‘They are the holders of history’: Women share stories, not advice, at live ‘Tell Her This’ podcast show next week at Bombyx
“Tell Her This,” a podcast sharing women’s stories, will have a live show at Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence on Friday, May 23, at 7 p.m., preceded by a show featuring live stories told by local women at 7 p.m. the day before.
“Tell Her This,” described in a press release as “an inspiring blend of podcasting, visual art, and live music,” features stories told by women across the country – complex stories about their lives and experiences. It is decidedly not an advice or self-help podcast, nor a podcast in which every guest is “an expert on this, an award-winning that,” as show host Rochelle Rice put it.
“Our society globally spends so much time telling women who they should and shouldn’t be,” Rice said. “I didn’t want to create another one of those. We don’t need any more of those.”
Instead, women get to talk about highs and lows of their own lives. In one episode, musician and filmmaker Be Steadwell talks about a breakup, addiction, and sobriety. In another, performer Jillian Willis discusses life experiences including a crisis of faith, a sexual assault, and getting hired to a teaching position.
Rice launched the podcast in late 2022. Her inspiration was the women in her own family.
“I was thinking a lot about the spaces that I existed in as a kid, all the spaces where stories were shared, where stories were told, be it around the kitchen table or sitting in the living room with my aunties and my grandmother and my mom,” she said. “So many of the stories became my guidebooks through life. These women were giving me advice without giving me advice.”
Many of her episodes feature musicians, some of whom she already knew personally and some of whom she didn’t, but all of whom were “people whose lives I admire and wanted to know more about.”
“I didn’t know what stories would come from them, but I was so interested to sit and talk to them,” she said.
All told, she has traveled more than 6,000 miles to help her subjects tell their stories, which entailed meeting up with her interview subjects a few days before the recordings and walking around their respective cities together.
“A lot of what the women share in the podcast is so intimate and so personal,” she said. Her goal was to “get to the intimate and the personal without it feeling forced or exploited.”
What she’s learned since then is about how shared certain emotions and experiences are.
“Loss and grief and deep joy and longing – that’s universal to everyone,” Rice said.
Rice isn’t just a podcast host; as she puts it, she’s a “singer and songwriter first. Podcasting just wiggles its way in.” A member of the a cappella ensembles Sweet Honey in the Rock and bēheld, Rice wanted to make sure her live show would be “an entire start-to-finish concert experience.” Combining podcasting with live music, she said, “often feels like pouring out of the same vessel.”
When Rice brings the podcast to Bombyx, it will, of course, be different from a regular podcast-listening experience; a press release describes the live show as “a three-fold, multi-media journey in words, music, and visual art.” Part of that includes a video of “Strong, Like Water,” an art installation featuring portraits of women who have shared their stories on the podcast. (The installation itself is too big for many performance venues, hence the use of a video of it instead.)
Another difference: on Thursday, May 22, it will feature live stories shared by local women who workshopped to develop their stories with Rice over three days as part of her weeklong Bombyx residency. (Unfortunately, the deadline to apply to participate will have already passed by the time this story hits print.) Those stories will be set to music, played by a live pianist. The final product, Rice said, will be “beautiful, transformative, collaborative.”
Women, she said, are “the truth-tellers. They are the holders of history.”
“Those stories, the telling and retelling of our history, they lead to liberation, and I truly believe that.”
Tickets to both the “Tell Her This” community storytelling event and “Tell Her This Live!” are $20 to $30 in advance or $25 to $35 at the door at bombyx.live.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at [email protected].
Daily Hampshire Gazette
