Casse Culver: Back To The Bars
by Rogi A. Rubyfruit

"It's time to leave the nest of the women's music circuit and take myself into country 'n western bars and festivals. I don't know what's going to happen. It's like getting in a spaceship and flying off to Venus."
For Casse Culver, veteran feminist musician, women's music has been a safe place, a cradled home in which her music was loved because it came from her. "I walk into a women's concert and can open up there in a way I never could in a male bar. But I'm happy to report, I'm feeling strong enough to jump out and see what happens. I might get real busted up and come back crawling. That's o.k., because I'm not going to stop doing my woman's work."
A good deal of Casse's woman's work can be found on her new album, Three Gypsies, produced by Wisewoman Enterprises and distributed by Olivia Records.
Casse is intrigued with the development of non-linear feminine methods of communication. Her music, a saucy blend of cow-dyke twang and east coast metaphor, actually has a chance of making it on the straight country 'n western circuit. It combines farce, fantasy, and fury, into a moving display of her own life and politics.
"A woman's concert and participating in ritual are very similar. The ritual is more intense because there are fewer of us and we're all doing exactly the same thing. We all become, at once, the performers and the audience. It's taking the performance situation and distilling it. It's hanging out with the girls and havin' a good time!"

TRIBAL PROFESSIONALISM
Casse is determined to make a living from her music. Any other work for her is a "shit" job. But using art to make a living "puts a burden on the art that shouldn't be there," she knows. "one of my greatest fantasies is being in a garden full of women working. I pick up my autoharp and sing so our work will go easier. Someday I would like to live with a tribe of women."
Within the tribe we now have, Casse has noticed that women are not making their own work easy.
"I'd like to see them (producers, technicians, etc.) take themselves more seriously. I'm getting the amount of money I request, but they're still volunteering their labor. We've got to be more realistic about how much ticket prices have to be in order to support all the labor that goes into putting on a concert.
The way matriarchal economics might work is that with small audiences, each of us has to bear more of the burden. Ticket prices have to be higher, workers have to get paid less. Instead of increasing ticket prices to capitalize on the fame of the star-trip, as the patriarchs do, we matriarchs should decrease ticket price as the audience grows larger. Vhen you're playing to audiences of 3,000, the ticket prices can reasonably be brought down to $2.00. Some women are still afraid to ask for what they need o survive, afraid to put a price of $3.00 on a ticket. There also has to be education to show the grass, expenses, and net profit — if any."
Casse may be growin' and goin', but she's not doing it alone. She's now looking around for women musicians who, "have been working hard on their craft and are willing to take this risk." She wants to be part of an all woman team, and wants to know "Anyone for the Belle Star Band?"

from Lesbian Tide, Mar/April 1977