$20 adv, $25 day of
G.A. (seated) - Doors open @7PM
This concert is a benefit for Jean Millington (June’s sister), bassist / musicians and co-founder of Fanny. She is recovering from a complicated stroke though through support has made miraculous progress including being able to perform (with assistance) at the recent Fanny reunion tour concerts. Additional donations can be made by clicking the button below.
https://www.ima.org/playlikeagirl.info/solo.html
Back in 1969, when June Millington began her career as lead guitarist for Fanny -- a mainstream all-female band -- she recognized that mainstream music was largely inaccessible to women. During the five years in the 1970s when Fanny were active, few women had made significant mainstream rock recordings. Through four successful albums with Warner Bros. (Fanny, Charity Ball, Fanny Hill, and Mother's Pride), June Millington and Fanny served notice to the rock world that women could do more than simply sing: that women could also write and play rock & roll passionately. Yet there were nearly no women technicians supporting either the studio recording process or live tours, and women booking agents, managers, and promoters were few and far between.
The Changer and the Changed: A Record of the Times
Then, in 1975, Millington was asked to play on Cris Williamson's seminal album The Changer and the Changed. It had been a leap from fooling around on the ukulele as a child in Millington's native Manila to rock fluency in California; it was a greater leap between mainstream fame and "women's music." Resonating with the politics of women making music, Millington established her own label, Fabulous Records, and released several albums: Heartsong (1981), Running (1983), and One World, One Heart (1988). Then, Millington began to conceive of mentorship for women pursuing music and allied professions. The Institute for the Musical Arts (IMA) was Millington's idea for how to empower women, especially women of color, in their pursuit of careers in the field of music, bridging the gap between women in the mainstream and in "women's music," and promoting social justice and equality within the music industry and in other social and cultural spheres.
Millington's idea immediately drew some of the most experienced women in the music industry to IMA's advisory boards: Bonnie Raitt, Linda Tillery, Teresa Trull, and Cris Williamson. Today, following a move from Northern California to Goshen, Massachusetts in the early 2000s, IMA remains active as a multicultural nonprofit national teaching and performing arts organization, with Millington serving as Artistic Director. Through classes, apprenticeships, and experiences in live performance and studio recording, IMA students gain knowledge and expertise in such areas as artist management, concert lighting/sound, entertainment law, instrument/voice development, marketing, music composition, promotion, sound technology, stage management, video, and recording/engineering, the latter of which has resulted in several new albums by up-and-coming artists on the Fabulous label.
June & Jean Millington
June Millington’s special concert at the Drake comes right on the heels of an important release in the film world, Fanny: The Right to Rock debuts May 22nd.
Synopsis: "Revivify Fanny. And my work is done."- David Bowie
Sometime in the 1960s, in sunny Sacramento, two Filipina-American sisters got together with other teenage girls to play music. Little did they know their garage band would evolve into the legendary rock group Fanny, the first all-women band to release an LP with a major record label (Warner/Reprise, 1970). Despite releasing 5 critically-acclaimed albums over 5 years, touring with famed bands from SLADE to CHICAGO and amassing a dedicated fan base of music legends including David Bowie, Fanny's groundbreaking impact in music was written out of history... until bandmates reunite 50 years later with a new rock record deal. With incredible archival footage of the band's rocking past intercut with its next chapter releasing a new LP today, the film includes interviews with a large cadre of music icons, including Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, Bonnie Raitt, The Go-Go's Kathy Valentine, Todd Rundgren, The Runaways' Cherie Currie, Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, The B52's Kate Pierson, Charles Neville and David Bowie guitarist and bassist Earl Slick and Gail Ann Dorsey. Fighting early barriers of race, gender and sexuality in the music industry, and now ageism, the incredible women of Fanny are ready to claim their hallowed place in the halls of rock 'n' roll fame.
“They were one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time. They were extraordinary: They wrote everything, they played like motherfuckers, they were just colossal and wonderful, and nobody’s ever mentioned them. They’re as important as anybody else who’s ever been, ever; it just wasn’t their time.”