Cathy DiToro missed out on Lilith Fair when musician Sarah McLachlan launched the woman-focused festival in 1997.
“I was 12 when it first came out, and I had pretty strict parents,” said DiToro, who performs in popular tribute bands The Legwarmers and So Fetch. “I knew about it, because I was obsessed with music — I wanted to go, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.”
DiToro is versed on the beginnings of McLachlan’s Lilith Fair, which became a yearly series of concerts and festivals, from 1997 through 1999.
“She started it because (radio programmers) were not playing two women at a time on the radio,” DiToro said. When McLachlan would submit her music, “She would get an email back saying, ‘We can’t play yours right now, because we already have Sheryl Crow playing, or we already have Lisa Loeb playing.'”
The Lilith Fair festival included yearly performances at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.
“It was for women, by women,” DiToro said. “Nothing like that had been done before, and nothing really like that has been done, since.”
Saturday, at The Atlantis downtown, DiToro has organized Lilith Fest, in which today’s performers will play cover versions of songs by more than two dozen female artists from the era, including Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Tracy Chapman and Lisa Loeb.
“We really are trying to recreate that spirit,” said DiToro, who is the founder of Project HERA, a D.C.-based nonprofit, “To ignite that feeling of community and camaraderie among women, who are still a minority in the music industry.”
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