Women in music

"When I was growing up people would always say, and it was meant in the kindest possible way, ‘You’re really good for a girl,’ because there weren’t a lot of girls or women playing. Out of this small pond of people, it was surprising to them. In my opinion, you’d have to be pretty unworldly to make a comment like that anymore. Nobody had the success that Alison Krauss had. So, when that happened, I think it started to make it difficult for people to look at women in bluegrass as some kind of exceptional thing. Here was a woman who really blew out the boundaries for the music and really expanded the potential for the music and brought in new listeners."

"In 1995, I was lucky enough to get a job traveling with a busy, all-male band. I was only 19 years old, and I’ve stayed employed ever since. It wasn’t until years into my career that I realized my experience could be considered rare. As a teenager, I was just happy to be playing my banjo and I didn’t dwell on any gender-specific issues. If they don’t have to play with an all-female band, a group led by another woman, or be the bandleader themselves, the number of job opportunities drastically increases. I believe that, eventually, gender won’t be an issue. One day, female musicians will just be musicians and that’s the ultimate goal."

"If we’d like to be honest about gender in the music world, we need to address all parties. Women need to invest in themselves, hustle for gigs, network, and do the work of forming bands and cultivating their own talents if they would like to be taken seriously. The industry pretty much always rewards women who do these things. I’m not interested in any special handout just for being a woman. But on the other hand, if a woman is doing these things, yet she’s told ‘We already have enough women on the bill, so we’ll call you next year’—now that’s an issue. No one says to a male artist, ‘We already have enough men on the bill!’"