The Mastersons, ‘Don’t Tell Me to Smile’

“You should smile more.”

Any woman who’s ever walked around with less than a permanent, pageant-ready, toothy grin has heard this many times: Smile more, and you’ll look more beautiful. Smile more, don’t be so serious. Smile more, and you could be president. Yes, even Hillary Clinton wasn’t immune, constantly told by pundits and politicians to turn her frown upside down (and then, when she did, she was told she smiled too much). But really, it’s bigger than the appearance of a happy face. There’s a universal discomfort with intelligent, strong women, and, in so many ways, telling one to “smile more” is a nicer way to say that we should focus on being pretty, not smart. Pretty, and not powerful.

“Don’t Tell Me to Smile” from husband-wife duo the Mastersons was written by Eleanor Whitmore after a woman — yes, another woman — yelled at her to smile more from the crowd. From their new record, Transient Lullaby, it’s about being sick of hearing others tell you how to appear or act when they really should be listening instead of looking. Here, Whitmore’s talking about life on the stage, but it’s a universal experience she shares, told with a bit of Liz Phair sass in a rich, roots-rock package and a lush hook. “Don’t tell me to smile. I will if I want,” Whitmore sings alongside backing from her partner Chris Masterson. Pretty, and powerful.  

Trixie Mattel: Equal Parts Mother Maybelle and Mama Ru

To be in roots music is to be infatuated with its “good ol’ days,” with its forefathers, and with tradition. Almost any change — stylistic or cultural — is debated. The labels on album spines and headstocks are just as important as the labels given to each other. After all, any genre within roots music is not simply a genre, but a community and, if the members of these communities look, sound, act, and think like ourselves, it’s easier.

On the other hand, the art of drag is all about challenging perceptions and presuppositions. By slapping on a wig and three or four pairs of pantyhose, a queen puts gender identity, sexuality, and societal pressures all under the microscope. In drag, boundaries are meant to be pushed, shock is a commodity, and respect for the “tradition” is more often than not shrouded in biting, heartless insults. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.

Where the two overlap, we find international drag queen superstar, contestant on season seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and folk musician Trixie Mattel. While many Drag Race alumni have released albums — not surprisingly all are dance/club-oriented — Trixie (aka Brian Firkus) just released Two Birds, a folk-influenced country album of original songs. Firkus grew up in rural northern Wisconsin with hardly a neighbor and a shortage of friends, so playing Carter scratch guitar and listening to his grandad’s favorites — Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash, and the like — were the most entertaining use of time. To most roots music fans, that’s an awfully familiar story, right up until you add a wig even larger than Dolly’s, makeup that rivals a clown’s, and a lacy nightgown.

In our brand new column, Shout & Shine, we will explore diverse voices and identities in roots music. We’ll talk to musicians, artists, and creators who don’t fit the “mold.” People who are marginalized within roots music communities — not because their love and respect for the music is lacking, not because they don’t have the familial or cultural ties, and not because they did not grow up learning chords from their grandparents at the kitchen table, but because there are people out there who believe the music can only belong to those who are exactly like themselves. A man in a wig, lashes, nails, and a nightgown is surely disqualified.

When I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw a video of you playing “Storms Are on the Ocean” on autoharp, I was shocked. Where did you get those autoharp chops?

Oh my God, you are going to laugh. I’ve only been playing autoharp for like … five months? I love the instrument! Plus, it’s such a pretty-looking instrument to play in drag. It has such an angelic, feminine look to it. I learned on a chromaharp by Oscar Schmidt and I just got a D’aigle harp made for me. It’s a custom build and it’s so beautiful.

I’ve played guitar for 15 years. I play kind of “Carter scratch” style. I grew up alone in the country playing, so I learned how to play the accompaniment with the melody together on guitar. I’ve always sung and played together, so it made perfect sense. I taught myself guitar, and autoharp, to me, it’s the same business. You use the leading tones of the chords to find the melody. You just learn to play by ear. That instrument, it’s sort of like learning to sight-read or sing solfege — like do-re-mi. Once you do it enough, it becomes second nature. On the album, I got Allison Guinn to play it. She’s like the Beyoncé of autoharp — she’s been on the cover of Autoharp Quarterly and she’s a Broadway actress whose special skill on her Broadway resumé is that she’s an autoharp champion. She’s fabulous.

I saw you perform in Nashville for A Drag Queen Christmas where you sang Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” live and accompanied yourself on guitar.

That was the only night I did “Coat of Many Colors.” I love that song and, to me, it’s almost a Christmas song. I ended up dropping it because I wanted to do what I normally do — I do a stand-up set with music woven in. I’ll make a joke about Aja [RuPaul’s Drag Race season nine contestant] looking like a burn victim, then I’ll sing “Girl on Fire” for 15 seconds. Or I’ll make a Columbine joke then sing “Dust in the Wind” for 10 seconds. That’s usually what I do — little bits of music punctuated by jokes. For Nashville, I wanted to do “Coat of Many Colors,” because I thought, if anybody is going to go on this journey with me, it’s the people in Nashville.

I play guitar. I went to school for music, but it never occurred to me to make Trixie sing. When I started, it was like a light turned on. I never really sang in drag until this year. I look like Dolly Parton, but I sing like Garth Brooks … like it doesn’t really make sense. [Laughs] It didn’t make sense to me for Trixie to have this man’s singing voice. But then the comedy became less about being a drag queen and more autobiographical. The stand-up show I’m doing now, there’s a portion where I do original music and it’s always everyone’s favorite part of the show. It occurred to me, people relate and are more responsive to Trixie being a singing drag queen than I thought they would be, so I might as well run with it.

You said you’ve been playing guitar for 15 years — how did you get started?

I’m from the Northwoods of Wisconsin, and we didn’t have any neighbors or anything. I didn’t have any friends. There wasn’t anyone else who lived around us, so I learned to play guitar at the kitchen table from my grandpa, who was a country musician his whole life. At 13, I started and he kind of taught me, but he was a little more insistent on me teaching myself. He said, “If you were a good musician, you could figure it out on your own,” which I think is sort of true.

Who did you listen to growing up? Who did your grandpa turn you on to?

He turned me on to George Jones, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty. Obviously, I gravitated more toward the women — I liked Loretta a lot. Dolly. Loretta and Dolly, for me, are running head-to-head for my favorite. I think Dolly is a finer musician, but I do like that Loretta’s music is a little rougher and tougher. She’s a little more like a tomboy in country music. I like the rougher side of her lyrics, and it’s a little more mellow. Her songs are about being poor and stuff, but obviously, I’m a drag queen, so I like that Dolly wears full drag.

There was some crossover into pop music for a while, that stuff you listen to when you’re a teenager. With folk, I was like, “That’s old people music! My grandparents like that.” When I started to get older, I was done with it, but then only as an adult, when I entered my mid-20s, did I realize that country and folk, given how simple it is, it speaks to the most basic human needs. It’s simple music because it’s by simple people for simple people, really.

I’m the only person from my family to go to college. You can be smart, but not educated and, in folk music, that’s pretty apparent. There’s an emotional intelligence. They communicate really deep things with clean, simple structures in the music.

The people who created this music have always had marginalized identities: immigrants, impoverished people in Appalachia, African slaves, African-Americans being excluded from Western European music and turning to jazz, creating blues. Roots music has always been this vehicle for the struggle of people who are othered. It would makes sense that LGBTQ identities could be intuitively folded into that music, but within these genres, there persists this narrative that they belong to straight, white, Christian men.

Folk music feels like it’s not for us because the culture that surrounds folk music is so old school and very religious. We feel like we can’t belong in that genre of music. When is a gay [artist] ever going to win a CMT Award? Probably never. Or even like an Americana award or something smaller. It’s a challenging thing. Folk’s contemporary movement is a little more liberal.

When I wanted to do the album, I thought it was going to be a shot in the dark, because I really wanted to use gay musicians, if I could. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. My producer, Brandon James Gwinn, is originally from Nashville, but he works in New York producing off-Broadway music material for musical theatre. I’m a half-musical theatre person, half-folk person, so he was perfect, because he knew the Nashville sound. He worked on Ring of Fire, the Johnny Cash musical, and he had a network of people, like the fiddle player and bass player.

I feel like a foray into the roots music market would be daunting for any LGBTQ person, let alone a behemoth character/star such as Trixie?

Originally, when we shot the album artwork, we did it in drag, out of drag, and we shot one together, because we weren’t sure how we were going to market it. We also thought about doing two different covers and different names to sell the album in different ways, because we wanted people who like folk music to pick it up, but not be deterred by the fact that there’s somebody who puts on a dress on the cover. My manager asked me if I wanted to release it as Trixie or as Brian. First I said Trixie, then I said Brian, then I was like, “You know what? It’s kind of irrelevant. It’s more about the story of the music. People can envision whoever they want singing it. That’s kind of irrelevant. That’s sort of the point of the album.”  I didn’t want to market it as drag, but I didn’t want to shit on what people already know about me. It would make no sense, as a business person, to market it without the name on it, because all of the followers I’ve gotten — who like me for comedy, for dressing up — it would be stupid to not try to also let them know that there are other things going on.

I think people, in general, especially in drag and with the age of drag on television, people aren’t used to drag queens having any discernible gifts whatsoever. Nowadays, dressing up is enough. When people see you do something, they’re like, “Oh my God! That person got on stage and did a thing!” I’m like, “By the way, Linda, people used to have to do that.”

How does it feel for you to go from being a former Drag Race contestant to becoming a songwriter?

I’ve always felt like a songwriter first and a live performer second. It’s exciting to have people hear it, even if they don’t hear it live. But I also prefer to play alone. I’ve always played by myself — it’s just what I’m used to. I really love to do stand-up and I love to do comedy and I think I’m actually funnier than I am a fine musician, so I like to blend the two together.

I’m hoping people will go on the journey with me. A lot of people love me for the look and for the comedy. I hope that they’ll listen to it. The music is kind of the behind-the-scenes of the lifestyle of being a comedian and drag queen. It’s not necessarily funny music; though a lot of it has a sense of humor to it, it’s not comedy music.

Would you say on your family tree, on one side you have Mother Maybelle and on the other side you have Mama Ru?

Oh yeah, totally! I’m so into that. There’s a museum somewhere that has Mother Maybelle’s autoharp on display and I’d love to go see it someday.

Last question: Do you think there oughta be a bluegrass drag queen named Shady Grove?

Oh my God. Yes. The answer is yes.

LISTEN: Dougmore, ‘Best Outta Three’

Artist: Dougmore
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Song: ”Best Outta Three”
Album: Outerboros
Release Date: June 2, 2017
Label: Golden Stag Music

In Their Words: “In ‘Best Outta Three,’ I attempt to capture a moonlight-drenched walk home from a first date gone wrong — that feeling when Lady Luck lets you lose, when a brazen first kiss is met by a turned cheek. Exploring games of chance to find my language for this particular heavy-hearted experience took form from its well-known, most basic-level — a playground match of rock, paper, scissors. Suddenly, metaphors for this romantic tête-à-tête find new life through the signing of hands by a metonymic displacement of the kiss event.

In the language of love, hand imagery is commonly employed, as in ‘winning his/her hand in marriage,’ a figure of speech that is an extension of the symbolic exchange of rings as signifiers for a couple’s love and relationship status. I use the poetry of the song to play in the space existing between sign and meaning, as well as signified and signifier, as my metaphors dance and spin out into something new as they run away with themselves.” — Dougmore


Photo credit: Yoichi Nagano

Healing the Heartbreak: A Conversation with Chastity Brown

“All my life, I was afraid of everything, and I wouldn’t touch what was beautiful to me,” sings Chastity Brown on “Drive Slow,” the first track on her new LP, Silhouette of Sirens. Appropriately, it’s a song filled with motion: an automotive chug toward the horizon, a call to move on and leave our ashes behind. But, like Brown herself, it’s more complex than just that. There are moments to stop, plant your feet, and savor the stillness, a rearview mirror filled with memories both sweet and sinister.

But Brown likes to move, no doubt — right now, she’s just completed a run in Denver, where she’ll be singing in Ani DiFranco’s back-up band later in the night. She certainly likes to move on, too, and Silhouette of Sirens finds the Minnesota-residing, Tennessee-born artist pondering perseverance: how to overcome and heal a broken heart with an understanding of all the many ways one can be shattered in the first place.

Now signed to Red House Records, Brown crafted Silhouette of Sirens with her longtime writing partner, Robert Mulrennan, and the result is a set of songs that exist in the perfect sweet spot between roots inspiration and modern sensibilities. And with plenty of soul-bearing honesty, too. “I try to find a way to sing where I’m not having a therapy session,” says Brown. “But I think there is a lot of longing on this record.” These aren’t songs to be heard prone on the couch anyway. “Pouring Rain” has a soul-filled groove, and “Carried Away” is a delicate but sweeping mid-tempo ode to rising up and over what sets us adrift.

You just got back from a jog — does running help you think creatively?

It helps me calm down. I think I have such high anxiety that it clears out the cob webs. I don’t do it to be entirely healthy. I just have to have something to take the edge off.

It’s been quite a bit of time since 2012’s Back-Road Highways, your last release. So much has changed since then: You have a new label, you’re five years older, we have a new president. How do you reflect back on it all?

There are mile markers that I think are physical: a record label, for one. I finished the album two years ago and, at that point, I had taken two years to make it. That was the longest I had taken for anything. And, at that time, I was also turning 33. I’m not religious or anything, but I was like, “This is my Jesus Christ year. This is my Buddha year.” Thirty-three is where you go big or go home. And I gave myself permission to actually be ambitious and gave myself permission to get what they call in the music business a “team.” To make the album, I had emotionally gone through a really dark time without realizing it, and that influenced the work. I was separating all the dark shit going on in my head with these songs I was writing with my writing partner. It wasn’t until after I finished that I was like, “Holy shit, this actually digs deep into my subconscious and exercises some demons I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.”

How so?

The music reflected itself back to me and, in one part, let me know I was quite broken, and in another part of the album, let me know I wasn’t that way anymore. It’s a fucking therapy session, but I can’t say what it feels like to be different. Though I know I’m literally in a different place than when I was making it.

Was it difficult to give up your independence and sign to a label?

Yeah, I’m a little bit — and I think my band mates can vouch for the fact that — I am a little bit controlling. But at the same time, this isn’t really possible to do alone. I had to ask people for their gifts and talent. It was difficult to relinquish some of that, but we all work really well together. I’m a 34-year-old woman who is not going to be told what to do. Working with these people on collaboration, I don’t feel like it’s me telling them what to do or the opposite. But I do have clear goals, and it wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was thought out, and I have to trust them. And I do.

You mentioned the album was finished two years ago, so do these songs still feel fresh to you?

I was expecting them to be old by now, but they’re not old to me. Maybe it’s just my relationship with them. For 2016, I got the incredible opportunity to tour with Ani DiFranco, and that was the real test of these songs. And I feel like they can hold their own. I still love them. But after you create, and you go on the road, and you geek out, the songs are still evolving. All I did is capture where these songs were at the time. But now I’ve changed, shit’s changed. They augment with me.

Who were you then versus now?

What I was experiencing during that dark time was having a really dark childhood. I think because of that — and the album is not about that at all — but I feel really sensitive to other people’s stories, and what I had realized is, that time period in my life broke my heart. As a child, my heart was broken, and it has taken me so long to mend that and allow love in my life. So the overall theme came out that there are different types of heartbreak. Of course there are love songs, but there are other things that break your heart. There is more to life than songs about coupled relationships — though I love those — but this is a little bit broader. A macro view of different types of heartbreak informed by my own personal heartbreak.

You’re singing with Ani tonight and you’ve opened for her in the past. That must have been an amazing, informative experience.

Yeah. Shit. I’ve said this before: It’s the most generous thing that any artist has done. She’s showed me how it’s done, in a different way. I’ve been touring for 10 years, but there are different things at her level, which you can only see from there. In the folk world, it’s generational, passing things down. It’s huge to me, how generous she’s been. And it’s a good affirmation that someone I respect gives me a thumbs up.

Did you have conversations with her about what it means to be a politically engaged artist?

Well, I don’t think we talk in terms of what things mean. We were out on the road when Trump was elected president, and what we talked about was how to act, and in what capacity. We have such a privilege, all across the country: When you step on stage, you are the loudest person in the room. I feel like Ani teaches by showing. She stands in her integrity so fiercely, it made me want to articulate even more what matters to me. Like how Black Lives Matter has been a huge cornerstone in what I talk about from stage the past year-and-a-half, and it will be until I feel like folks get it. You’d be surprised how many “liberal” audiences have a rebuttal to that.

Really?

I remember in Utah, I was talking about this Nina Simone song and I said, “I play this because Black lives matter.” And this woman was like, “All lives matter!” I want to use compassion to educate people, but at the same time, God, that woman fucking infuriated me. But it wasn’t the time. Going back to what to do as an artist during these times, it’s to use your voice in the capacity of your life. I’m from Tennessee; I have family members who voted for Trump. And those are family members I love, and I can’t pretend that they are evil. But I can get down and dirty in a difficult conversation, trying to figure out where they are coming from.

Have you written any overtly political songs?

I have, but none that I would play out. One of the titles was like, “Fuck You Pieces of Shit!” An ongoing rant. I was like, maybe I can kind of hone it in! But I have been creating. A lot of people are saying, “What are artists going to say as a comeback to all this?” And I’ve heard some incredible work that’s going after how fucked up our government is, but there are other things to focus on. Like the beauty of being a brown woman and celebrating that. There was a time after so many police shootings, all the songs I was writing were really angry. But Solange [and her 2016 LP, A Seat at the Table] was a great reminder of “Yo, let’s talk about our beauty.” And we should.


Photo credit: Wale Agboola

LISTEN: The Mastersons, ‘Perfect’

Artist: The Mastersons
Hometown: Houston, TX
Song: “Perfect”
Album: Transient Lullaby
Release Date: May 19, 2017
Label: Red House Records

In Their Words: “We wrote the bulk of ‘Perfect’ in Washington, D.C. and finished it years later in Newcastle, UK. Rarely is anything in this life perfect (especially the characters in this tune). Our best hope is to walk through it with a little bit of grace. ‘Perfect’ is a strange optimism from a broken pair.” — Chris Masterson


Photo credit: Curtis Wayne Millard

Vikesh Kapoor, ‘Down by the River’

Like Bob Dylan to those roaring locomotives, the mythical river has long been a source of artistic inspiration, impacting everyone from classical musicians to modern rock stars: Less assuming than a powerful ocean but no less captivating, that wayward wind of water often tells a story of its own. The mystery of the river — so easy to take for granted, until it dries up or overflows — runs as deep and long as its path, always headed toward a greater force and never sedentary. A river can whisper one moment and rage the next, hiding truth and lies beneath its murky surface.

When folk musician Vikesh Kapoor wrote “Down by the River,” he wasn’t hopping steadily along the banks in the summer sun. Instead, he was stuck home in Pennsylvania, while a snowstorm lingered. “A river called the Susquehanna rushed through my town and I’d sit on its bank in the snow thinking about a Ukrainian girl I met there, by chance, the winter before,” Kapoor says. “A few nights later, waiting for the snow to melt, the image of her on the edge of the river became clear in my mind. I finished the song while the sun was still down, but never got to sing it for her in the morning.” Maybe, just maybe, she can hear it now.

Set to a delicate pluck of guitar and Kapoor’s voice floating like a gentle mist over the water, it’s a moment to appreciate the ephemeral nature of things: Just like love, which changes in an instant, the river is transforming as it’s being watched, ever shifting and creeping toward its eventual goal. On “Down by the River,” Kapoor acknowledges that movement — and understands that, as romance and time get washed down stream, there is nothing more valuable then a simple second of standing still.

LISTEN: Scroggins & Rose, ‘Eagle’s Nest’

Artist: Scroggins & Rose
Hometown: Denver, CO / San Francisco, CA
Song: “Eagle’s Nest”
Album: GRANA
Release Date: May 23, 2017

In Their Words: “This was one of the first tunes that Alisa and I worked up as a duo. I had written this long before we started playing together and had a full band in mind for it. After playing it a few times and feeling how easy it was for us to play textures over each other’s interpretations, I knew we’d have no problem filling up the same space, sonically, even without a whole band.” — Tristan Scroggins

WATCH: Miner, ‘Bonfire Cabaret’

Artist: Miner
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Song: “Bonfire Cabaret”
Album: Tuanaki

In Their Words: “Huntington’s Disease, which claimed the life of Woodie Guthrie among many others, has brought a lot of sorrow into my life over the last couple years — but the best medicine for that sadness is a song of joy along with the love of my friends and family. For this video, we gathered a bunch of our loved ones to drink and sing together, as a reminder that love will always carry the day.” — Kate Miner

LISTEN: Mink’s Miracle Medicine, ‘Somebody Else by Your Name’

Artist: Mink’s Miracle Medicine
Hometown: Harper’s Ferry, WV
Song: “Somebody Else by Your Name”
Album: House of Candles
Release Date: May 26, 2017

In Their Words: “I wrote this song a few years ago about losing a friend. It took me back a few steps and I often felt like I was stumbling around looking for something. Time would pass and then, suddenly, I would accidentally call out their name and remember again. I’ve always been into the music straight out of old spaghetti westerns, and here I tried to take an iconic theme and use it through the whole song. I love how, when I hear that lick, I get an instant snapshot of the desert landscape in my mind.” — Melissa Elizabeth Wright


Photo credit: Chris Scruggs

LISTEN: Zephaniah OHora, ‘I Do Believe I’ve Had Enough’

Artist: Zephaniah OHora
Hometown: Manchester, NH
Song: “I Do Believe I’ve Had Enough”
Album: This Highway
Release Date: June 9, 2017
Label: Roundup Records

In Their Words: “I’ve lived in New York City for nearly a decade, and it’s a hell of a town to survive in. At the same time, it’s an amazing place filled with amazing people. But like any place or job, you get to the point where you want to get out of town and go some place easy and quiet with more trees. To quote the late great Merle Haggard, ‘If you don’t love it, leave it.’ Sometimes you get the itch to split town. But New York has community, and that’s why I haven’t left.” — Zephaniah OHora


Photo credit: Meredith Jenks