Now I’m fired up…
Kaitlin Butts took home the award for Honky Tonk Female of the Year at the Ameripolitan Awards hosted at the Moody Theater in downtown Austin, Texas last night.
Up against Cristina Vane, Emily Nenni and Hannah Juanita, she appeared very grateful to have won it, and gave a very moving and important speech about the struggles that women face in country music, and moreover, the music industry in general.
The Oklahoma native is an incredible talent, most recently releasing her 2022 album What Else Can She Do, fighting back tears, she started her acceptance speech by dedicating the award to the women she sees “out there running down the road alongside me”:
“I want to dedicate this award to the women that I see out there running down the road alongside me. Girls like Emily, Hannah, Summer, Kat, Brennan, Kesey, Taylor and all the other women nominated tonight that I haven’t gotten a chance to mention yet.
I just wanna say I see you, I see you and I see the extra struggles that we get to face. But you keep f*cking going, and you don’t let it keep you from doing this. I’m sorry, I have a foul mouth.
You don’t let the comments like, ‘I don’t normally like girl singers, but I like you,’ you don’t let that stop you. You don’t let the lowball offer at the 12 o’clock first set of the festival stop you, or the unconscious or conscious bias in this industry stop you… or the car breakdowns, or the mental breakdowns stop you, either.”
That right there is half the battle, but I digress…
Butts continued, adding that she knows what it’s like to get dressed in a van and put lipstick on in the rearview mirror, then proceed to get up on stage and to perform like it’s nothing.
She poignantly, and aptly, pointed out that all of that is, in fact, the opposite of “nothing”:
“You get in the dress in the back of that stink ass van in the parking lot of the venue, hoping no one will walk up to your untinted windows and see that you’re wearing your ugly bra to the show tonight.
You put on your lipstick in that rearview mirror and you get on stage like it’s nothing. But I know it’s not nothing, and I see each and every one of you honk tonk women and I admire you and I look up to you more than words can express.”
Kaitlin also encouraged the parents in the audience to take their kids to concerts, so that they might be inspired as she was as a young girl. She laughed as she pointed out that, yes, they might hear a few curse words, but they’ll be alright, and there’s no telling how it will inspire them to chase their own dreams.
I think it’s more than worth your time for any girl or women, or anyone else for that matter, to watch this speech, no matter what your dreams are. Kaitlin just gets it, and she’s not afraid to say exactly what’s on her mind… which is exactly why she won this well-deserved award.
I especially love how she noted that all of the aforementioned struggles are “struggles we get to face,” and she’s done it with grace and in a way that is certainly to be admired. With that kind of drive and mentality, it’s impossible not to love her, in addition to the fact that she’s a wizard with the pen and has an amazing voice too.
Keep Kaitlin’s name on your radar, because she’s going places fast:
And if you haven’t heard her music before, “Blood” is a fantastic place to start:
