SHEROES Talkhouse Podcast Network

The popular Instagram account Book More Women began tracking the statistical data for gender inclusivity on U.S. music festival lineups in 2018, and has grown to a following of over 16k over the last six years. The account has become hailed by the likes of Brandi Carlile, who says that founding her own festival (Girls Just Wanna Weekend) was directly inspired by seeing the data that Book More Women posts. The identity of the woman who runs this account and handles the hefty task of tracking this data has mostly been a mystery, and it took us five years to finally convince Abbey Carbonneau to join us for a SHEROES interview. In this not to miss conversation we learn about the methodology and inspiration behind Book More Women, and find out a bit about the passionate music fan that has single-handedly built it from the ground up, completely on a volunteer basis.

Colorado-born and Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Jobi Riccio released her critically-hailed debut album Whiplash last September and has just been nominated for her first Americana Music Award as Emerging Artist of the Year. She sits down with Carmel Holt to discuss the path she has been on since her early teens as a guitarist, the crucial mentorship and influence she has received from artists like Sarah Jarosz, her experience as a student at Berklee College of Music, and how she has finally learned to take up the space she deserves.

Australian singer-songwriter Grace Cummings joins Carmel Holt this week to talk about her stunner of a third album, Ramona, and her journey thus far. A self-taught guitarist who is also an actor, Grace was encouraged by a fellow musician friend to share her mighty voice on stage, and though at first reluctant, she discovered a love for performing and music that quickly landed her a U.S. record deal, and a newfound musical soulmate in producer Jonathan Wilson, who produced her new album.

Guitarist Gabriela Quintero joins Carmel Holt to discuss the latest Rodrigo y Gabriela album, In Between Thoughts... A New World, their sixth studio release and first since their 2019 Grammy-winning album Mettavolution. Gabriela takes us back to her earliest days of teaching herself to play guitar, discovering her love of rock and metal bands, and the chance meeting at fifteen with Rodrigo Sanchez that would eventually lead to forming their metal-influenced acoustic duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and traveling around the world to playing some of the biggest stages.

Guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer, activist, and founder of She Shreds Media, Fabi Reyna joins Carmel Holt to discuss Malegría, her full length debut as Reyna Tropical - now a solo project she initially started as a duo in 2016 with producer and dj Sumo Diaz in 2016, who passed away in 2022. Fabi shares her journey from picking up the guitar at age nine, to learning about activism through music at Girls Rock Camp as a teen, touring in femme and queer bands, founding She Shreds Magazine (the world's first and only magazine focused on women and gender nonconforming guitarists and bassists), and the journey she has been on since meeting Sumo of writing and singing with new purpose and connectedness to ancestral roots, land, queer love, and self-love.

Sarah Jarosz joins us on SHEROES and reflects on her journey thus far, including starting her career in her teens and early 20’s, the importance of joining forces with Aoife O’Donovan and Sarah Watkins to form I’m With Her, and how her new album, Polaroid Lovers, her seventh studio release, finds her both breaking new ground by deciding to invite co-writers to work with for the first time, while simultaneously bringing her full circle to her early days when the world had crowned her a bluegrass prodigy and she had just barely graduated high school.