National tour

Lilith Fair

Love fest

When Sarah McLachlan founded Lilith Fair in 1997, naysayers doubted that an all-female package tour could sell tickets. But it became one of that year's top-grossing tours, spawning a two-CD live set and even a tribute band (Sweet Surrender, named for the McLachlan hit). By 1998, in contrast, scoffers argued that Lilith was too commercial, too homogeneous, with too many alterna-waif singer-songwriters and not enough rock or hip-hop. Again, fans didn't care and flocked to the galapalooza. To be fair, the fest was more diverse this time, featuring such performers as rapper Missy Elliott, rockers Liz Phair and Luscious Jackson, and R&B chanteuses Erykah Badu, Neneh Cherry, Lauryn Hill, and N'Dea Davenport. (Alas, of these, only Luscious Jackson and Davenport played during the tour's Great Woods visit.) Also present were local heroines Laurie Geltman, Melissa Ferrick, and Kay Hanley (fronting the otherwise Y-chromosomed Letters to Cleo); idiosyncratic veterans Syd Straw and Natalie Merchant; country legend Emmylou Harris; and of course, McLachlan. Here was true girl power, on stage, in the audience, and in the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for women's shelters and similar charities nationwide. As Luscious Jackson's Jill Cunniff said at Great Woods, "It's still a love fest, whether it's heavy or not."

-- Gary Susman

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The Official Lilith Fair site
Lilith Fair Review Archives

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