It’s a feel-good, positive night with an important message: Women can do anything they want in the music industry, so don’t try to stop us.
Thirty years ago when Dale Krevens co-founded Tech 21 she remembers coming to the National Association of Music Merchants show and being mistaken for a booth model, a pretty face to attract the mostly male attendees into the amplifier company’s space on the exhibition hall floor.
“Obviously it’s more widely accepted now,” she said on the red carpet of the She Rocks Awards at the House of Blues in Anaheim on Friday. “People don’t raise their eyebrows like, ‘Oh, what’s she doing here?’
“They talk to me instead of going, ‘Where’s a guy I can talk to?’” said Krevens, who soon would be presented with the She Rocks Mad Skills Award.
That’s a tidy summation of what the She Rock Awards was created to celebrate and encourage and inspire – the right and the ability of women to fill any role they want in the music industry be that on stage as a performer or behind the scenes in any of the other technical, creative or business world opportunities that exist.
The seventh annual She Rocks Awards honored musicians including Terri Nunn of Berlin, singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb, rock guitarist Nita Strauss, R&B singer Macy Gray, singer-composer Erika Ender and the late Janis Joplin, who was presented a lifetime achievement award.
But it also honored women such as Krevens, who work outside the spotlight. Other honorees included Lynette Sage of Reverb, the online musical instrument market, Samantha Pink of JAM Industries, Terri Winston, a musician now more famed for her work as a recording engineer, and Dana Dufine, head booker for all of AEG.
