Welcome to Send Me On My Way.
I'm your host, Audrey Dean Kelly.
And on this podcast, we're going to talk about everything from music to pop culture to reality
TV to pretty much whatever I want.
So let's get into it.
As a musician in the industry, I think there needs to be a discussion had about the fact
that the Me Too movement has barely scratched the surface in our industry.
So that has inspired me to come to you today as a 37-year-old musician and mother of two
to talk about my experiences within the music industry.
I am someone who started making music when I was about 12 years old.
I lived in Arkansas and I started playing in bands.
And I moved to Los Angeles when I was 18 to go to college.
And that's the point when I started through the help of my cousin working as a songwriter
in the industry.
And I think that's where I really got my first glimpse into part of what I'm going to discuss
about the Me Too movement within the industry.
But we'll back it up quite a bit because I do want to start off on my first real experience,
which is the concert experience.
This is going to be a hard one for me to talk about, to be honest with you, because I have
buried a lot of these things for a long time.
And I've talked to my therapist about it a little bit, but I think I finally am ready
to talk about it.
And yeah, so we'll start off with one of the worst things that happens and that I experienced
in the industry, which is very young girls being scouted at concerts to go backstage
and hang with the artist.
We can all put together what that means.
My first experience, I was in, oh God, it was, and I was at Robinson Auditorium in Arkansas.
And I was there, my older sister brought me there.
I'm really surprised in hindsight that my parents let us go to this show, just the two
of us, but alas, they did.
So my sister and I were at that show and I ended up meeting up with my two friends who
were my age.
And I was still going to cathedral school, so that means I was in sixth grade because
that's the highest grade that I went there.
And it definitely had to be sixth grade.
So anyways, my friends were there with their parents.
I was there just with my older sister who immediately ditched me and went into the mosh pit.
So I hung back with my friends.
So we're having fun, we're watching the show, and all of a sudden this guy comes up to us
and hands us what I very naively thought were stickers.
Is it to me and my two friends who also were in sixth grade?
I'm going to protect everybody's identity here.
Also, just because those girls didn't end up going backstage, they went home with their
parents and they kept those stickers.
So if they want to call out who they are, that's fine, but I'm not going to call anybody
out on this podcast.
But anyways, we looked at the stickers.
We were like, oh, cool stickers, free stickers.
And then I looked at it closer and I realized it says VIP all access.
This is not just a sticker, this is a backstage pass.
And it was given to us during the opener, which was, gosh, it was that band they sing.
But anyways, so my sister, anyway, I met up with my sister at the end of the show and
I showed her that I was given a backstage pass.
And my sister got super excited about that and decided that she was going to steal it
from me and ditch me, leave me alone in a concert as a sixth grader.
And she was going to go backstage because she was four years older, so it would have
made her, I don't know, 16, I think, 15, 16.
So here I am left alone at this concert and people start clearing out.
And I remember I saw this kid from my church and he also, I guess his brother had gone
back, I don't remember.
But he knew the way back.
So I remember he showed me where they were, they were on basically the side of Robinson
Auditorium where the tour buses were.
And yeah, I found my sister there was quite a scene.
And I'm just racking my brain now thinking that was somebody's job.
Like, obviously that person was there to do other things, but part of his job was to give
out backstage passes.
And what I saw when I ended up making it backstage, despite the fact that my sister
stole my backstage pass, made it back there anyways, were girls that were definitely under
18 being taken on the bus, hooking up with these guys.
Yeah.
But I just, and like my sister, when we talked about it years later, she was like, oh, I
protected you by taking it.
I'm like, I don't think that's why you did that.
But thank God, thank God I was protected in that situation.
Now we're going to get into the real trauma in the one that I was not.
So it was a freshman in high school.
I don't know.
It's either ninth, eighth or ninth grade.
Anyways, so I was at, I am going to drop who, yeah, yeah, I guess I have to.
So I was at a big, I will say, I guess I have to.
I will say it was the opening band that had this person sent out, I believe.
I mean, that's who they brought us back to meet.
So it was that was bringing us back to backstage.
But anyways, 14 years old, I am walking around before the show starts or no, the opener was
playing when this happened.
I'm walking around with my two girlfriends and a woman this time comes up to us and says,
hey girls, do you guys want to come backstage and hang with the opening band?
And we're like, yeah, of course we do.
We're 14.
Because like honestly, and like, I have so much shame telling this story, but in hindsight,
just like the fucked up part of this industry is like the shitty things that happen to us,
then the victim needs to feel guilt about and needs to feel bad that they said yes to
the backstage pass and that they hung out with the band at that age and that they felt
like they couldn't tell anybody what happened.
And though I'm pretty sure those girls told what happened anyways, so you know what, we're
just going to tell what happened.
So we say yes, we go backstage.
Immediately when we get backstage, they start to offer us like a beer and we're like, oh,
well, we're 14.
And at that point, one of the artists kind of shits us that he's like, oh fuck this,
I'm too smart.
But the other one is like, oh, well, what a mix up.
What a mix up.
But that's okay dolls, you can still stay backstage with us and hang out.
We'll just give you waters and juices.
And yes, he was British.
And he was a charming British rock star who showed me a lot of attention.
And this was at a time that my parents had gotten a divorce, I think, two years before.
It was like, I was just a wild, rebellious little teenager, but at the core of it, I
wanted to be a musician.
So being in the presence of someone who had my ultimate dream was just so exciting, so
exhilarating, and it made me just kind of let my boundaries down.
And yeah, we ended up watching the show from the side of the stage and ended up going back
and he brought me back into the bathroom area of the backstage and we kissed and he put
his hands at my pants and was like, oh, and I, you know, then was like, we shouldn't do
this.
But so I didn't have sex with him.
I kissed him.
He touched me and he gave me his number and he gave me, I remember a little, it was like
a Wizard of Oz teddy bear.
That was one of the things that was like thrown up on stage.
And he wrote his phone number on it.
And yeah, I just, I mean, back at the time I was so excited and I think I even like kind
of, I told my mom that like we, I obviously didn't tell her that I hooked up with him,
but I told her that we went backstage.
And it was just like this exciting little secret.
So there I am 14 years old, had a phone call with him after that.
And he's a pretty famous old man, old man musician who it makes my skin crawl to now
think about that experience.
I have so much shame around it.
I can't believe that I'm even coming on here to talk about it, but it's true and it happened.
And to be honest with you, within the whole basically something happened in New York where
they released the statute of limitations where people could come forward.
And there was part of me, there was like a day where it was expiring.
And I think it really sucks that like it's amazing they open that up, but also at the
same time, it really sucks that they put any kind of expiration date on coming forward
about sexual assault.
And like look, there is a whole spectrum and I'm not trying to say that me kissing some
rock star and him putting his hands down my pants and having that experience is anywhere
in the same realm as an experience that someone else has had.
So please guys don't don't feel that I'm diminishing someone else's experience because mine is on
a lower level.
I was not raped, I was, I willingly went into this situation.
But the fact that someone, someone's job two different times was to come scout a young
girl, a couple of young girls.
And I have no doubt that this person had done that with young girls for a while.
I have no doubt at all.
And yeah, it's just, it's wild.
That's one part of the industry.
So not even the last experience like that.
There was another show, I mean granted after that experience, nothing happened like when
I went backstage, but there was another show.
I was in Memphis.
I like met someone, I was like, yeah, actually I remember this.
I'm not going to say the artist because I actually really like the artist and they didn't
do anything.
So I don't want to associate them with this.
But I was like singing along to the artist and I was harmonizing and basically someone
who was a guitarist for the next artist was right next to me, heard me harmonizing.
He was like, oh, you've got a beautiful voice.
I ended up chatting him up.
What do you know?
Then I'm backstage watching the show from the side of the stage.
That was a little bit less innocuous, but more innocuous.
Sorry.
This is going to be very off the cuff.
But my point in all of this is after the age of 16, I went to plenty of other shows, plenty.
And I didn't get scouted to go backstage at another show ever again.
Never at a legal age was I scouted to go backstage at a show.
So I know that I am probably one of million.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm not going to try to quantify those numbers, but maybe this podcast can be a place
where women can talk about that experience for themselves because you don't need to feel
ashamed if that was your experience.
You went to a show and you went to a show to see the artists that you idolized and someone
taking advantage of that inherent power gap.
It's not your fault that you took the bait.
And if you feel ashamed or if something more traumatic happened to you, which I wouldn't
be surprised.
Yeah, feel free to, you know, I'll create an email where you guys can send me stories
and vent and have this be a space where we can talk about this because this has to change.
It really does the industry.
And this is the time.
This is the time to upend all of the sexual abuse that has been happening in the music
industry for a very, very, very long time.
It has to be a safe space where you women can anonymously share those stories.
So think of it as a du moi for all of our experiences in the music industry because
we have barely scratched the surface ladies and we all know it.
So that is our inaugural short but sweet episode of Let Me Say.
If you have made it to the end, thank you for listening and for letting me share my
story because honestly, I think it's been pretty therapeutic to be more open and honest
about my life and I've been doing that a lot on Instagram and TikTok lately.
But I'm creating this podcast because I have a lot to say beyond those platforms.
And so this will just be a safe space for that.
And we'll see where this goes.
I am excited and thanks for listening, guys.
Love ya.
Also, this podcast is sponsored by OddRoutineKaliMusic.
Stay tuned for the full album.
Thank you.
The album is a monster.
I don't want this feeling to end
Can't we soak up the last reason that I like the sun and the rain?
Can't we stay back, can't we wake up?
Feeling of the golden days of the summer time
We can take a drive in the moonlight, sometimes
I'm in the sunlight, sunrise, sundown, at night
Can we stay back, can we wake up?
Can we find the feeling of the golden days of the summer time
We can take a drive in the moonlight, sometimes
I'm in the sunlight, sunrise, sundown, at night
Can't we soak up the last reason that I love the sun and the rain?
Can we take a drive in the moonlight, sometimes
I'm in the sunlight, sunrise, sundown, at night
Can we take a drive in the moonlight, sometimes