SHEROES

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, guitarist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader Shana Cleveland cut her teeth in Chicago before heading to the Pacific Northwest which is where she would form the psychedelic surf-rock band La Luz in Seattle a decade ago as their lead guitarist and songwriter. Meanwhile Shana also was fronting a folkier band called The Sandcastles as a vehicle for her other passion - acoustic fingerpicking - and couple years after releasing La Luz’s 2013 full length debut, It’s Alive, Shana put out her solo debut as Shana Cleveland and The Sandcastles, Oh Man, Cover the Ground, followed by 2019’s Night of the Worm Moon, under her own name. La Luz has since put out three more albums - most recently their critically hailed 2021 self titled album, but in January 2022 Shana was diagnosed with breast cancer, and their tour was cut short. Now just over a year later, Shana Cleveland has returned with a gorgeous new solo album called Manzanita, inspired by the nature of her new home surroundings in California, and her first pregnancy and birth of her son. 

Cellist/multi-instrumentalist/composer/producer/singer/songwriter Lucinda Chua sits down with host Carmel Holt to talk about the themes of returning to her self and her cultural identity on her beautiful self-produced and engineered full length debut, Yian.

On the heels of releasing what is already a critically hailed debut album, Sabrina Teitelbaum aka Blondshell sits down for an in-depth conversation with Carmel Holt about freeing herself from trying to fit the mold of a female pop star, internalized misogyny, and how she imagines herself 40 to 50 years into her career.

While Katie Melua came up through the BRIT School in London, famously attended by fellow pop icons Adele and Amy Winehouse, she was born far away across the Black Sea in Georgia, and spent her early childhood in the former Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Georgian civil war she moved with her family to Belfast, Ireland, before settling in London, and as you will hear her tell us, her family always believed that this move would mean big things for Katie. It turned out, they were right. Fast forward two decades and nine albums on, Katie Melua remains one of the top artists in the U.K. and Europe. And while success has not always been easy on her, Katie has recently found love and welcomed her first child, documenting her newfound happiness merging with her longtime success on her ninth album, Love & Money.

In today's conversation, you’ll hear about what happened when singer, songwriter, producer, and musician Caroline Rose wrote songs as if no one would hear them, which would call to mind memories of writing their first songs as a teenager. Simultaneously grappling with the recent memories of lost love, and a family member losing their memory, during the isolating times of the pandemic, Caroline Rose created their most personal and exceptional album to date, titled The Art of Forgetting. A piece of art, that embodies the art of letting go.

Not only is this week's guest a fantastic songwriter and performer, she is a genuine outlaw country SHERO, a rebellious tough girl with a tender heart, and, as she dubbed herself on her last record in 2017, a Highway Queen who has logged countless miles as a touring musician, while running several businesses at once. She is a woman who suffers no fools, but with a smile. On this new episode of SHEROES, we meet the many sides of Nashville singer-songwriter-entrepreneur Nikki Lane, as she sits down with Carmel Holt to talk about her fourth and most personal album, Denim and Diamonds. Hear how Nikki finally found the sound she had been striving for, reflecting on the roads that got her here, even when some of those roads got dark.

Singer Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive, and the duo Rachael & Vilray, joins Carmel Holt to talk about the new Rachael & Vilray album I Love A Love Song!, what pregancy and planning for new motherhood as a musician has been like, and changes she would like to see for women and nonbinary people in the music industry.

Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, poet, and author, Valerie June sits down with Carmel Holt live in conversation at the annual podcast festival, On Air Fest: Brooklyn. They discuss Valerie's hard-won success, the spiritual practices that have carried her through, and the many questions that she has when it comes to equality in the music industry. Two decades into her already illustrious career, Valerie June continues to forge an incredibly inspiring, not to mention prolific, path, and a message of joyful resistance, courageous dreaming, and compassionate love. 

Polymath Margaret Sohn sits down with Carmel Holt to discuss their visionary full length debut as Miss Grit, Follow The Cyborg, the importance of making technology cute, and the ongoing challenges of communicating and collaborating in male dominated spaces. 

Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Katherine Paul (KP) sits down with Carmel Holt to discuss her third album as Black Belt Eagle Scout called The Land, The Water, The Sky, moving back home to ancestral lands, and the need to lean into the things that ground her.