You’ve Come a Long Way, Olivia

Years before k.d. lang or Tracy Chapman made a record, before the women in L7 plugged in their guitars, before many of the young “riot grrrls” were even born, Judy Dlugacz and nine other women in Oakland borrowed $4,000 and started Olivia Records, the first--and still foremost--company devoted solely to recording and releasing music by and for women.

“We were pretty radical feminists and lesbians in the early ‘70s, and we knew we wanted to start a business together,” Dlugacz, 40, said by phone from her Oakland office. “But when the others said they wanted to start a record company, I said, ‘Are you crazy?’ But they said it was all about creating a place for women in the music business, which was very closed.”

Dlugacz ultimately agreed, and this weekend, as the company’s president and sole remaining co-founder, she will preside over a series of events as Olivia marks its 20th anniversary. Kicking off the celebration will be a concert Friday at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Auditorium featuring many of the women who have recorded for Olivia.

Among those performing will be Cris Williamson, Tret Fure, Linda Tillery, Teresa Trull and Deidre McCalla--singer-songwriters who virtually created the field of “women’s music” and served as a bridge between the hippie-folkie culture out of which they grew and the wider spectrum of music being made by women today.

Olivia’s impact on the music industry has been virtually negligible in terms of record sales, its two-decade total amounting to something shy of 2 million records, a figure that might represent a decent month for a major record company. But Dlugacz said that the company’s achievement has been in addressing artists and an audience largely ignored by the majors.

“My experience in the last 20 years has been in creating visibility for women, and particularly for lesbians,” said Dlugacz. “There are now many role models that this is a healthy, normal way to be, and that there aren’t stereotypical ways you have to look or be. These days are very exciting.”

Ken Barnes, editor of the music trade magazine Radio & Records, agrees that Olivia’s significance is well beyond its level of sales.

“One of the key legacies of Olivia is just creating a stable opportunity for women to record the music the way they want to,” he said. “That’s fostered a lot of independence in women in music in general, not just the women on Olivia but some key figures on the mainstream scene as well.”

Olivia’s releases have not generally been specifically lesbian oriented, although the company has never been in the closet. The company’s first album, Meg Christian’s “I Know You Know,” stands as a lesbian culture landmark, and in 1975 the company issued a multi-artist collection titled “Lesbian Concentrate,” with cover art made featuring a mock orange juice can in response to anti-gay comments by then-orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant. That, Dlugacz said, made the task of establishing Olivia even harder.

“We were like the little red hen, no one wanted to help us out, so we had to do it ourselves,” Dlugacz said. “Back then there was really a lot of homophobia. In terms of the industry, we were not being outrageous and nor was the music. But we didn’t get any help.”

Rebuffed in attempts to set up distribution through the record industry, Olivia relied on its fans to take on the role of ad hoc distributors and concert promoters.

To singer-songwriter Cris Williamson--whose 1975 album “The Changer and the Changed” accounts for 300,000 of Olivia’s sales, by far the company’s biggest release--it was a godsend. She’d become frustrated knocking on doors of record companies only to be told that they “already had a Judy Collins.”

“Olivia and I decided to make up a room of our own,” Williamson, 46, said in an interview from her Oregon home. “We made up our own venues, made up our own money sources and invented an atmosphere. Today there are k.d., Melissa Etheridge, L7, the riot grrrls--they’ve made something up, too, built other rooms onto this.”

Still, Olivia remains a very small part of the music market, and Dlugacz said that today the record company is largely supported by profits from Olivia’s more recent ventures booking lesbian-oriented travel tours, including trips to Greece and Mexico.

Regarding the music industry as a whole, despite lang’s openness about being a lesbian and the presence of several key women executives at the major companies, Dlugacz believes that equality for women and acceptance of gay men and lesbians in the industry remains a long way off. She still has hopes, though, that 20 years after beginning on a shoestring Olivia can gain the attention of the music industry’s power-brokers.

“I’m going to make another round of going to the major labels to try to set up a distribution deal, and I hope that the doors will be open,” she said. “You look at what’s going on out there and you see women’s artists getting more popularity today, and I tell you, five years ago they would have all been on my label.”

SARAH FAWCETT / For The Times