Groundbreaking Women's Music Legend Alix Dobkin is our Featured Woman in Music!

Alix Dobkin has been called "mythic," a "heroine and harbinger," and a "pioneer" who birthed "women's music." Read our interview with this musical legend!

CommitmentNow.com:  You recently published your memoir, My Red Blood: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement.  What inspired you to write this memoir?

Alix Dobkin:  The book's Preface goes into some detail about the reasons for this memoir, but the short answer is that I wanted to write about being at the right places at the right times with the right stuff from a different, unconventional perspective, as well as to tell some of my father's stories which document profoundly influential times that are done, gone, and left out of popular history.  I also wrote it to make use of my FBI dossier which is threaded throughout my childhood between ages 13 - 30, and for my daughter, grandchildren, and younger generations who will benefit from knowing more about their history. 

CommitmentNow.com:  You’ve been called a “ground breaking lesbian” and a “women’s music legend.” What is the message of your music?

Alix:  Briefly, my message is to tell your own unique story, be who you are, use your brain, and love women or die.  

CommitmentNow.com:  Your first album Lavender Jane Loves Women was a national and international phenomenon.  Did you expect that kind of success?

Alix:  Yes

CommitmentNow.com:  Your music is very personal.  Do you find it difficult to reveal your life in such a public fashion?

Alix:  I only reveal that which I have thought about exhaustively, thoroughly digested, sorted through and worked out to my satisfaction.

CommitmentNow.com:  Who were your musical influences?

Alix:  As I wrote in the Epilogue to my book besides my mother, my major musical influences would be: JS Bach, Cole Porter, Yip Harburg, Rogers & Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Comden & Green, Leonard Bernstein who wrote Broadway show tunes of the 1950s; Satchmo and Dixieland music, Jerry Lewis, the Red Army Chorus, popular songs from the Hit Parade (which demonstrated what NOT to write), Pete, Woody, Peggy, Leadbelly, & a host of old folkies.  (For a more complete list, read the book).

CommitmentNow.com:  How do you think your music and the women’s music scene of the 1970s has influenced the current generation of women in music?

Alix:  Among many other things, women's music brought Lesbians together to create Lesbian businesses and institutions.  It has empowered, educated, and illuminated a generation of women, created a consciously feminist audience, and made it possible for a woman to present a strong public image on her own terms without making it immediately clear that she is sexually available to men.

CommitmentNow.com:  You have recorded several albums, performed all over the world and written a memoir!  What projects are you working on now? 

Alix:  In addition to being a good grandmother, my job now is to sell the memoir, which means booking book tours and going on the road.  I've just completed a very successful and fun month reading and singing throughout Florida and the southeast. 

For the future I plan to put my songbook on my website, collect the columns of political commentary I've written, talk my publisher into publishing them, and of course, to keep touring. 

Singer-song writer and producer of the groundbreaking 1973 "Lavender Jane Loves Women," Alix Dobkin has six additional highly praised albums and a songbook to her credit. She lives in Woodstock, NY.

To purchase My Red Blood:  A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement, click here.