The Song of Sisterhood: Mother Legacy at Madlife, March 31, 2023

It takes courage to be a woman, and it takes exceptional courage to be a woman who is true to her own heart. Our authenticity, love force, and soul magic are constantly under assault, if not by forces from outside then by our own self-doubts.  

For some of us, the music of our sisters, Dolly, Stevie, Janis, and so many more, helps to sustain us and to remind us that heartbreak and uncertainty are universal, and that we are beautiful and magical just the way we are. Shay Collins is one such sister-mentor whose performances have blessed countless women.

Her band name, Mother Legacy, which includes her husband, Steven Seidler, pays tribute to her uncle’s involvement in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. But while Zappa’s goal seemed to be to get people to think differently about the world, Shay’s goal seems to be to get us to think differently (or perhaps more clear-sightedly) about ourselves as women.

Shay has recently undergone serious medical issues, and with the physical, psychological, economic, and other traumas she experienced, many people might have assumed that she would be on permanent hiatus. But in a comeback performance at Madlife last weekend, Shay showed us what it meant to be a woman in full.

Arriving a little after it started, I saw the same beautiful woman I always see on stage, dressed in her characteristic boho style complete with a feathered and bejeweled fedora. But I was a bit concerned, because, although she is not a small woman, she seemed a bit small on stage. Her voice wavered and cracked a little, and her eyes seemed full of pain under those long eyelashes.

However, as the evening continued, what I also saw was someone who kept going, who kept singing us her carefully curated selection of songs that spoke to us of the experience of being female:

Of hard times:

I want to know
Have you ever seen the rain?
I want to know
Have you ever seen the rain
Comin' down on a sunny day?

Of self-doubt:

Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Of lost love and righteous anger:

And I'm here, to remind you
Of the mess you left when you went away

But also of strength and fortitude:

And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I've had enough
But I'm gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough

And of how to recognize true love when it comes:

You gave me strength to stand alone again
To face the world out on my own again
You put me high upon a pedestal
So high that I could almost see eternity
You needed me, you needed me

And as she sung these songs of her musical mentors, she implored women of a certain age in the audience, those in country club beige, those in colorful hippie dresses, and everyone in between, to chime in. Through song we shared our common experiences of love and loss and celebrated the strength and survival and refusal to not love that made us the badass women that we are.  

And as we all sang together, we created something so beautiful – a sisterhood that lifted each other up and into and through the spirit of the music.  Shay grew visibly stronger as we sang back to her, finally calling out in a voice clear and loud and strong, “I’m back, baby!!!”

Shay’s real, and she’s raw. She’s glamourous, righteously angry, tender, and unflinchingly honest.  She makes you listen – not just to her, but to yourself. And she has the courage to give us her battered heart in song and to accept ours tenderly.

The world will put beat us women down over and over again. But what it can’t destroy is what happens when we hold each other up. Sustaining this sisterhood is why Dolly stays down-to-earth glamorous and why Stevie still shows us she can twirl. It’s why Shay does what she does, and it’s the reason why I will continue to see Mother Legacy over and over again.