Unwilling to wait on labels, rising female artists crowdfund country, Americana albums

The pressure for change in country music's mainstream and the rise of women's empowerment in the genre has reached its modern fulcrum point.

However, for rising female artists like Heather Mae and Roberta Lea, the desire to wait — as did label-signed emerging stars like Hailey Whitters and Lainey Wilson — for a decade to establish themselves and then a half-decade more to maximize a lifelong passion for success is a bridge too far.

Enter the 14-year-old crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

Via Kickstarter and the support of around 1,000 fans at various investment tiers, Lea and Mae have raised over $70,000 between them to release three albums by December. (Mae has an Americana and pop release, while Lea has a country album.)

This isn't a novel feat. However, its expansion from well-regarded artists with major-label backgrounds to independent artists navigating modern music's unique landscape is notable.

The artist-to-fan relationship redefined

Crowdfunding's rise as a counterbalance to mainstream industry norms dates back to 2012, when via Kickstarter Amanda Palmer, former lead singer of Boston-based folk-rock duo the Dresden Dolls, raised nearly $1.2 million pledged by more than 24,000 people in 30 days to release a solo album after leaving Roadrunner Records in 2010. (Palmer now uses Kickstarter's competitor Patreon.)

Palmer felt she had lost creative control over her music and instead opted to create a direct-to-fan symbiotic relationship between her art and fanbase.

Fast forward to the present day and a decade has elapsed since CMT birthed its Next Women of Country program in the wake of queer, female and outside-of-Nashville's superstar-making system artists like Brandy Clark who desired an industry-fueled "safe space" for cultivating their art.

Industry growth since August 2019 has seen female artist representation grow from 20% of the songs on Billboard's Country Airplay Chart to 20% of the No. 1 singles on the chart. However, this does not solve for the fact that women are still not heard back-to-back on the same radio dials where they reign supreme more often than they have in 50 years.

For a decade, singer-songwriter Mae — who relocated from Washington, D.C., to Nashville and also works in music marketing — has been critically acclaimed and proudly out as queer and polyamorous.

At the same time, Norfolk, Virginia-based but nationally touring Lea (with the Black Opry Revue and as a 2023 member of CMT's Next Women of Country class) is a wife, mother and former schoolteacher spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic's onset to surge forth into her dreams of a career as a "country neo-pop" artist.

If you're looking to find where artists like these two fit in the major-label and well-defined industrial system in predominantly male and country-defined Nashville, they don't.

Lea balances dreams, creative realities

To many, it's problematic that record labels, when defining how and who gets opportunities at success, err by weighting social media data more heavily toward artists who are stereotypically successful in country music.

To Lea, it reflects what she believes is an "awkward and pre-pubescent" misuse of technology that flies in the face of conventional wisdom in the genre that states that people shaking hands and kissing babies is a surefire route to gaining sustainable fandom, regardless of racial, sexual or social background.

More music: Our 10 favorite Nashville albums of 2023 (so far)

For Lea, however, metaphorically turning shaking hands and kissing babies into a commercial Kickstarter transaction was a "hard" task that saw her check her ego, fear and pride at the door. This left an artist known for stating common truths as high art more emotionally threadbare than usual.

Unexpectedly, via her campaign, Lea has learned the value of her blood, sweat and tears not being all for naught but instead being poured into the foundation of what her artistic community can evolve into.

Instead of seeing a song, without the aid of label or mainstream marketing support, get lost in the sea of streaming playlists and "song of the week" lists, it's instead being directly serviced to, at minimum, 316 album-as-Kickstarter project backers. These are people who are financially and, thus, uniquely and personally invested in her work.

Her backers' reassurance and direct financial involvement — not solely as financiers but also as nuanced and aware fans of country music — gives Lea, as a mainstream-aimed CMT Next Women of Country member with a video currently airing on the network ("Too Much of a Woman"), an unprecedented level of direct support as a Black female country artist.

"I have a system of building blocks supporting me that make (the Nashville establishment) making me feel like an imposter almost impossible," she says. "Though I've just switched from one full-to-overtime job to another, because of my supporters, me and my art will never be marginalized."

Lea says her husband (whose amorousness is charmingly chronicled in her songs "Sweet Baby Ray" and "King Size") offers support she described as "the invaluable help of my best friend to achieve my dreams."

"Leaving my little ones for a couple of days to record my album or play shows weighs on me emotionally and mentally," Lea says. "Having a loving, caring and responsible — and fine as hell — husband who is not afraid of the potential of your success is fantastic." Her husband is a successful entrepreneur as well.

'Barefoot girl with a guitar'

Mae, who describes herself as a "folk-loving barefoot girl with a guitar," states that she found it "exhausting" and "damned near next to impossible" to independently record the "angry, painful, sad and formative" songs she wrote during the COVID-19 quarantine, with a team of players, background vocalists, co-producers and engineers who are entirely women, at a level both comparable to and competitive with Nashville standards.

The album is a follow-up to her 2019 album "Glimmer," plus the #MeToo movement-inspired feminist anthem "Warrior," which features a choir of more than100 female vocalists, and "You Are My Favorite," a marital love song.

Via her Kickstarter campaign, Heather's was afforded the opportunity to work with Brandy Zdan, a Canadian-born artist-producer and engineer based in Nashville whose recent work includes working on critically acclaimed performer Emily Scott Robinson's 2022 album "Built on Bones." Her partner Crys Matthews — a vaunted folk artist — also appears on the release.

"Paying a whole slew of women (a competitive industry scale) from money given by my fans, followers and those who will purchase my music allows for an independent ripple to emerge that, alongside the similar mainstream work that artists like Brandi Carlile are doing with women like Allison Russell, Brandy Clark, Sista Strings and Tanya Tucker, is developing a vital, sustainable female-empowered part of the (country and Americana industries) overall."

Inside the track list: CMA Fest TV special premieres this month

Mae's website proudly states she's a "queer, fat, femme living out loud with mental illness" who "writes music for the light seekers and the good-troublemakers." Thus, citing the influence of all-lesbian, '70s-era music collective Olivia Records — whose do-it-yourself work ethic keyed (adjusted for inflation) six-figure-earning releases — is logical. Moreover, its 15-year existence is critical in her thinking regarding what a crowdfunding-led independent arm of Nashville's evolving, woman-defined industry can become.

"Aiding artists in releasing music and overcoming oppression creates a beautiful, rebellious community built on surviving creative, emotional and personal heartbreak," she says.

"As a queer songwriter — especially one currently working in Nashville — it's my job to make music that is always revealing and normalizing the revolutionary truth of who I am."

Mae adds: "When you get closer to real, you also get closer to beautiful."

Lea adds a personal note regarding the eventual impact of her work that profoundly impacts her project — and a deeper power to Kickstarter's overall appeal.

"I have a legacy to leave behind," she says. "I'll be darned if my mastery of the craft of songwriting and the work I put in doesn't end up — financially and creatively — in my children's hands."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's rising female artists crowdfund country, Americana albums