Inspired by creator and host Carmel Holt’s own 25 year career in radio, and lifetime devoted to music, SHEROES is a podcast that amplifies womxn’s voices in song and conversation. As the third production under the SHEROES name, following her syndicated public radio show SHEROES Radio, and SHEROES: Mixtape Memoir (Sonos Radio), the SHEROES podcast on Talkhouse acts as kind of creative lab, expanding to include mini-episodes that highlight the intersectional feminist heart of SHERO interviews, live tapings, roundtables and more. Carmel’s approach continues to be guided by a fierce commitment to diversity and inclusivity, showcasing a wide range of guests sharing their experiences spanning genres and generations, with a passion for amplifying new voices while recognizing and celebrating the womxn who paved the way.
SHEROES is on The Road To Joni, but in this episode we discover that sometimes that road is a bridge. A bridge to healing. A bridge to holding your own. A bridge to a new creative path. A bridge from one generation to another. Episode 4 of the Road To Joni begins at the SHEROES studio in upstate New York with 5x platinum recording artist and activist Natalie Merchant. A long time friend of host Carmel Holt, they discovered that they were both Joni Mitchell fans at a 1999 at breast cancer benefit concert that Carmel organized and Natalie headlined. The closing song from that show was a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want.” 25 years later, Natalie Merchant sits down with Carmel to reflect on her road to Joni, talks about crying at her kitchen table after missing Joni’s return at Newport Folk 2022, and shares an exclusive listen to a previously unreleased recording of her cover of “All I Want” from her personal archives. Then, it’s on to Newport Folk Fest 2024, where 4x Grammy Award Nominee Madison Cunningham (who also missed Joni’s 2022 Newport performance) recalls listening to Court and Spark and feeling like Joni was looking into her soul. The self-taught guitar and songwriting prodigy tells us that her road to Joni is more of a bridge, partly because of all the literal bridges she crossed while listening to Joni’s music, but the deeper metaphor she uncovers during this conversation reveals that Joni Mitchell provided Madison a bridge to cross the “moat” of her religious upbringing to a place that opened up not only her musical world, but made her available for all the opportunities that found her.
