By: women. For: everyone - the Lilith Music Fair, a festival of women musicians - Interview

Sarah McLachlan and Tracy Chapman take their hammers to the knotty question: Why a women's festival?

When Lollapalooza, H.O.R.D.E., Skoal, and other summer music tours started turning into macho mosh pits. lyrical Canadian musician Sarah McLachlan felt it was time for an alternative to the so-called alternative. Her brainchild, the Lilith Fair, which begins this month, is an all-female affair of good music and good vibes. It is not, however, a travelling girl's ghetto. Since we live in a time when pop democracy makes it possible for both sexes to create music that is either tremendous or horrendous, gathering the best women naturally also meant netting many of the most important performers, period. The lineup so far: Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple, the Cardigans, the Indigo Girls, Suzanne Vega, Paula Cole, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, and Emmylou Harris. Here concert organizer McLachlan talks from Vancouver with one of Lilith's troubadours, Tracy Chapman, who is in New York City a couple of months before the fair's opening date. Though they speak across a three-hour time difference, it feels like early morning to both of them. Interview's Alison Powell places the wake-up call.

SARAH MCLACHLAN: Tracy! How are you doing?

TRACY CHAPMAN: Oh, pretty good.

SM: So, what's going on for you this week?

TC: Well, I'm in New York recording, and I've been doing a lot of traveling lately. What about you?

SM: I've been in the studio working on my new record.

TC: Oh,great!

SM: We're almost done, and I had a wedding reception - mine - to come home to this week.

TC: Congratulations! When does your record come out?

SM: If all goes well, around the fifteenth of July. And then of course there's the Lilith tour. You know, I haven't been this excited in a long time. I'm so happy you said yes to coming along.

TC: Well, it sounded like such a great Idea when you mentioned it to me.

ALISON POWELL: When was that?

SM: I met Tracy for the lust time at Christmas. I'm pretty shy, but I just bowled into her dressing room and said. "Hey, how ya doin'? What're you up to this summer?"

TC: You didn't seem shy at alii

SM: I think I kind of freaked you out. I'm sorry, I was a little over the top. I was nervous to talk to you 'cause I'm no good at selling myself. Gosh, it's so bloody early in the morning.

TC: How early is it for you?

SM: It's nine.

TC: That is early. It's noon for me In New York, and even that seems early.

AP: How about this for a wake-up question: If the established tours, like Lollapalooza and H.O.R.D.E, hadn't become so masculine in recent times, do you still think there would be a Lilith?

SM: Oh, definitely. Lilith Fair was only slightly begun for reactionary masons. I think it's been coming for a long time. In fact it's odd to have to put this out as something new and different - Tracy, I think you'll understand this. People ask, "So what do you think about this new fad of women in music?" And I think, What do you mean, fad? Have women never made music before?

AP: I think what people noticed was that there were suddenly a lot of women clustered at the top of the charts.

TC: The chart position Is what makes R.

AP: Tracy, you were a part of that.

TC: Yeah. But I think I know where Sarah was going with what she was saying. Of course women throughout history have always been making music, and crossing genres too, but it's only in recent years that the press has made it seem as if these movements are moments in time when women are somehow becoming more popular, or in some cases dominating the Industry, which of course is far from the reality. But there are more opportunities out there right now for women who write their own songs and play on their own records.

SM: Yeah. If we had tried to put together a women's music festival like this five years ago, the promoters would've laughed at us. Now they're so excited about all these women - it's nice to see that some things can turn around quite quickly. Who knows why? I guess people just had a desire to hear something different, and women were offering it.

AP: But Sarah, that was hardly still the early days of the women's movement.

SM: Which is pretty sad.

TC: Yes, but even though I think all women owe something to the women's movement - the right to vote, to own property, and to have control over our bodies and lives - the music made by the women who are part of this tour doesn't necessarily have anything to do with politics. The position we are in also has a lot to do with the pace of music - a lot has happened In It.

SM: The curious thing about all this is that the idea for Lilith came from a humble idea, which was: Wow, wouldn't it be fun to get together with a bunch of women I love and admire and have a tour? I never get to see anybody play live, so it's really a selfish act.

TC: I was thinking that too. I haven't seen a lot of the women who'll be playing on the tour. It reminds me of when I did the Amnesty International shows. I'd never seen Pater Gabriel or Bruce Springsteen or Sting play live, so as much as I was a participant I also felt like a fan, and I feel the same way about Lilith: It's a free concert every night.