Songs for Creative Revolution
Four talented women musicians gather to celebrate exceptional music and the power of women supporting women at SebArts on Sunday, Jan. 18
A luminous undercurrent flows through Sebastopol, and it’s quietly affecting the world of music. Its nexus is a local business called Supernova Support. Founded in November 2024 by singer/songwriters and former bandmates Karen Joy Brown and Katie Phillips, Supernova Support offers music coaching, a popular biweekly ‘Not So Open Mic’ event at Coffee & Moore, a podcast, and weekly virtual Song Salons and Songwriting Hours to women locally and worldwide.
The business acts as a hub for women and femme musicians to connect in supportive, non-male-dominated settings and provide one another with positive, “critic-free” feedback. In a little over a year, the model, born out of dissatisfaction with the music industry and the need for personal empowerment, has proven successful.
“We’re offering the kind of community support that we knew we needed,” Phillips said. The concept evolved from the emotional support she and Brown offered each other at a critical moment in their lives during the COVID shutdown, when each faltered on their path as a musician.
They began meeting for the sole purpose of listening to music and, if they were in the mood, sharing their own music with each other — in a relaxed, open environment. They only spoke about what they loved about the other person’s music and offered no suggestions for improvement.
Their Not So Open Mic, which has met with huge success since its inception, follows a similar model, with the added stipulation that men can attend as audience members, but only women and femmes can perform onstage. The Supernova Support community continues to flourish in the unique climate Brown and Phillips have created.
Now the friends and business partners have teamed up with two other singer/songwriter musicians they met through Supernova Support events and the Bay Area music scene — Oakland-based Briget Boyle and San Francisco-based Cassidy Frost — to create “Songs for Creative Revolution,” an upcoming event at Sebastopol Center for the Arts from 3-5 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 18.
Per the flyer on the SebArts website, the event is “[a] unique songwriter-in-the-round experience that will leave listeners feeling inspired and empowered to incite their own creative revolution.”
Boyle emphasized the word “inspired.” “That’s always my favorite feedback from audience members,” she said. “When people come up to me and they’re like, ‘Your songs are great, and I just want to let you know that I’m going to go home and write my own songs.’”
The four musicians bring with them a diversity of talent and experience. Sebastopol resident Karen Joy Brown began singing in church as a teenager, then led worship with her guitar. In her 20s, she began songwriting and in her 30s she began playing in public and toured parts of the West Coast. More recently she formed a duo with her husband, then played in The Bootleg Honeys with Phillips.
A Santa Rosan by birth, Katie Phillips’ music career began at the age of 5 when she joined her father onstage at his regular gig with the band Osage at Sebastopol’s Marty’s Top of the Hill, where they sang a country-western song together. She pursued musical theater and songwriting in high school and classical voice studies in college, then began playing guitar in her 20s. She formed the local Americana band The Bootleg Honeys with two other Sonoma County women, and when one of them left, Brown joined the band.
Regarding the importance of music in the current political climate, Phillips said, “I think people are feeling very hopeless and feeling like we have no control, and the secret is community. If we build strong, local community and we have each other to rely on, we can face anything, I think. But we have to be connected to each other. And music has always been that.”
Briget Boyle grew up in Los Angeles with a recording-engineer father and a musician mother who was formally signed to Atlantic Records in Nashville. In addition to playing guitar, she has many years of experience singing Eastern European/Balkan folk music and is a former member of the renowned Oakland-based women’s vocal ensemble, Kitka.
Originally from Oakland, Cassidy Frost dropped out of high school to play in indie rock bands in 2006. In the ensuing years, she started a PR company, managed artists and published a newsletter while continuing to write songs and play in bands. She currently coaches musicians.
“I can’t overstate how important it is for women to have other women to support them in their music career. It’s invaluable,” Frost said. “The thing that I didn’t expect and that surprises me every single time I’m in a room with Katie and Karen is the energy. It’s almost kind of a religious experience, the sanctity and beauty and space that they hold around their work and around the work of others.”
The format for “Songs for Creative Revolution” will include each musician singing several of her original songs, some with accompaniment from the other musicians. The four women will then informally discuss their creative processes, and finish the show by playing a song together. The event promises to be lively and joy-filled.
“I want everyone to know that you can sing and you can write songs,” Brown said. “And, no matter what happens to those songs, [the process is] extremely valuable and it will liberate you. It will tell you things about yourself that you didn’t know. And it will connect you to something that you probably were too scared to voice before.”
Don’t miss “Songs for Creative Revolution” at Sebastopol Center for the Arts on Sunday, Jan. 18, from 3 pm to 5 pm. For tickets and more information, go here. You can also find out more about Supernova Support, Karen Joy Brown and Katie Phillips at their websites.
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