Why have there been so few female headliners at Atlanta’s Shaky Knees?
When Jade Long and Jessica Thompson, lead singers of the Athens indie rock quintet Hotel Fiction, discovered they’d make their performance debut at Atlanta music festival Shaky Knees this year, their response oscillated between totally “freaking out” and hugging each other tightly.
It was a bucket-list moment for the group, which formed in 2019 while they were students at the University of Georgia.
“I went to my first Shaky Knees at 16, and it was a very eye-opening experience where I discovered a lot of my music tastes that really shaped who I am, (especially) seeing that this was something that people can do with their lives,” Long said.
After the excitement kicked in, however, Long and Thompson, both 27, made a jarring observation: They were one of only a few female-fronted bands on the extensive lineup. The realization reflects a darker reality for Shaky Knees, which heads into its ninth consecutive year without a female headliner.
As the three-day event — which returns to Piedmont Park this weekend with Twenty One Pilots, Gorillaz and the Strokes leading the lineup — emerges as one of Atlanta’s oldest music festivals, the dearth of women musicians on the bill becomes impossible to ignore.
“If you love something, and we do love this festival, everyone has to work to try to put as much love in it to make it better,” said Thompson, whose band performs at Shaky Knees on Saturday.
A numbers game
Formed in 2013 by Tim Sweetwood of event management company C3 Presents, Shaky Knees has evolved from a two-day festival at two locations (Historic Fourth Ward Park and Masquerade Music Park) to a three-day celebration where prominent rock artists descend upon the larger Piedmont Park, yielding at least 50,000 attendees each year.
This year marks the festival’s second time at the Midtown site, moving from the smaller Central Park in 2025. Shaky Knees entered another, more metaphorical but equally notable, territory this year: becoming Atlanta’s oldest major music festival that’s ticketed and hasn’t had a hiatus or cancellation since its inception (outside of COVID-19). Music Midtown, previously held in Piedmont Park, paused in 2024 and has not returned. One Musicfest, held in the same location, recently announced a hiatus for this year.
Shaky Knees, which predominantly features rock musicians, has also experienced growth in the number of genres it includes, like rap and EDM. Legacy hip-hop groups Wu-Tang Clan and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are among this year’s performers.
“It’s a festival that’s really important to us and our families, and Atlantans and Georgians … everyone in our state feels like this is a big deal,” Thompson said.
But the festival’s promising evolution hasn’t extended to its inclusion of women performers. This year, only 33% of Shaky Knees performers are or feature at least one woman or nonbinary musician, according to data compiled by Book More Women, a national nonprofit that has advocated for gender equity in music since 2018.
That number is higher than the national average (23% for major U.S. festivals in 2025) and recent data for festivals outside the U.S. (13% in the U.K. in 2022). Still, Shaky Knees’ figures have remained relatively stagnant over the years, per research conducted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Book More Women. Numbers for women and/or nonbinary performers at Shaky Knees have ranged within 25%-34% for most years since the festival began.
Further, a solo female act nor a band solely fronted by a woman hasn’t headlined the festival since 2016, when Florence + The Machine took the stage. A Shaky Knees representative didn’t respond to the AJC’s requests for comment or information regarding its booking process.
“Local events are super important to people just creating community and ways to uplift each other in an industry that might not always do it,” Abbey Carbonneau, founder and executive director of Book More Women, said about examining festivals.
Additionally, Carbonneau said her group’s goal is to talk to festivals and buyers to understand why the gender disparity exists and how they can change it, recognizing there are myriad factors that determine lineups (like availability and pricing). The nonprofit has an accountability program that partners with festivals to help ensure their commitment to diversity.
Elena de Soto, a talent buyer for Atlanta music venue the Masquerade, also acknowledges the hurdles festivals can face when aiming to create diverse lineups. She doesn’t think women should be tokenized in the process, either.
“You have to walk that fine line between turning things into a yucky, ‘we need to meet a quota’ type of thing.”
She added: “Putting in the extra work instead of just relying on submissions, I think is something that the industry could take note of. Sometimes, these big festival departments are being handed options, and there are women outside of those options if you go looking for it.”
Carbonneau posits that the primary genre showcased throughout Shaky Knees could help explain its lack of diversity.
“I think that skewing towards rock hurts them,” Carbonneau said. “I think there’s festivals that book similar types of acts overall and maybe are presenting a better diversity overall, but the rock world is hard. There’s a lot of systemic issues going back to just even young women just deciding they want to be in a band and then finding an environment that’s not really friendly for them.”
A rock reckoning
When Katherine Yeske Taylor was in her early 20s, she was a budding reporter covering Atlanta’s rock scene, when “music writers were older and male,” she said. She quickly encountered some of the misogyny often experienced in the industry.
“I remember (a man) cornering me in a club and basically just asking me, ‘Did I write my own articles, or did the editor write them for me?’”
Decades later, after hearing similar stories from female rock musicians while writing for local outlets Creative Loafing and Flagpole, Taylor knew the issue warranted greater attention. Her book “She’s a Badass: Women in Rock Shaping Feminism” was published in 2024.
“It just seemed like the obvious topic because it was a pretty common experience to have to fight to get our place in this space where men were automatically granted a shot to do things.”
Taylor notes that opportunities for women in rock are improving, highlighting Olivia Rodrigo’s inaugural Daisy Chain Fields music festival in Irvine, California, last month. The festival, featuring acts including Doechii and Chappell Roan, offered an all-women lineup.
Still, while major genres like country and rap boast an array of female mainstream stars, rock music seems to lag.
“All these other genres have kind of superseded (rock) in recent years, so I think maybe part of it is because if a woman has (rock) talent, she might choose to go into one of those other genres right now instead if she thinks that it might be a better path for her to express her vision and be taken seriously,” Taylor, who now resides in New York City, said. “It’s kind of a vicious cycle in that way.”
That didn’t deter Gabriella “Guitar Gabby” Logan, whose rock fandom began when she was 11. As a Black girl growing up in Stone Mountain and Gwinnett County, she didn’t see herself reflected in the music she loved (Nirvana, Queen). She wanted to fill that void.
Now, the 34-year-old Spelman College alumna, who’s performed at the Afropunk Festival and toured with the Indigo Girls, is the founder of TxLips Band, which functions as an international Black female rock collective and firm that teaches the next generation of women of color in rock. She especially likes building awareness of Black women’s history in the genre, amplifying the work of Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
“I think the answer starts with nothing that has to do with music,” Logan said when asked about improving rock’s gender disparity. “It has to start with the ethics of the business because if you don’t see value in women and diversity and queer people coming to the front of genres that they created and helped to form into what it is today, then it’s going to be hard to have that diversity be part of the long-term picture.”
Some male rockers have used their privilege to tackle the issue. Jack White previously talked about intentionally touring with an all-female band to increase their visibility. In 2020, the 1975’s frontman Matt Healy pledged not to play at festivals that don’t feature enough women and nonbinary performers.
But female rock musicians need “more of everything,” Long said. The road to cinch gender equality in the scene remains long and arduous.
“More opportunities, more representation, more abilities to shine … because they will,” Long said.
‘Really good for a girl’
Though Thompson and Long said they haven’t faced any severe scrutiny for being women in rock, they’ve experienced many microaggressions.
“You’re really good for a girl,” Long recalls hearing from men after too many shows to count.
That’s partially why Hotel Fiction wants festivals and venues to put more women onstage: The mastery and musicianship of female rockers deserve to be showcased just as frequently and wildly — and loudly — as that of men.
At Shaky Knees this weekend, Hotel Fiction is looking forward to connecting with fans, sharing new music (like their new single “Cold Cold Heart,” which dropped Wednesday) and seeing other festival acts that include women like Rehash and the Two Lips. At the same time, they recognize the greater importance of not being one of the few to have “a seat at the table.”
“If all of those perspectives that we’re hearing in music are white male perspectives, then we’re not just celebrating the diversity of the different perspectives that can come from songwriting and music,” Thompson said.
IF YOU GO
Hotel Fiction at Shaky Knees
12:45 p.m. Saturday. Sold out. Criminal Records stage at Piedmont Park. 1320 Monroe Drive, Atlanta. shakykneesfestival.com.