Jill Sobule, the late singer-songwriter who scored a hit with the queer anthem “I Kissed a Girl” in 1995, will be celebrated this spring with a series of tribute shows around the country dubbed “Jillith Fair — Loving Jill Sobule.” Margaret Cho, John Doe, Tom Morello, Joan Osborne, Lisa Loeb, Marshall Crenshaw, Madeleine Peyroux, and the Go-Go’s Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin, among others, will all variously make appearances. Full details about which artists will be appearing where are on Sobule’s website. More dates will be announced in the future.
After this year, the organizers hope to hold Jillith Fair annually on her birthday, Jan. 16, and during Pride Month. The It Was a Good Life Foundation will be at this year’s events to distribute donations to the ACLU and other causes Sobule championed in her lifetime.
The first event will take place in Northampton, Massachusetts, on May 31. Crenshaw and Peyroux will appear at the event, hosted by Erin McKeown, with others. Another event featuring Amanda Palmer and others will take place the next day in Cambridge, Massachusetts. On June 1, an event with Cho, Loeb, Morello, Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro, and others will take place in Santa Monica, California. More dates will follow with full details and lineups on Sobule’s website.
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Sobule died at her home in Woodbury, Minnesota, when it caught fire on May 1. “Jill Sobule was a force of nature and human rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture,” manager John Porter said in a statement at the time.
The last song Sobule released was titled “J.D. Vance Is a Cunt.” Her management reports that she had two partially completed albums at the time of her death and some 70 finished songs. A full-length documentary is also in the works. Sobule’s F*ck 7th Grade – Original Cast Recording will come out on June 7 and a vinyl reissue of her 1995 self-titled album will come out the same day.
