SPOTLIGHT: Women That Rock Launch First Multi-City Tour This Summer with Charli Adams and Abby Holliday
SPOTLIGHT
SPOTLIGHT
☆ BY SAMANTHA SORIA ☆
UNWAVERING SUPPORT FOR FEMME AND NONBINARY ARTISTS—has always been important to Andie Aronow and that North Star mission is set to enter a new chapter. As founder of Women That Rock, Aronow is launching the company’s new tour concept summer tour this August, building on a project that first started as an Instagram page where she promoted artists she admired.
“I was sitting in my apartment one night and found that the name ‘Women That Rock’ was available and I snagged it really quickly, made a little temporary pink circle logo at the time, and it just took off,” Aronow said.
Using guerilla-style marketing, Aronow began reaching out to artists through social media and asking if they wanted to be featured on Women That Rock. The response she received was overwhelmingly glowing.
“So many artists were like, ‘This is incredible! We need this. I want to be involved. How can I help?’ It was like all signs forward were green flags and after, I just kept taking the next right step—needing a website, logo, etc.—and then in 2019, we broke into live event production,” Aronow said.
With events held all over the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Vermont and five consecutive events held in Texas at SXSW, Women That Rock has grown to over 70,000 followers across social media and is sure to grow even bigger as its five-stop summer tour kicks off on August 7 in Washington D.C. and ends in Nashville on August 15, and featuring co-headliners Abby Holliday and Charli Adams.
For Adams, this tour marks the first time she has worked with Women That Rock.
“As an independent artist, it’s nice to have other people championing the tour because we’re always trying to promote as much as we can,” Adams said. “Being an independent artist and doing most of your marketing on the internet, everything can be a lot on your shoulders, so it’s always nice to have more people involved in supporting something like this.”
Holliday, meanwhile, has worked with Women That Rock before. Over a year and a half ago she played at the Brooklyn Bowl where Women That Rock had a showcase. It was after the show where Holliday and Aronow met and discussed ways of working together in the future. Fast forward to today, Holliday is excited to collaborate again with Women That Rock.
“They’re sort of the only brand that I’ve partnered with in terms of shows,” Holliday said. “In terms of shows, it’s been very independent—either opening for another artist or doing our own headline thing—so to have this kind of third party pushing it in their own ways is very sweet. I love what they stand for. It’s fun to be a part of.”
Co-headlining is just one exciting aspect of the project for Holliday and Adams; they've also been given the creative task and collaboration in selecting opening acts for each stop along the tour.
“It’s almost like making a playlist for the people coming to your show a little bit because you get to show them or curate the night,” Adams said.
As independent artists, building from the ground up for a long time is something that Adams and Holliday know well. Taking to Instagram was a natural way to get artist recommendations and the response they received was abundant and lively. With a shared note, Adams and Holliday spent many days compiling through over 200 comments and listening to all the artists who sent in submissions.
“We both found a lot of music that we love through doing that,” Adams shared. “Some of them we knew, some of them we didn’t, but it was really cool. We went back and forth about who we wanted, which was hard to pick because there were so many good options.”
“I’m very drawn to songwriters and people that are very open and vulnerable in their music and writing, and I feel like we picked some good acts in terms of that,” Holliday said, when it came to looking for an opener who was within her and Adams' genre.
On Instagram, Eliza Harrison Smith, Izzy Potter, Grenon, Rat Tally and Laken Campo were recently announced as the lucky artists chosen to share the stage with Adams and Holliday this August.
Historically, when it comes to festival lineups, male artists have been at the front. However, over the past few years, that has changed with major artists such as Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter dominating the stage. Though this may be the case, there’s still an underrepresentation of female and non-binary artists in festival lineups.
A study done by the non-profit organization group Book More Women showed that in 2025, 21.6 percent of headlining slots across nine major music festivals in 2025 were female and 1 percent were nonbinary, whereas men accounted for 77.4 percent of these slots. More so, in the same study for 2025, Book More Women showed that female and nonbinary representation actually dropped and that progress had reversed after several years of improvement.
Upcoming festivals like All Things Go and, most recently, Daisy Chain Fields, founded by Olivia Rodrigo, are dedicated to bringing back a space to celebrate female voices in music and advocate for social change. However, for music festivals as a whole, there’s still much work to be done.
“On the surface, it looks like we’ve got all these really big female stars and that’s awesome. It’s great that there’s not all just male stars. But below the surface of that press-worthy, in the inner workings of the industry, there’s still a wide discrepancy and many fewer opportunities for women,” Aronow explained. “I think it’s wonderful that Olivia Rodrigo and her team are creating Daisy Chain Fields festival; I want to go! Initiatives like this will hopefully start to move the needle, but it doesn’t mean that the industry at large doesn’t still have a gender gap problem.”
Representation is an important stepping stone to being respected not only for the music but also, as Adams notes, for women who have the right and want to play into their sexuality.
Holliday, who has spent over the past five years opening for male artists on tour, not only shared the same sentiment as Adams but also expressed her gratitude for this tour in providing space for all of this to occur.
“To do a tour like this, where it’s an all female lineup is super sweet and I think being in that environment is going to be just a nice change of pace for myself, with how the nature of my career has been, just by coincidence,” Holliday said.
Beyond representation for female and nonbinary artists, for Adams, Holliday and Women That Rock, creating a space where artists can uplift other artists rather than compete is just as important.
Whether it’s mainstream pop or indie, female artists have been historically pitted against one another and have been compared countless times, but both Adams and Holliday strongly reject that idea. Instead, for this upcoming tour and beyond, they strive to create an environment that uplifts and celebrates those joining them—on stage and off.
“I hope people have fun and they feel like they can be themselves at this show,” Holliday said. “When I walk away from a concert that was really moving, I just feel more connected to everything around me, to the people, to the world… I hope that this show can give people a break from the stress of life and feel empowered and inspired by it.”
As for Aronow, when the tour finishes, she hopes to build upon the first show as a touring program, creating a sustainable platform that runs a couple times a year with more artists. The key in doing this, Aronow explained, is finding the funding to support it as well as finding the brands and partners that want to get behind it and make it possible.
“Sustainability for artists is really hard but with incredible music, generally comes incredible fan bases,” Aronow said. “If those artists can use their touring time to capture and grow their audiences, then sustainability becomes easier because they have people who are devoted to them.”
