Hippie Chick is a fine art, hardcover coffee table book by famed rock and roll photographer Jay Blakesberg. Featuring 445 images shot over the past three decades, Hippie Chick celebrates the unique connection between the vibrant community of free-spirited women who are inspired by, and help inspire, live music. Blakesberg's visual anthropology beautifully captures the feminine festival and concert archetypes, and the individuals, who have graced the fields and performance halls of America since 1980. Earth mamas and fairy princesses, hula hoopers and whirling dervishes, front row regulars and flower crown makers; the entire tribe of dedicated, music-loving women–their fashion and their passion–is sensuously brought to life through Blakesberg's artful lens. Iconic rocker and pioneering hippie chick Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) provides the book's Foreword, offering a retrospective of women in the original hippie-era music scene. In the Afterword, modern-day hippie chick and freewheeling frontwoman Grace Potter considers how women today carry on the legacy of the demographic. Freelance journalist Edith Johnson contributes the book's Introduction and chapter essays, entitled "Love," "Devotion," and "Surrender." During the preparation of Hippie Chick, Johnson interviewed 81 different women from the live music scene. Their colorful anecdotes have been distilled into a series of quotes selected to accompany Blakesberg's images, bringing further dimension to the book's overarching theme of what it means to be a hippie chick.
JAY BLAKESBERG is a San Francisco-based photographer, filmmaker, and visual anthropologist, who regularly contributes to Rolling Stone, Guitar Player, Relix, and many other magazines. He has photographed countless musical artists, including the Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews, Phish, moe., Nirvana, the Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, Neil Young, and Carlos Santana, to name just a handful. Blakesberg’s photography has been included in over 200 CD packages and in magazines worldwide. Hippie Chick is his tenth book featuring his music photography.
GRACE SLICK is a singer-songwriter and visual artist who rose to fame during the hippie revolution of the mid-1960s while a member of the San Francisco psychedelic rock outfit Jefferson Airplane. She made history as one of the first women to front a rock and roll band, and served as a trailblazing advocate for social justice and women’s rights. In 1996, Slick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with her Jefferson Airplane bandmates.
GRACE POTTER is a multi-instrumentalist, rock and roll singer-songwriter from Waitsfield, Vermont. Raised by hippie artist parents, Potter grew up around music and picked up piano as a young child. She recorded her first solo album in 2004 and has since released four studio albums with her former band the Nocturnals. Potter has played many of the major U.S. music festivals, including Bonnaroo, Coachella, Lockn’, and Lollapalooza. Her new solo album, “Midnight,” will be released August 14, 2015.
EDITH JOHNSON is a freelance journalist and cultural historian who left behind academia and a burgeoning career in the art world to pursue her dream of documenting music full time. She has contributed to various print and online publications, including Hittin’ the Note magazine and Fest300. Since 2012, she has shared her live concert experiences through social media as “Festival Girl.”
