April 19, 1980 concert review: Linda Tillery in the Unitarian Church
April 19, 1980
Soaring Voice Speaks Well For Feminists
"There's something very different about that collective women's energy," singer and songwriter Linda Tillery was saying Friday afternoon in regard to the women's collective that runs Olivia Records in Oakland.
"That feeling," she added, "is very special."
The same could be said for Tillery's concert Friday night in the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Elmwood Avenue. The first event staged by the Buffalo Women's Production Company, it buzzed with a rare electricity of accomplishment and adventure.
By all accounts, it was a success. The virtually all-female crowd of about 250 plainly adored Tillery and her spunky pianist, Diane Lindsay. And Tillery was plainly a marvelous singer, needing no more than her amplified voice and Lindsay's perfect piano to fill the church interior.
And what a voice she has! The middle range is rich and full, the highs come easy, the lows are a husky jab in the ribs. She skittered and scatted like Sarah Vaughn, shouted like Aretha Franklin and worked up a fever pitch like James Brown.
Tillery's songs were a collection of blues and pop, with feminist themes that easily spread to the universal, as in her best-known tune, "Womanly Way." She propelled the songs with hand claps, foot stomps and a tambourine, finally raising the whole place in a chorus of "Blessed With the Right to Be."
For those who wish to relive the show, it was taped for broadcast May 14 on the Stonewall Nation show on WBFO-FM. The Buffalo Women's Production Company's future plans include an all-women's coffeehouse in May.
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IN THE PHOTO: Undated Linda Tillery photo, probably from the 1970s.
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FOOTNOTE: Bringing Linda Tillery to town was a big deal. Before she became one of the foremost lesbian artists of the time, she had been lead singer with a San Francisco band called the Loading Zone in the late 1960s. Her Wikipedia page had the band's founder describing her hiring like this:
"She said, 'I'm kind of big, like Big Mama Thornton, and I play harmonica.' ... She walked through the door in a post office uniform, with little white cat-eyed glasses, and I said, that's our girl. She just looked right. We evolved as a dance band with a fusion of R&B and rock, and we ended up as a psychedelic soul band once we added Linda. She was singing for us by the time we opened for Cream at Winterland. Her mother made her a floor-length ruffled red leather cape. It was very dramatic."
Before they broke up in the early 1970s, they toured as an opening act for Vanilla Fudge and the Jeff Beck Group. When they opened for Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin's fans liked her so much that Joplin said she never wanted Tillery on the same bill with her again.
Tillery continued to be a major force in women's music into the 1990s. At the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, she led the gospel choir which sang on Sunday mornings. She also worked with Santana and Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra.
After that, she focused on Black roots music, from spirituals to slave songs, with the Cultural Heritage Choir. They performed at folk festivals and released six albums. For the past dozen years, she's been a visiting lecturer and artist at the San Francisco Jazz Center.
The Buffalo Women's Production Company first appeared in the pages of The News when they put on the Linda Tillery show and disappeared after they promoted another concert a year later in the Unitarian Church with the city's foremost gay feminist figure, Madeline Davis, who at the time was making a musical comeback.
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