Le Tigre
Photo: Mr. Lady

Standing onstage Thursday (August 16) in Chicago's Congress Theater, Kathleen Hanna caught her breath between songs and attempted to boil down the impetus behind this month's feminist Ladyfest music gigs to a single sentence.

Society, said the former Bikini Kill frontwoman, tries "to make you feel stupid because you're making work about your friends and neighbors." But your friends — and your bands and festivals — are just as valid as anything else on the mainstream's radar, she implied.

Then Hanna and her new band, Le Tigre, laid waste to the mainstream's dismissals with a new stick-to-your-guns tune called "My Art Is Better Than Your Art."

Le Tigre's lo-fi, disco-punk set was a clear rallying point for Ladyfest Midwest, underscoring that women of all genres could and should create their own art, with their own values, based on their own experiences.

The four-day event, which ended Sunday, saw more than 1,000 women (and dozens of men) trek to the Windy City for sets by minimalist funk pioneers ESG, Indigo Girl Amy Ray backed by queercore punks the Butchies, country singer and Mekons member Sally Timms, art-metal punishers Loraxx and scores of others.

The Chicago festival followed the smaller but equally energized Ladyfest Scotland, held August 12-14 in Glasgow. Like its Midwestern sister, Ladyfest Scotland featured numerous do-it-yourself and feminist workshops on topics such as DJ skills, violence against women and alternative ways to deal with menstruation. Scottish synth-pop outfit Bis, American garage acts Bratmobile and the Gossip, plus Katastrophy Wife — Babes in Toyland leader Kat Bjelland's new band — all took the stage, along with numerous other rock and spoken-word acts.

Both events took their cue from last summer's inaugural Ladyfest, a stridently independent arts and activism conference that took place in Olympia, Washington, a hub of the 1990s riot grrrl feminist-punk movement.

"This time, people haven't allowed it to remain in Olympia," said Glasgow co-organizer Lee Beattie, 22, taking a breather in the basement of the 13th Note Club on LF Scotland's opening day. "With Riot Grrrl, lots of people were happy to just sit back and take what they were doing. The riot grrrl creators were exhausted. You cannot maintain the energy to keep doing that and produce things all the time. This time it hasn't just moved from Olympia to Seattle or Washington, D.C. It actually moved across the world."

An emphasis on empowerment connected events within each festival and linked the independently organized Midwest and Scotland Ladyfests to each other.

In Glasgow, women plotted to commandeer the reins of publishing during a workshop on postering zines throughout one's neighborhood; in Chicago, they got seductive in "Kinky Crafts: Cheap and Fun Ways to Enhance Your Sex Life."

Meanwhile, Amy Ray and the Butchies stomped through a cover of Tom Petty's "Refugee," turning the song's chorus ("You don't have to live like a refugee!") into an anthem of lesbian and gay rights. In the cloistered confines of the 13th Note, the Gossip's hefty singer Beth Ditto spread her "fat positive" message by shimmying and shaking through a raucous set stripped down to her underwear.

Numerous fans at both Ladyfests said they came to the events for the music but were heading home inspired to become producers of zines, shows and festivals of their own. Just as last year's Ladyfest inspired Beattie and Ladyfest Midwest organizer Marf Wright, this year's events have sparked the DIY urge in other attendees. A handful of Glasgow fans began talking about staging a Ladyfest in Nice, France, next summer, while in Chicago flyers circulated for a 2002 Ladyfest South in Atlanta.

Another offshoot, Ladyfest East, will take place in New York in early September.

Standing out in the Glasgow rain, getting ready to catch a set by Brighton, England's electronic-buzz band Electrelane, Bratmobile singer Allison Wolfe observed that a resurgent energy is coursing through women in the indie punk scene.

"It feels like the spirit of riot grrrl all over again, though maybe in a slightly modernized package," said Wolfe, 31. Bratmobile were one of the earliest Riot Grrrl bands, and the only act to play Ladyfests in Olympia, Glasgow and Chicago.

"It's interesting, because it's a little bit looser-knit. People can put on their own festival and make it however they want, whatever suits their communities. And a lot of us will attend. It's great that the pressure's not always on the same people. I don't think it has a chance to get too stale."

• Bratmobile
• Le Tigre
• Amy Ray
• The Butchies
• Bis

Bratmobile
Photo: Pat Graham

Riot grrrls Bratmobile, electro-punk duo the Need and punk-pop threesome the Gossip will rock the "hippest town in the West" at Yoyo a Gogo 2001, to be held July 17 to 22.

More than 50 bands, ranging from punk rock to electronic to folk, will play during the six-day festival, to be held at the Capitol Theatre in Olympia, Washington.

Also on the bill are C Average, Dead Moon, Sarah Dougher, the Haggard, the Tight Bros From Way Back When, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Tennessee Twin and Enemymine.

The event, which will also include a fashion show, spoken word performances, art shows and seminars, will coincide with Olympia's Lakefair Festival, an annual carnival and parade.

Previous Yoyo a Gogo shows were held in 1994, 1997 and 1999 and featured such artists as Beck, Elliott Smith, Rancid, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Sleater-Kinney and the Halo Benders.

Olympia, declared the "hippest town in the West" by Time magazine last year, was also the location of the first Ladyfest. Held in August and organized entirely by women, the event spawned spinoffs in several other cities.

Ticket information is available at yoyoagogo.com.

• Bratmobile
• The Need
• Sarah Dougher
• Dub Narcotic Sound System

Le Tigre
Photo: Mr. Lady

When the final curtain fell on the first Ladyfest music and activism fair in Olympia, Washington, last August, organizers knew they'd started something exciting.

They just didn't want it to continue in Olympia.

"It's really weird if yearly everyone makes their pilgrimage to Olympia," said Kathleen Hanna, former Bikini Kill frontwoman and singer for lo-fi dance punks Le Tigre, whose From the Desk of Mr. Lady EP includes the activist rant "Get Off the Internet." Though Hanna was not involved in last year's Ladyfest, Le Tigre are playing Chicago's Ladyfest Midwest, one of several sequel events this year.

Olympians "have done incredible things for years and years and years and years," Hanna said. "But if everyone just moved to Olympia or goes there to get the Ladyfest vibe ... that's doing kind of a disservice to the amazing stuff that goes on everywhere." Rather than make Ladyfest an annual affair in Olympia, organizers at last year's conference urged women activists to start their own events across the globe. At least four Ladyfests are in the works for 2001. The first, a four-day happening in Bloomington, Indiana, kicks off Thursday. Then a spate of summer fests kicks off with Ladyfest East in Northampton and Easthampton, Massachusetts, August 2-5. The farthest-flung from the original site, Ladyfest Scotland, is set for August 12-14 in Glasgow, followed by the Chicago event, Aug. 16-19.

Organized and operated entirely by women, the inaugural Ladyfest boasted not only six days of concerts by Sleater-Kinney, Bratmobile, the Butchies, the Need, the Gossip, Neko Case and Cat Power, but also art openings, film screenings and workshops on everything from sewing to labor organizing to running a PA system, plus discussions on sexual assault and middle school gender socialization.

Many of the folks involved — planners, bands and attendees — had roots in the riot grrrl feminist punk movement of the early '90s. Chainsaw Records will release a commemorative CD from the event in July.

Meanwhile, April 10 will see the release of Ladyfest East, a double-disc benefit album to raise money for various charities and to help stage the Massachusetts edition of Ladyfest. The 29-song set includes cuts by Lavababy, the Hissyfits and the Trouble Dolls (including MTVi News managing editor Matty Karas), along with Moxiestarpark, whose 28 Days Records is releasing the album.

Seated more than 100 miles west of Boston, Northampton is somewhat off the beaten path of the urban East Coast — and that's the point, said Nancy Scibilia, who with 30 other members of the music committee will choose the bands for Ladyfest East.

"It would have been easier to have it in D.C. or New York City, but New England's great," Scibilia said. "There's a lot of music scenes up there." Among the musicians already signed on to play Chicago's Ladyfest are Indigo Girl Amy Ray with the Butchies, Bratmobile, the Need, Shannon Wright and Detroit house artist DJ Minx.

"Chicago's very diversified ethnically," said PR coordinator Tammy Cresswell. "We have a lot of Spanish music, a lot of Mexican music, a lot of good country music. So it's a really good place for us to diversify the idea of Ladyfest." The Windy City festival will also offer mammograms, discussions on women and the death penalty and being raised by gay or lesbian parents, and workshops on four-track recording, guitar maintenance, motorcycle mechanics and kick-boxing.

Organizing so many Ladyfests is "like the difference between being a rampant consumer and being someone who, through the example of others, sees themselves as producers as well," Hanna said. "They're producers of culture. And that is the thing about the Ladyfest in Olympia ... that shows me how successful it f---in' was."

• Le Tigre
• Bratmobile
• Sleater-Kinney