City Girls/Country Music Kickoff Show

​City Girls/Country Music held their kickoff show this month at the famous Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles.  It was a meaningful and intimate night featuring all women based in Los Angeles.

Leigh Madison opened the show by belting a stunning acapella song called The Teeter-Totter of Life, a raw look inside the ups and downs of going after your dreams with no guarantee of success or security.  Leigh, a single mother, then sang a song for her daughter called I Learned How to Love from You, which was a bit of tear-jerker with theatrical moments that hinted at her background in musical theater, starring opposite Neil Patrick Harris in RENT.

Cindy Jollotta was up next, opening her set with Room in My Pants, a saucy song about a woman with no room in her schedule for a relationship, but plenty of room in her pants for... you know.   The song has become an anti-slut shaming anthem in the Los Angeles bi community.  Cindy wrapped up with Jet Plane to Reno, a song with the unusual theme of draft dodging.  She wrote the song after hearing a story of President LBJ eliminating the marriage exemption from the military draft during the Vietnam War.  The government announced the change with no warning and many couples found themselves in a last-minute race to get to Nevada to get married before midnight the day of the announcement.  

The husband and wife duo Drew and Ket took the stage next. Their voices blended in gorgeous harmonies throughout the set and it was hard to find a dry eye in the house. Their first song, Wildfire, featured a goosebumps-inducing epic fiddle solo performed by Ket.  That was followed by a clever take on the term "fuck boi" with their new song Truck Boy.   A favorite of the night was Three Day Weekend, a sweet and relatable song about recapturing the days "when we were 20, with no money, staying up till 3am."

Anna Ash closed out the night with her syrupy soprano voice, tinted with a slight southern drawl.  Each of her songs had a quiet poetry about them with memorable lines like "Baby, lock your doors and baby, shut your heart off. Baby, just let this one go.  I'm gonna drive to the beach and sleep somewhere expensive alone..." from her song Floodlights.  You could hear a pin drop in the room throughout her set, as the audience was hanging on her every word.

​It was a special night and everyone on stage and in the audience seemed to know it.  Each performer left 'em wanting more.  And hopefully, that's what they'll get!  City Girls/Country Music plans to return to Los Angeles January 2020.

Photos by Anna Larina