Singer/songwriter Dawn Landes will release a new album, The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, on March 29th, 2024 during Women’s History Month. The release reimagines music from the women’s liberation movement, with songs that were featured in The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, originally published in 1971.
Landes, along with producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, Bob Weir, Cassandra Jenkins), highlights 11 musical stories from the canon of women’s activism from 1830 to 1970. These messages are just as timely today as they were then.
The first track has been released, the 1830 song “Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind.” This traditional ballad was often sung at protests during the Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 60s and early 70s and was recorded by Peggy Seeger in 1954 and Joan Baez in 1961 under an alternate title, “The Wagoner’s Lad.”
In the “Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind” video, Landes embodies women from the past including a farmer, a suffragette, a factory worker, union-activist and martyr Ella May Wiggins, and a protester from the 1968 Miss America Pageant protest in Atlantic City.
Landes shares:
There’s a reason this folk song has been around this long and we’re still singing it nearly 200 years later.
The project began while Landes was at home during the pandemic and picked up the book at a thrift shop. Then in 2022, with the overturn of Roe v. Wade rolling back women’s autonomy by 50 years, Landes turned to the songbook for inspiration.
Josh Kaufman says about the project:
Working with my old friend, Dawn Landes, on this collection of tunes was a real creative and collaborative gift. Many of these songs were already powerful in message but musically were never meant to travel beyond the picket line. I hope our work helps to amplify their message of freedom and equity anew.
The Liberated Woman’s Songbook was recorded in Upstate New York at Little Pink and at The Garage in Chapel Hill, NC with Landes on vocals, guitar and organ and Kaufman on guitars, keys, drums, bass, mandolin and percussion.
Landes enlisted other voices to accentuate the messages on the album, including Emily Frantz of Watchhouse, Kanene Pipkin of The Lone Bellow, Rissi Palmer, Charly Lowry, Annie Nero and Lizzy Ross (Violet Bell).
In July 2023, Landes and Kaufman performed a live show of The Liberated Woman’s Songbook at the Newport Folk Festival. A select performance of The Liberated Woman’s Songbook with Peggy Seeger is confirmed and more are in the works. Additional shows will be announced shortly.
Landes has explored a wide variety of styles from Indie Pop and Folk to the French-language album Mal Habillée. She has collaborated with Justin Townes Earle, Will Oldham, Norah Jones and more, and has shared the stage with Ray Lamontaigne, Feist, Andrew Bird, Sufjan Stevens, Suzanne Vega and others. She has numerous film and TV credits to her name as well. Landes is currently based in Chapel Hill, NC.
Dawn Landes – The Liberated Woman’s Songbook Track Listing
1. Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind (1830)
2. One Hundred Years (1852)
3. The Housewife’s Lament (1866)
4. Keep Woman in her Sphere (1882)
5. The Factory Girl (1906)
6. Bread and Roses (1912)
7. Mill Mother’s Lament (1929)
8. Cotton Mill Girls (1930)
9. Which Side are You On (1931)
10. There Was a Young Woman Who Swallowed a Lie (1970)
11. Liberation, Now! (1970)
Dawn Landes – Tour Dates
February 18 – McCormick, SC – Lutheran Church by the Lake+
February 20 – Greensboro, NC – Flat Iron+
April 12 – Louisville, KY – 21C+
September 7 – London, England – Barbican feat. Peggy Seeger + more*
^ supporting Steep Canyon Rangers
+Acoustic Shows
*Performance of The Liberated Woman’s Songbook
