Life on the road with dudes

I work in the music business.  One of the last bastions of male domination.  Sure, there are lots of amazing women that work in this business, but the upper echelons are still held by men.

Its ok.  I actually don’t mind it.  Some of these guys that I’ve had the privilege to work with harken back to an era of when women were dames and men wore fedoras – and not in some weird fad-ish way.  Like the real deal Don Draper-styles.  These guys are something else.  Aside from male domination, this is also an industry that’s fed by youth and here they are running the machine, still relevant, still getting their calls returned.  I love it when they call me “Babe” when they forget my name.  Somehow they have earned the right.  Now if some little hotshot straight out of recording engineering school tried that he would get the freeze from me!

I don’t mind being one of the few women at the table.  The women that are here are for the most part pretty damn cool and have more chutzpah in their baby finger than you can imagine.  Women who have built major companies while nursing babies and traveling the country.  Pushing a stroller side stage, they created their own empires.  And they did this in the ’70s and ’80s when you were a pariah for even considering the working mom title.  Women who have chosen to make the artists their families and work around the clock, dedicating themselves to the business.  Female artists who have had to overcome the need for physical beauty to find success and respect for their artistry in spite of their looks.

I always wanted to go down to Chinatown and buy those jangley Chinese meditation balls and send them to all my female colleagues. The way I see it you always need a good set of balls in this business.