Women Making Music By Peggy Ratusz
Photo by Jeff Fasano
From top left to right: An Ya, April Bennet, Caromia Tiller, Cynthia McDermott, Ellen Trnka, Heidi Holton, Kathryn O'Shea, Kimberly Cann, Lo Wolf, Megan Leigh Johnson
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here’s a lot not going on; but also, there’s more going on every week- concert, gig and show-wise in WNC. Ticketed virtual shows are on the rise. Drive-In style concerts are popping up! Breweries with outdoor spaces are booking small combos of musicians and a limited number of restaurant gigs are up for grabs again! Artists are still releasing music. Musicians are still practicing; on their own and having social distant rehearsals to keep up their chops. I know it’s been a godsend for me, to meet up with my music pals to play an outdoor live stream or do an outdoor house concert. Venues hosting bands for recorded shows to stream at a later date are becoming more common as well. The creative juices are still flowing in the music industry and our scene at large is no exception. 12
thesofiamagazine.com | August 2020
The women, for sure, are still making music. Here’s a list of just a select few, out of literally hundreds of female, career musicians in our region, who haven’t allowed this Coronavirus to keep them down or out of the spotlight. April Bennett struts across the hallowed ground of R&B, straddles and rides the rhythm and rhyme of Hip Hop and sails on the wings of Soul. Seamlessly blending her influences into a sound called April B. & the Cool, look for this trendsetting grove ingénue, this guitar slingin’ starlet, this elastic yet deliberate singer with a conscience, on the other side of the Cororna! aprilbmusic.com Lo Wolf just came out with her debut full-length album she titled, Singe. Some tracks come with a suggested Parental Advisory for their disquieting use of the
English language. She’s blunt, honest, unfiltered and extremely personal. This is a singer/songwriter who puts her money where her activism is. 90% of all the proceeds from the album will be endowed to Asheville Survival Program. lowolfmusic.com facebook.com/groups AshevilleSurvivalProgram Way back in April, local singer/songwriter, Kathryn O’Shea released a debut album too, that she calls January 9th, which is the date her father died in 2014. On her website she elaborates about the album and her father: “….on January 9th 2020, I recorded 10 of my songs in a vocal booth built out of the closet I shared with him in my childhood home. My brother, Michael recorded everything. That day, he sat right around where he used to sit to do homework when this
