Brandi Carlile on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.

This week, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee highlighted the ongoing struggles of female country artists to earn airplay on country radio.

Samantha Bee visited Nashville to meet up with several artists, including Brandi Carlile, Mickey Guyton, Margo Price and Tanya Tucker, as well as CMT’s Leslie Fram, who each offered their perspectives.

“Radio is still king so I feel like we are training people not to hear female voices,” Fram said.

They offered insights from Jada E. Watson’s “Gender Representation on Country Format Radio” study, which stated that in 2000, 67% of artists represented in the country format were men, while 33% were females. In the past eight years, there has been a 66% decline in music heard by female artists on country radio; in 2018, male artists performed 89% of the music heard on country radio, with only 11% of the radio format’s music coming from female artists.

“I wrote a song called ‘Pay Gap,’ and that’s exactly what it’s about,” said Price. “That lost me a lot of those mainstream country fans that I had. I was blacklisted by a lot of those [mainstream label] people because my music talked about real life problems. They just didn’t like what I liked to say. But there are people in rural America who need to hear these songs, especially young women.”

Guyton offered insight on questions of race and gender in country music.

“Black people love country music and there are so many people who look like me that love country music and that’s what I’m here to do. We’re really just paving the way. We deserve to have our time here,” Guyton said.

“There is really no one person you can point a finger at,” Carlile said. “Anyone that listens to country music, anyone who loves country music, despite where you fall on the political spectrum or who it is you are, ask yourself this question, which is what do you want her daughter to know about herself? And if you can’t get that from country music, if you can’t get that from country radio, it’s a problem.”

Watch the video below:

Photo ID (L to R): Scott Underwood (Train); Ronnie Dunn; Emmylou Harris; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Waterkeeper Alliance); Chris Janson; John Oates; John Esposito (Warner Music Nashville); David Whiteside (Tennessee Riverkeeper); Zac Cockrell (Alabama Shakes); Trevor Terndrup (Moon Taxi)

Warner Music Nashville’s Chairman & CEO John Esposito welcomed a number of Nashville’s top music artists, as well as passionate supporters of clean water initiatives, to the Warner Music Nashville office on Jan. 14 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tennessee Riverkeeper. The Tennessee Riverkeeper and the Waterkeeper organizations defend the fundamental human right to drinkable, fishable and swimmable waters, and they combine firsthand knowledge of local waterways with a commitment to the rights of communities. The event raised $60,000 for the initiative.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. served as keynote speaker for the evening, while Tennessee Riverkeeper Executive Director David Whiteside offered an introduction.

The son of New York Senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Jr. is a co-founder and President of Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental protection organization that seeks to preserve and conserve water resources. He has been named Time Magazine’s Heroes For the Planet. He is a partner in Silicon Valley’s VantagePoint Ventures Partners’ CleanTech investment team.

Pictured: John Oates, Aimee Oates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Emmylou Harris, John Esposito, Chantel Esposito

Earlier in the day, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had also stopped by Patagonia Nashville to discuss the work of Waterkeeper Alliance, which was launched in 1966 by what he called a “blue collar coalition of commercial fishermen who mobilized to reclaim the Hudson River from its polluters.”

Waterkeeper Alliance now unites more than 300 Waterkeeper groups that fight the planetary environmental crisis, protecting 2.5 million square miles of rivers, lakes, and coastal waterways on six continents.

“People ask me what’s the most important thing for the environment? For 30 years I said the best thing we can do is have true free market capitalism. A true free market promotes efficiency and true efficiency means the elimination for waste and pollution is waste. It’s the undervaluation of our resources that causes us to use them wastefully.” Kennedy said.

Numerous artists attended, including Emmylou Harris, John Carter Cash, Ronnie Dunn, John Oates, Train’s Scott Underwood, Chris Janson, Alabama Shakes’ Zac Cockrell and Moon Taxi’s Trevor Terndrup.

Warner Music Nashville artist Chris Janson brought a guitar, keyboard and harmonica to offer songs including “Good Vibes,” “Drunk Girl,” and his 2x Platinum single “Buy Me A Boat.” “I’m so proud to be a part of the Tennessee Riverkeepers,” he told the crowd. “Keep this up.”

“I am passionate about protecting our planet on all fronts,” said Esposito. “Clean water is imperative to our survival. David Whiteside and the Tennessee Riverkeeper organization work on a daily basis to protect our water rights. I cannot think of a better way to salute Riverkeeper as they celebrate their 10th Anniversary.”

Warner Music Nashville is dedicated to improving sustainability efforts within and outside of its Music Row headquarters. The company’s employee-driven enterprise, WMGreen, has made strides toward its goal of 90% waste diversion by implementing composting and additional recycling services, donating surplus food from events to local organizations, eliminating single-use items from offices, working with sustainable vendors and more. WMGreen has partnered with numerous organizations in the local Nashville community to drive change and encourage sustainability. The successful initiative has proved a catalyst for the entirety of Warner Music Group, with local WMGreen committees beginning to form across the globe.

Pictured: John Carter Cash, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ana Cristina Cash

Chris Janson performs.

Marty Stuart will release a coffee table book, The Pilgrim: A Wall-to-Wall Odyssey, that details the making of his legendary album The Pilgrim. Included in The Pilgrim: A Wall-to-Wall Odyssey is a newly remastered CD of the original album, along with 10 bonus tracks that feature guest performances by Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris, Uncle Josh Graves, Earl Scruggs, and Stuart’s wife, Connie Smith and a foreword by Billy Bob Thornton.

“Going into my archives to search out Pilgrim-related material for this release was like reaching into a dusty old treasure chest,” Stuart recalls. “I found songs that I’d written and forgotten, photographs I never got around to looking at, unfinished recordings from The Pilgrim sessions, and a string of archival recordings … So many life lessons were offered in the creative process of making The Pilgrim. Perhaps the toughest of them all was letting go when the record was considered unsuccessful. However, in letting go, I learned that some things do, in fact, come back around.”

A concept project, The Pilgrim was originally released in 1999 and was based on true events that transpired in Stuart’s hometown. The album represents a rediscovery of Stuart’s roots and a creative rebirth, but the hardcover book is about much more than the album, it’s about spiritual discovery, artistic integrity, and a vision that set Stuart on an enlightened path. Originally available in limited release during the 20th anniversary celebration of the album in the fall, The Pilgrim book is now available as a wide-release title via BMG.

The pages of the book feature intimate photographs of Marty making music with Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Rick Nelson, Bill Monroe, Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, B.B. King, The Staple Singers, Tom Petty, John Lee Hooker, Willie Nelson, Keith Richards, George Jones, Dolly Parton, and others. A celebrated photographer in his own right, Stuart himself captured the truck stops, county fairs, gospel singers, backwoods circus performers, South Dakota Native American Indians, and eclectic cast of characters that he encountered on his journey to reconnect with his musical roots and forge new paths forward.