45: Women’s History Month With Recording Artist & Activist Autumn Sky Hall #WomenOfAction

Rantz N Raves

Episode 45 took place on location in West Sacramento where I interviewed Sacramento (CA) recording artist and activist Autumn Sky Hall as part of Women’s History Month in March. This was during my Facebook live feed video for The Women’s International Music Network #WomenOfAction promotion.

I have known Autumn for many years and have always admired her inner strength, talent, and her voice in our music community. I catch up with Autumn to reminisce over her incredible indie music career and learn more about her new music project, Write Or Die which has released their debut album, Scream of Consciousness.

“Baby Girl” by Write Or Die from their debut album is featured as the intro to this podcast. See the video below!

LIKE Autumn Sky Hall on Facebook HERE.

LIKE Write Or Die on Facebook page HERE.

LISTEN to Write Or Die on Soundcloud HERE.

BIO: Autumn Sky is a 12 year veteran of the music scene in Northern California and a Hall of Fame inductee in the Sacramento Music Awards. She is an advocate for intersectional feminism. She was born the oldest in a family of seven children to a painting father who worked as a computer programmer and a singing mother who worked as a midwife. Together, her parents home-schooled their seven children together in many rural parts of the US, including the forests of Wisconsin and a restored 1970’s commune on the hills of ocean-side Mendocino, CA. Painting, reading and a love of words began at an early four years old and songwriting followed shortly after at five when Autumn was given a box to store the songs she made up for fun by her mother, who encouraged her to continue and keep a record of her work from then on. At 23 years old, Autumn fronted her folk-rock band and was the only solo female act to ever be honored with the induction to the Hall of Fame (having received six awards total, including three Artist of the Year awards, back to back in the three years prior.) She was also the youngest inductee ever at the time, having begun her work on the particular project at just sixteen years old. She played at an open mic or a bookstore nearly every night of the week for over two years, saying she needed to “catch up” to her friends because she considered herself a late bloomer in performing and struggled with stage fright. She had played over 500 gigs by 23 and had a knack for marketing and promotion, brainstorming new ways to reach fans and utilizing every available avenue, even going so far as to hand paint flyers when there wasn’t money for a printer. The Autumn Sky band could range from solo performances in wineries to full band performances at huge venues, sometimes reaching 13 members at its peak including a string and brass section and touching on multiple genres. It was used it as a vehicle to feature the talents of her compatriots in the scene and to challenge the status quo of what being a “singer-songwriter” was. The band would eventually be honored with a lot of local love and successfully broke into the festival circuit in 2014, opening for Bauhaus front man Peter Murphy, Heart at BottleRock Festival, and TBD Fest only a few months following. Today, you’ll find her working on her current passion project, Write Or Die. The band has released an EP, “Scream of Consciousness,” and plans to release a full length album, in 2017.

WRITE OR DIE – BABY GIRL (OFFICIAL VIDEO) 2017