lydia and I started wondering, what if women
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  just had more opportunities to become friends?
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  time together. You can't manufacture chemistry,
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  but you can create the conditions where relationships
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  have a chance to form. And so we did. We started
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  hosting camps. We called it women's rights. And
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  thinking about our history got me wondering,
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  if friendship really does affect who we choose
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  to create with, could you see that in the history
• 3:00
  of country music? At first, I thought I was looking
• 3:03
  for women who had written country songs together.
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  And pretty quickly, I realized that I was way
• 3:08
  more interested in how did they know each other.
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  So if we go all the way back to the 1920s, Sarah
• 3:14
  and Maybelle Carter, they were family. Mira Smith
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  and Margaret Lewis, Mira played guitar in Margaret's
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  records. They became friends, started writing
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  together, and eventually moved to Nashville together.
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  They wrote more than a hundred songs. Loretta
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  Lynn and Peggy Sue Wells, sisters, and they wrote
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  "Don't Come Home a Drinkin' with Lovin' on Your
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  Mind" together, and that was Loretta Lynn's first
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  number one. Of course Loretta wanted to write
• 3:38
  with her sister. Then there was Mary Ann Kennedy
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  and Pam Rose, who frequently were writing with
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  Pat Bunch. Now that's not just a pair, it's a
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  little circle. And then Gretchen Peters, Matraca
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  Berg, and Suzy Bogguss, friends for years. They
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  started performing together for fun and eventually
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  writing together, too. And I thought, well, there
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  it is again, sisters, friends, creative partnerships
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  that lasted for years, which made me wonder if
• 4:01
  maybe we've been so focused on representation
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  that we've missed something that matters, too,
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  and maybe it matters more, proximity. Representation
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  can give you a seat in the room. Proximity gives
• 4:13
  you the chance to form a relationship. So maybe
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  the question wasn't, why weren't women choosing
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  women? Maybe it was, were enough women around
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  each other often enough to get the chance to
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  choose each other? Miranda Lambert and Natalie
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  Hemby already had a creative relationship. And
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  then Nicole Gaylon enters the picture and another
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  connection gets made. Liz Rose, Hillary Lindsey
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  and Lori McKenna keep choosing each other enough
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  that eventually they become the love junkies.
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  Trust travels. I know you. You know her. You
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  think she's great. Bring her. The music industry
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  is really good at teaching scarcity, especially
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  to women. And here's where I'm sure you expected
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  me to tell you an alarming statistic about gender
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  inequality and talk about tomato gate. But the
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  truth of all of this is that regardless of gender,
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  when you believe there's not enough to go around,
• 5:01
  everyone feels like competition for what you
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  want. A scarcity mindset is at odds with the
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  very nature of connection and art. Friendship
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  does the opposite. Friendship isn't just something
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  that happens after you get access. I feel like
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  friendship creates access too, because when something
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  good happens to my friend, I want her to win.
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  And if I can bring her with me, of course I will.
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  And suddenly that old saying makes a lot more
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  sense. A rising tide lifts all boats. Maybe the
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  tide is connection. And I think that's the long
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  answer to the question I started with. Why is
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  a podcast about creative relationships called
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  Women's Writes? It's because women are where
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  Lydia and I first understood the power of those
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  relationships for ourselves. But that's just
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  where the story starts. Women's Writes is about
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  how collaborators find each other, why they keep
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  choosing each other, and what they make together
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  that neither of them could have made alone. And
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  that's our first episode of Women's Writes mini
• 5:54
  episodes.