'Am I Dreaming?': Tanya Tucker, Wynonna Judd Headline for an All-Women Country Music Festival

When the Key Western Fest kicks off Tuesday in Key West — the third music festival in as many weeks centered around the city's Cafe Butler Amphitheater — will feature a lineup that's unique among its country music peers. The bill is an all-female showcase featuring mostly '90s country stars.

“I'm so glad this festival has the balls and ovaries to put on a line-up like this,” says Suzy Bogguss – who will share the stage with Wynonna Judd and Mickey Guyton – Rolling rock. “I'm really looking forward to seeing and hearing from my girlfriends who have been rocking it all these years with style, work and patience.”

The second leg of the five-day festival kicks off on January 30 and is headlined by Wynonna, Deana Carter, Tanya Tucker, Lee Ann Womack and Jo Dee Messina. While the festival is heavy on 1990s icons, more recent artists such as Guyton, Kylie Frey and Nikki Lane are also on the bill. Such a lineup is rarely seen outside of festivals personally curated by female artists, like Girls Just Wanna Weekend, the Brandi Carlile-led festival in Cancun that wrapped up its fifth year earlier this month.

In fact, the unfortunate truth is that women are often excluded from performing at other major festivals in the country, let alone headlining.

In 2023, Key Western featured a male-heavy mix, but promoter Kyle Carter, who also books the eighties hard-rock Rokisland and Red Dirt-centric Mile 0 festivals in Key West, is back this year on the draft and saw an opportunity to showcase country music's roster of female superstars.

“After seeing it all on a spreadsheet, it became clear to me that this might be the only genre of music where, over a few decades, you can create a whole line of hitmakers and influencers who are all women. ,” He says.

Key Western got its name when Jamie Lin Wilson started telling the Mile 0 crowd to get “Key Western'ed” off the stage. Carter envisioned it as a celebration of Nashville music.

“I can't even tell you how monumental this is,” says Tanya Tucker. “To actually watch more than one or two girls on stage in one show — let alone four days — makes me proud. It will be harder to decide what to wear with all these ladies in the lineup and what songs to sing, but, really, am I dreaming?'

Carter sees the lineup as a high point for the festival and its organizers, but is quick to point out that Key Western 2024 is based on country music rights and cautions against reducing the week to a gimmick.

“If you just look at this lineup and see that it's all women, I'd rather keep your money in your pocket,” Carter says. “This is much more than that. If you were to sing any of the hundreds of songs these ladies made famous, everyone around you will sing along. That's what it's about.”

Josh Kratsmer is a journalist and author of the book 2020 Red Dirt: Roots Music Born in Oklahoma, raised in Texas, at home anywhere and the 2023 book The Motel Cowboy Show: On the Trail of Mountain Music from Idaho to Texas, and the Side Roads in Between.