Beginning tomorrow, the Bay Area will be hosting the inaugural Doll Fest. The two day festival will take place at the Cornerstone in Berkeley, CA and is “a celebration of the feminine energy, friendship, and community gathering together in support of one another.”
The lineup is a jaw dropping list of rad bands all with a femme energy to them along with multi-genre artists. Doll Fest will feature artists such as The Iron Roses, Tsunami Bomb, Dog Party, Tess & The Details and many more on March 1st and 2nd along with a pre-show party tomorrow, February 28th.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been sharing interviews from a copious number of amazing bands that are stacking the lineup of Doll Fest. But, for our final interview of the run, we figured we’d go directly to the source! We spoke with co-founder of Doll Fest Maria Chaos. She explains the origins of the festival and the meaning behind the name, what makes Doll Fest important in today’s society and political climate, and – of course – all of the bands that she’s stoked to see! Check out our interview below and grab your tickets to Doll Fest now via their website here!
Interview
What inspired you to create Doll Fest and ensure that it has a strong focus on highlighting female voices in music?
I went to a lot of shows and festivals in the last several years, all over the country and world, and found myself noticing that the same demographic was constantly being booked, or the same bands would tour together. They would consistently shout from the rooftops that they were all the “good antis” – anti-transphobia, anti-homophobia, anti-racist, anti-fascist – as well as all the “good pros” – pro-women, pro-choice, pro-diversity, yet they never booked any diverse bands. Especially bands with femme people in them specifically, let alone femme fronted.
I was working on another festival as the Talent Buyer/Event Manager and started getting a little confidence in how to negotiate, network, and organize an event as big as this. That’s when the two things combined, my confidence and the anger towards the patriarchal and fascist country we live in came from. That was the birth of Doll Fest because I realized there had not been any femme fronted music festivals in far too long.
And because of the fight for those that are more marginalized, I wanted to be more inclusive, so I refrained from using various types of language in order for the umbrella of diversity and inclusion of trans, queer, enby folx. We hear the word “women” even today and automatically think of cis het women and that women is such a construct to our society so I wanted to expand it for more inclusivity and diversity. “Doll” has a very decorated meaning to it from being symbolic of Black trans women in the ‘80s of New York, to sailors calling women “doll” in a very condescending way and now is a term of endearment including trans women. Like many words, we have been able to take back and are now terms of endearment. “Bitch” is a prime example. I want that to be parallel of Doll Fest. That we get to take back events because without many, many decades of legacies in the music industry, music would truly not be in business without femme people.
How did you go about curating the lineup for the festival? What are the qualities or stories you look for in the artists that are playing this year?
This was very tough for me because my list of bands is infinite. If I booked everyone I wanted to play or booked everyone that also wanted to play, this festival would be every weekend, which is not sustainable.
From my perspective, talent buying is not about you and your taste in music. Yes, I am the Founder of this festival, but none of this is about me; it is about bringing people together in a weekend of fun. It is about catering to your audience’s ears. With that being said, I broke this up into three parts – Enjoyment, Draw, and Morals. Enjoyment being do audience members enjoy their show because they deliver a great show? From a business perspective, do they have a draw in the Bay Area? Now there are a few bands that don’t have a huge draw in the Bay Area and deserve a shot at showing off in one of the richest areas of music in the country. I was confident that with enough marketing strategies and promotion we could showcase how awesome they are. I like to think that we have achieved that. And lastly, do their morals align with those of the festival. I like to think that on the first try of this I did pretty okay.
How do you balance the creative and logistical demands of organizing Doll Fest while staying true to the core mission of supporting female voices?
Yoga or boxing, crying myself to sleep from stress and therapy, haha. No but seriously, there are a number of things to look at, especially for our first one. Does the band align with our mission? Do they have a Bay Area draw? Do they put on a good show? Will the audience enjoy their music? These are just a few of the questions I looked at when contacting the bands or their agents. But it’s not a perfect science, aside from the bands’ morals alignment.
Are there any specific stories or experiences – good or bad – from the artists you’ve worked with that have deeply inspired you or influenced the direction of the festival?
When I have met femmes in the industry who are legends and don’t boast about it. I have been in conversations with some really incredible women and femme beings since this journey or prior to that and their humility just sings to my soul.
A more recent event was by Cassie Fox, who runs Loud Women, a DIY femme forward festival that recently expanded outside of London into New York and Australia and she has been nothing but supportive of us. She clearly was not threatened by Doll Fest taking her thunder. Cassie has been nothing but kind, humble, loving towards what we are doing. She even asked me, a total novice, for advice. And all of these women I am sharing about I can now all call my friends. We are more marginalized than ever before and we need community and friendship to stick together. We are going to need it now more than ever.
What kind of support have you received from other femme people in the music industry during your journey with Doll Fest?
It has been nothing but positive. I have felt very fortunate to have started this journey solo and am starting to end the first chapter with an entire group of people that have been beyond supportive of this since the beginning. Doll Fest’s inception has easily been the best thing that has ever happened in my life and between my inability to take “No” for an answer at times, and meeting some of the best baddies I have come across. I cannot wait to keep doing this over and over again. Doll Fest Volume 2 is already in the works, as well as some other developments about the growth of Doll Fest, but more on that later.
What kind of impact are you hoping to make on both the music industry and the audience by showcasing female talent through this event?
One, to showcase that this patriarchal world has some competition. We have so many people these days claiming that they love having diversity in their worlds, yet they don’t add them to their lineup. That doesn’t showcase anything to our young people that are the future and we need them to help with this revolution.
Two, this event is all ages to show young people that they have representation in this world. There are so many folx I have met that have said they WISHED something like this would have been available to them when they were younger.
And lastly, the impact that I would ideally like to make is that if someone says that Doll Fest is the weekend they look forward to the most out of the year, then I have done my “job.”
In your opinion, what are some of the key barriers that femme people in the music industry still face today, and how can the industry be more supportive?
Femme people are not respected in the music industry. Every industry has been once dominated by white men, and then later just men and we are still fighting for that and it is 2025. I will fully admit that I am still pretty novice to the industry, but I’ve been adjacent enough to understand how it works. And I have watched how femme people are treated so differently in comparison to men and not just in the music industry, but every industry.
Even femme people that are veterans of the industry are still, at times, having to “prove” their worth after being in the industry for years to decades. And even then it feels like there are tiers of respect; like you made it into the Green Room, but that’s tier one, and there is a Silver Room then Gold Room, then Platinum Room, and the line goes on. What happened to just showcasing your capabilities? The “good ol days”? Oh right, they never actually existed for femmes.
How do you see Doll Fest evolving in the future, and what are some of your long-term goals for it?
Long term goals would be to scale it to be an outdoor festival, maybe Punk Rock Bowling big, haha, but at least outside would be fun. Even having more than one a year is definitely not something I would be opposed to.
It’s probably too taboo to say… but which bands are you most excited to see?
All of them. I genuinely cannot answer that. There are a handful of bands I actually have not seen and may have a smidge of a different type of excitement. I have flown all over to try and see as many bands as I possibly could. Shoutout to Frontier Airlines, Southwest and Alaska for always coming in clutch with flights under $50 each way to make my financial irresponsibility more manageable for me to see these bands.
But the reality is, this festival is special; not because I am bias, but because it’s A – the first one and B – we strived so hard to project what we are about that I feel like there is going to be this communal sense of joy that I wish we could bottle. Doll Fest was built on the principles of building community, finding friendship, while being in a place of safety. Doll Fest is a festival weekend that if someone walked up to me after a few Volumes of Doll Fest have passed by and they tell me, “I look forward to this weekend every year,” then I will die happy.
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