Tag: lesbian

Country Star Chely Wright Brings All of Her Life Experiences to a New Corporate Role

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

From growing up on a Kansas farm, to building an award-winning country music career, to a groundbreaking coming out in 2010, to now. As Senior Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility and New Market Growth at global workplace experience and facilities management company ISS, Chely Wright has followed a simple but effective mantra: “Plan your work and work your plan.” Her parents instilled this ethic in Wright and her siblings, and to this day it guides her trajectory.

“My parents raised all three of us kids to be problem solvers,” she says. “When you live on a farm, you’re poor, and you have to fix things with duct tape, you get really good at problem-solving. It’s in our DNA, and I love that they raised us to do that.”

A singer and songwriter, she moved to Nashville in 1989. Awarded the Academy of Country Music’s Top New Female Vocalist of 1995, her steady ascent led to over fifteen chart singles — including her first hit, “Shut Up and Drive” (1997), first number one, “Single White Female” (1999), and “The Bumper of My S.U.V.” (2005) — and eight studio albums.

Wright came out in 2010, making history as the first country star to publicly do so — at great personal and professional risk. At that time, she could not have anticipated that her courage and authenticity would not only reverberate and empower countless others, but would eventually lead to a high-level position.

“When I came out, I wanted to do it well,” she says. “That included embedding myself with organizations that could inform, educate, and help me be a good voice in the LGBTQ community. In doing that, I gained tremendous understanding of the power of storytelling and, essentially, culture work. I began having opportunities to do that work with corporate organizations, higher education, and faith communities. It became what I called my ‘side hustle,’ in addition to my work as an artist.”

When COVID-19 lockdowns brought touring to a halt in 2020, Wright continued her “side hustle” through virtual events and workshops. One of her clients, global design firm Unispace, brought her on full-time as chief diversity officer, working in DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). This year, she joined ISS, whose international reach includes over 320,000 employees worldwide.

Moving into corporate social responsibility was an organic transition, as CSR intersects with DEI. “We think about creating access and opportunity for Black- and Brown-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, locally owned businesses, LGBTQ-owned businesses, veteran-owned businesses,” she says. “We think about procurement, sustainable sourcing, and ethical supply chains. Our clients have their eye on mindfulness around who works for them. They know there’s an employee value proposition. Those employees want to know that the company they work for is not only being good corporate citizens, but also ‘What are they doing for my community? What are they doing within a twelve-block, twenty-block, hundred-block radius of where I go to work?’

“Especially in the past five to ten years, companies are seriously asking themselves, ‘How do we not only protect our shareholders, our stakeholders, but how are we making sure that the people who work here know that not only do we need and want to give them health insurance, and economic security through a 401k and a paycheck, but what are we doing to use the monies we are making as a company to make the communities outside the four walls of this business, this office, better?’ That’s how I see the shared space between DEI and CSR.”

Wright works in the ISS New York office, sometimes telecommuting from home, and often traveling to meet with clients onsite. “I keep having opportunities to use my story,” she says, “and I cannot think of a single thing more gratifying than doing that now in a corporate space, in a global organization. I get to use that on their behalf and on behalf of our clients.”

In time for Mental Health Awareness Month, Chely Wright spoke at length with BGS about what she calls a move “from C-chord to C-suite,” how the landscape on Music Row and beyond has and hasn’t changed in the fifteen years since she came out, and how she balances fear and caution about the current climate with innate hope and optimism.

So many of us, especially women, experience impostor syndrome in our careers. Did you experience this as you moved into corporate spaces?

Chely Wright: Yes, a hundred percent. “Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Do I belong here? Do I actually have the goods to deliver?” Making a dramatic life pivot, impostor syndrome bubbled up and it wasn’t my first bout. I dealt with it when I came out. I dealt with it when I left Polygram and went to MCA Records. I dealt with it in 1989, when I went to Nashville to get a record deal. I know now that when impostor syndrome scratches at my back, I just turn around and say, “Okay, I have things to learn.”

There is nothing more exciting than taking on a new skill set and dipping my toe in a body of water that I never thought about being in before. I have 10,000 sunrises left, if I’m lucky. So it’s not “What can I do?” It’s “What do I get to do?” Why wouldn’t a person like me have a second and third life, take the leadership/communication/radical listening/storytelling/execution skill set, and go into corporate spaces?

We take a myopic view of the music business, but it’s business. The artists who have staying power and choices are iconic not just because of their talents. They do open their mouths and something magical comes out. But when you look at what they’ve done with their business and marketing and the protection and stewardship of their brand, it is business.

When Rodney Crowell produced Lifted Off the Ground [2010], he asked me, “What is your goal as an artist?” I said, “My goal is to be able to make music as long as I want to, when I want to, where I want to.” Because I’m in a corporate role right now does not mean in any way, shape, or form that I’m not going to make more records. I know I will. I have the choice to do that when, where, and how I want to, and having that choice is a blessing and a gift.

What changes do you see in the music industry? How does the big picture look today compared to when you came out?

It looks different than it did fifteen years ago. The music industry, as a whole, obviously is making progress. And I think it would be safe to say that the country music industry is making its own progress at its own pace.

All I know is this: change happens, whether we want it to or not, and there will never again have to be someone who says, “Do I jump first?” I jumped and several others since then have joined me in raising their hands, owning their narrative, and saying, “I am a writer, a producer, a picker, and I happen to be a queer person.”

That said, a lot has changed in the world that makes it more difficult to raise your hand and say who you are. Certainly in the last few years, politically, it’s gotten, in some ways, more dangerous to do that. In some ways, the stakes feel higher right now. But change happens. That’s the thing about time: you can’t slow it down. It’s coming.

Does country music have quite a ways to go to be known as a bastion of equity, fairness, justice, and safety for all? Of course. So does banking, construction, and tech. They’re all on their respective journeys and it takes courage. It takes courage to be a holder of a unique story that people might not be ready to hear. It takes courage, tenacity, and a sense of self. God bless those who raise their hands and say, “I am also this.”

 

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Change is not always a forward or positive step. Change is happening now, but in ways that many of us feel are going backward and becoming increasingly frightening.

Change is happening in some terrifying ways. I won’t gaslight and say, “It’s not as bad as it seems,” or, “It’s just rhetoric,” because even if the thing itself doesn’t happen, the terror that it might is the damage.

Some of these things we fear might not come to pass for certain populations, but we look at our brothers and sisters who are in the fight as well — Black and Brown people, immigrants, trans people — they are my family, and very real things are manifesting for them that aren’t just rhetoric. My wife is Jewish, we are an interfaith family, we are two moms, we are women, and we feel under threat in a lot of different ways. People in our family, and in our circle of love and trust and chosen family, are under threat.

American democracy is, by all intents and purposes right now, very close to being disabled. When we hear we’re in a constitutional crisis, in farm terms, we’re hogtied. As a mother of Jewish babies, as a queer person, as a person who has traveled the world and believes America is the greatest nation on the planet, the importance of America and democracy surviving this — it’s not just America at stake. It’s everyone. It’s the human population. We need to find a way to become un-hogtied, because democracy and freedom, real freedom for all, has to stand. I shudder to think what the world would look like without an American democracy.

In a 2010 interview with Entertainment Weekly you said, “It’s the secret haters who do the most harm, historically.” Those haters are now loud and proud. Is that better or worse? Knowing the enemy versus not knowing who and where they are?

Yes. They’ve become unburdened by any concern of being seen as homophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic. The power of gang mentality is real and negative gang mentality scares me a lot. There’s danger in it and people are very easily pulled into the vortex of those energies. When these people group together, form coalitions, lock arms, and move, they take on a new and exponential energy that can suck others up into it.

That scares me. I almost wish they would stay in their closets. But it’s also helpful to know who’s with us and who’s against us. That is really powerful information to have.

You said earlier that you have 10,000 sunrises left, if you’re lucky. There was a point in your life when you no longer wanted those sunrises. The Trevor Project’s 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People cites, among other things, that 39% seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year. What is your message – and how is your mental health today?

Coming out as gay when I did was the only way I could survive. On the morning after I didn’t end my life, on that cold winter day in my house in East Nashville, I was afraid I was going to go back downstairs, grab that gun, and do it. So I got on my knees and said, “God, if you have a way for me now, I need to know it.” Hand over my heart, in an instant I knew, “You’re going to come out, you’re going to come out well, and you’re going to tell the whole story.”

I had a responsibility to my maker to tell that story, which included a successful, relatively well-positioned person who always had a ton of confidence, love, friends, health, and resources. I had all those things, and I found myself with a loaded nine-millimeter gun in my mouth – a gun my parents bought for me for protection.

I had a responsibility to say, “This is how bad it gets when you don’t get to be who you are.” It was important, and I’ve said this many times, for the 14-year-old kid at the foot of their bed with their dad’s gun in their hand. It was important because we have to raise our hands in spaces where representation does matter, like in country music. Somebody needed to say, “I love the Grand Ole Opry, I love our troops, I love having grown up in a farm town in Kansas, I’m a person of faith, and I am a queer person, always have been, and always will be.”

My mental health, ever since that morning after I didn’t end my life – I’ve never had another thought of doing it. I’m often asked if the day I came out was the best day of my life. It wasn’t. The best day of my life was the day I decided I was going to come out, because for the first time since I was 9 years old I had hope that I could be me – the whole me.

So my message … I don’t say “It gets better.” I never liked that campaign of “Just survive junior high. Just make it through being bullied in high school, because once you’re an adult and have resources to change your zip code, it gets better. Just hang on through the shit because it’s going to get better.” I don’t like it. Our job as grown-ups is not to ask young people to survive the shit until it gets better. Our job is to roll our sleeves up, reach out, go to the shit, and fix it for young people right now. It’s incumbent upon those of us who have power, position, and resources to make it better now.

What can each individual, those of us who don’t have “power, position, and resources,” do to help make it better?

What I realized after coming out and having conversations with thousands of other queer people, whether it be on the phone, or they’d write a letter, write to me on Facebook, or stand in line after an event and talk to me and share their story, I understood that everybody has a fan club. That fan club may be your neighbors, your colleagues, your family, your congregation. It may be one person or a collection of people that notice what you do, what you say, how you express yourself. Everybody has their own personal story and presence. How will you use your respective power, position, and resources to do good?

Power means your personal influence – and it may just be with one neighbor or coworker. Position means, for example, if you’re really good at swinging a hammer, then do a little work with Habitat for Humanity. Use your skill. Resources might be, “I’ve got some extra ‘this,’” so use it.

Everybody has power. How will you wield it? How will you use your skill set? How will you use your unique resources, your influence, to make things a little bit better for an organization or a single person? That might mean swinging your hammer, or it might mean helping someone in a crosswalk when the light is about to change. There are a thousand ways we can use our power, position, and resources every day.

You wrote your autobiography Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer “to tell the story of who I am.” Who are you now?

I’m exactly the same. I have new experiences to add, my CV looks different, but I am exactly the same person. Still a person of faith, a person who loves country music and the Grand Ole Opry, who loves to meet and talk to people. I’m still really curious, proud of who I am, and as hopeful as I always have been.

And I’m still strategic, as evidenced by the way I came out. If you look at the way I’ve lived my life and evolved my career since then, it should surprise no one how strategic I was in how I came out. I wanted to come out well, and that required strategy, because the people who will and do malign people like me, the Focus On the Family [kind of] organizations and the far-right fringe, who want to tell stories that aren’t true about people like me — you better believe they’re strategic.

I’m going to meet and match their strategy with how I tell the real story of me and people like me. It goes back to what [my parents] Stan and Cheri Wright told me: “Plan your work and work your plan.” I did that when I came out, and I’m doing that now.

Photo courtesy of Shorefire Media.

Basic Folk: Mary Gauthier & Jaimee Harris

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris talk to Lizzie and Cindy for Basic Folk onboard the Cayamo cruise in front of a live audience. We get down to business in addressing nice things by asking Mary what kind of shoes she’s wearing – as she has a reputation for enjoying the good stuff, especially on her feet. After that, we asked and Jaimee enthusiastically answered the age-old question: What is the correct number of shoes to bring on tour? They generously share about their relationship, which began two years after they met as teacher (Mary) and student (Jaimee) in a songwriting workshop. Interestingly enough, both Harris and Gauthier have been playing music for about the same amount of time, despite their age difference. Jaimee, mid 30s, and Mary, early 60s, are also both sober and expand on what it’s like to be students of their own patterns.

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We also talk about their touring life, songwriting processes, and the alchemy of transforming personal trauma into art. We get to hear the very cute story of how Jaimee first heard of Mary Gauthier, by way of Ray Waylie Hubbard’s song “Name Dropping.” Mary, in turn, talks about her first impressions of Jaimee’s songwriting (spoiler alert: she was completely floored). They share their future plans with us, where they say there will be a Harris-Gauthier album, right after Jaimee completes the three records in her head and Mary writes her second book. They also share what it’s been like when they are together and around people who know Mary (who has a higher profile in the Americana world), but don’t know Jaimee. Each comment that they feel for partners in relationships with people who are “actually famous.”

We end with a great Lightning Round, a game we like to play with partners called “Which One.” We think they might have enjoyed that, because on the last day of the cruise Mary, getting off the boat, shouted, “Thanks for the interview! The Lightning Round was a real moment!!”

Photo Credit: Will Byington 

Out Now: Jaimee Harris

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Jaimee Harris is a thoughtful songwriter, a kind and quirky human, and an insightful individual. It was an honor to speak with her about her upcoming tour, the inspiration behind her songs, and how she takes care of her mental health in a demanding industry. Our conversation touches on everything from her daily routine – right down to crafting the perfect cup of coffee each morning – to how she stays grounded on the road, to the process behind her songwriting.

We dive into her haunting song, “Orange Avenue,” written about the tragic shooting at the Pulse LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida – a thoughtful and chilling track. We also explore the details of the title track of her 2023 album, Boomerang Town, a story song rooted in both fact and fiction. It follows intriguing characters with intricate pasts, the restless ache to escape small-town limits and achieve something big, and the soul-crushing realities of a harsh world.

I hope you can feel Jaimee’s humor, intellect, and warmth through this interview.

You have four months of touring coming up. You’re playing shows across the U.S. and you’re also headlining a tour in the Netherlands and Belgium. How does all of that feel and what are you most excited and anxious about?

Jaimee Harris: Mary [Gauthier] and I just got home from being on this incredible thing called Cayamo, which is like a floating music festival on a cruise ship. We were on that boat for seven or eight days and just got home last night. We leave again this weekend for tour. So I’m trying to pretend I’m not home right now. Because if I switch into this mentality of, “I’m home now,” then that just disrupts the system. So I’m looking at this week as if I’m still on the road. With just like a couple days off.

I’m so excited about touring the Netherlands. It’s one of my favorite places to play. It’s one of my favorite places to be. I love the people there. I love the culture there. And it’s been cool because I’ve been over there many times as an opening act, but I’ve never done my whole set there. And it’s been my experience that the people in the Netherlands can really handle and really enjoy the dark songs.

How do you find constantly being on the road? And, how do you balance that with mental health?

Well, I’ve learned that I need to have a couple of things in place to make me feel comfortable and it doesn’t take much, but one of them that is so important to me is my coffee, which might seem silly. But there’s this coffee I love from Austin, it’s called Third Coast, and Mary Gauthier, my partner, used to run restaurants in Boston and one of the only things she kept from her restaurants when she sold them to move to Nashville to become a songwriter is this industrial coffee grinder.

Every morning we grind it and make espresso and that’s like a huge part of my joy. And we bring it on the road with us. I bring a little kettle and my Hydro Flask, I’m a Hydro Flask girl.

Me too! Mine is right here! [Pulls up Hydro Flask]

Amazing! I love them so much. So the water bottle is a huge deal on the road.

Every morning when I start my day with that coffee, it sets me up for success. Having a little bit of routine to keep me tethered to something while we’re on the road is really helpful. I’ve found that I can always find 15 minutes throughout the day to move my body. Making that a priority for me helps everything while I’m on the road. I love being on the road. Today, since we just got home yesterday, I’ve just been on the couch all day. Re-entry is always hard for me. So today I’m just watching movies and being a weirdo on the couch.

Could you tell us about your recent interactions with Emmylou Harris?

I think coming off this thing we just did on the boat was incredible and Emmylou Harris is my number one hero of all time.

Her guitar tech, Maple Byrne, gave us a heads up a few weeks ago that Emmy might want me to play guitar and sing with her for this [songwriters] round we were in. I literally was driving a car in the Hill Country in Texas and I had to pull the car over and scream. I was like, “There’s no way! That’s my number one hero!” And I didn’t even believe it was gonna happen until it happened.

Earlier that day [during Cayamo], I played a show as me on the boat. Twenty minutes before I played, security walked Emmylou Harris and her friend to my show. I literally had to run to the bathroom! I was like, “I’m gonna be sick. I can’t handle this. This is crazy! THIS IS CRAZY!” I literally forgot the first two lines of the first song, because I was so in shock. I just couldn’t believe that happened and then I got to play with her later that afternoon. My wildest dreams have come true!

You’ve mentioned Mary a little bit. What has it been like for you to find a partner, Mary Gauthier, who is both a partner in life and also a partner in music, playing shows and touring together?

It’s been incredible. I have learned so much from her about what it is to be a troubadour from the business side of things. She’s so wise, because she came to music after running three restaurants. She has a lot of business experience that she’s been able to apply to the world of being a troubadour, which is incredible. She’s been able to do what she does inside her own integrity in a way that’s really beautiful to learn from. And I get to live in a house with one of the greatest living songwriters. I truly think she’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and it’s made me a better writer. Just getting to watch her, how hard she works on songs. She is a real hard worker. I mean, she’s got a lot of natural talent, but she chisels and chisels and chisels songs out of the marble. And so it’s made me up my editing game.

Your song “Boomerang Town” is so beautiful and relatable and intimate; it’s a story-song format. How did you come up with the idea for “Boomerang Town” and what does that song mean to you?

It came in different stages. I’d always wanted to write a song about where I grew up. I’m from a small town just outside of Waco, Texas. I remember being in my early twenties and trying to explain to people where I grew up and I came up with the phrase, “It’s a boomerang town.” People try to leave, they end up going back there pretty quick. That phrase had been in my mind for a while.

In 2017, I got asked if I wanted to sing a verse of “This Land Is Your Land” during this 4th of July celebration. The songwriter hosting the song said, “What verse do you want?” I said I want the steeple verse. The verse is: “In the shadow of the steeple, I saw my people/ By the relief office, I saw my people/ They stood there hungry, and so I stood there asking/ Was this land made for you and me?” In my hometown, there’s an interstate, I-35, that runs through the center of it and on the east side of that interstate there’s a steeple from the Truett Seminary in town and on the west side there are two relief offices. The interstate creates a bridge and there’s been a community of people living under that bridge for decades, like my entire life.

When I saw those words, I saw my hometown. The songwriter said, “I always thought Woody got it wrong with that verse.” I couldn’t believe that he would have such a different take on that verse; that planted a little seed for me. I worked on that song for years. I tried a bunch of different perspectives. I initially started with myself and I couldn’t find a way for the song to move forward if I was the narrator. I tried it from the perspective of a veteran. Then I tried it from the perspective of a woman who worked at a cafe. I decided her name was going to be Julie, because I’m a huge fan of Buddy and Julie Miller. I finally landed on the perspective of the 17-year-old boy who worked at Walmart that knocked up his girlfriend. Which is a combination of me when I worked at Walmart and somebody else I knew. That’s when the story started to take off.

I’ve had so many experiences where people came up to me and said, “Hey, you got that song perfectly right.” Like, “My brother died under that bridge, I know all about that scene.”

Also, being a woman from Texas, with the way things are going there – nationally and politically, that song, how it ends, has a way deeper impact than I could have imagined when I wrote it in 2020. The choices women had in 2020 are more than we have now in 2025. There’s no way I could have known that when I was writing it.

You’ve just passed 11 years of sobriety. Is there anything that you’d like to share about your sobriety, your support system, and addiction in general?

Well, I couldn’t have done it without 12-step recovery. I’m very active in 12-step recovery. That’s been my lifeboat, doing it with other people. Someone in recovery said this thing that has stuck with me: “At five years, you get your marbles back. And at 10 years, you get to play with them again.” I feel like that’s true. I’m learning every day.

I remember when I first got into recovery, people would say this thing that I could not understand, “I’m so grateful to be an alcoholic.” When I got there, it was through the criminal justice system, so I was going there to get a paper signed. I was like, “What are these people talking about?” I can’t tell you how many times over the last six years I’ve said, “I’m so grateful, because I have a support system in a time when a lot of people feel really isolated.”

You spent some time in Florida in 2022 and you wrote a song called “Orange Avenue” about the 2016 shooting at the Pulse LGBT nightclub. What does this song mean to you, and what was the process of writing it?

I decided to visit a bunch of spots in Florida to collect stories and write and record a song in each town. I spent a month traveling the state. I wasn’t even gonna go to Pulse, and then somebody mentioned it and I said, “Okay, I’ll check that out.” Everything about it really floored me. I was imagining this bar being in an entertainment district, where there are a bunch of bars. It isn’t like that, it’s a neighborhood bar. So it’s just house, house, house, house, a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street, and then Pulse. Of course it was a gay bar, but it was also a bar that you could get into if you were 18 and up. So it’s also a place where younger kids could get in and just go dance and have a good time. Which is why the youngest girl that was killed was 18 years old. She was there on vacation with her family.

Now it’s been deemed a national monument. When I was there, it was kind of makeshift. There are pictures of people, notes to loved ones, poems, just all sorts of tributes. Then there’s this one kind of official-looking plaque. It has the names of 48 people that died in the shooting. To the side of it says at the request of a family, one name has been left off this list. I was wondering, what’s the story there? I looked it up and it turns out there was a man of Middle Eastern descent and his family didn’t know he was gay until he died in the shooting.

They were ashamed of that. It took quite a long time for anyone to agree to come pick up his body. That’s how deep the shame was. At the time, I believe the police chief of Orlando was a lesbian and because of the element of it being a neighborhood bar, because there were people that were there just because they could get in because of their age, they weren’t necessarily going to come out and say, “Hey, this was a hate crime.” When they found out that that family didn’t want to come pick up their family member, they said, “We have to tell the world that this was a gay bar. This was a hate crime.”

I tried the song from my perspective, but it didn’t really have the impact that it did until I put it in a perspective of that man and his ghost and what it would be like to embody that man’s experience. It was an honor to write that song.

Photo Credit: Brandon Aguilar

BGS 5+5: Crys Matthews

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Crys Matthews
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest Album: Reclamation
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Papa Bear to my future-wife, Uncle Bear to our youngest nieces, and just Bear to my chosen nephew, River.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

Without question, the song that took me a while to get ‘right’ is my song “Suit and Tie.” This song was written in response to the drag ban being rolled out in Tennessee. Nashville is my home now, so having a front-row seat to the fallout from that bill definitely weighed on my heart. [The ban] was intentionally loosely worded so that law enforcement could have cause to harangue anyone who they saw fit, even a singer-songwriter like me who happens to dress in suits and ties more often than not.

Gender and gender expression are both deeply, deeply personal – they are nobody’s business and certainly not our government’s business. As a social justice songwriter, I take tremendous care to avoid “speaking for someone” or inadvertently appropriating something that I only meant to appreciate. In “Suit and Tie,” only one of the verses is about me directly and offers my perspective as a Butch-identified lesbian who has been wearing clothes that bucked the patriarchy since I was four years old. The other verses are about a nonbinary person, a femme-identified gay man, and a trans woman.

My friend Holly [Near] once called my songs “truth-telling journalism,” which I took as a badge of honor. The notion of being a faithful steward of the truth means a lot to a PK (preacher’s kid) like me, and so it took me about seven drafts before I felt like I had done that with this song.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

My mission statement is: To amplify the voices of the unheard, to shed light on the unseen, and to be a steadfast reminder that hope and love are the truest pathways to equity and justice.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

Unsurprisingly, so much of the best advice I have received during my time on this planet is from my mother. One gem in particular that has seemed more and more profound is, “Babygirl, you better remember whose you are, so you don’t forget who you are.” It was (and still is) her way of reminding me that this industry and this world can try everything in its power to try to change the things about you that make you special, those things that, so often, are the very things that drew them to you in the first place.

You have to be steadfast and secure in who you are at your core. You have to remember your ancestors and your community and the people who knew and loved you before anybody who thought they could help you ‘make it big’ even knew your name. That advice from her is why I have managed to have an actual career that centers my ideals and values. And I think it is why the people in my corner seems to also reflect that ideals and values.

Does pineapple really belong on pizza?

Absolutely not! I keep telling my future-wife that, but she keeps insisting that I’m wrong.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” – before I realized I could write songs, I was fairly certain that I was going to be a high school band director. I have a deep love for classical music. I can conduct the 1812 like nobody’s business!

I know some musicians hope they get famous enough to sing the National Anthem at a Super Bowl or play at the GRAMMYs, but I’m just hoping that I get to conduct the 1812 with a philharmonic at least once before I die.

Photo Credit: Emily April Allen

On Her Debut Solo Album, MUNA’s Katie Gavin Searches for Connection and Finds It

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On the album cover for singer-songwriter Katie Gavin’s solo debut album, What A Relief, she sits half-dressed in the middle of her shiny, sage-green bedspread with various clothes and possessions strewn around her and the floor; even the cat stands awkwardly mid-sit or stand, it’s hard to tell. The immediacy of this messy in-between moment conveys the intimacy Gavin reaches to again and again on the album.

I want you to see me
When you’re not looking
I want you to fuck me
When we’re not touching

The album’s opening track, “I Want It All,” exhumes a lust for connection so all-consuming she knows already, “I’m gonna lose my mind / I’m gonna lose…” But it’s also Gavin’s thirst for and attention to these acutely relatable moments of humanity that render the album enticing.

“I’m really hungry for connection. And I think that in putting out songs that express that, or putting out images that express that, and having it met with understanding gives me that experience of like ‘we’re all humans having a human experience,’” Gavin says. “I want to push myself in terms of what I allow other people to see.”

Much of Gavin’s career has been with pop band MUNA (who opened for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour earlier this year). Solo, Gavin sheds her dazzling pop-star persona and the trappings of MUNA’s spectacular auditory and stage presence, retaining their honesty and emotional precision. What A Relief, which was produced by Tony Berg, is a collection of 12 songs Gavin wrote on the side over the past seven years. With them, and a clarity born of self-assurance and yearning for connection, Gavin pulls up a chair to settle in for a heart-to-heart with her audience.

“Some days you do your best / Some days you do what gets you out of bed…” Gavin sings on “Casual Drug Use,” possessing an inscrutable ability to pinpoint reality neatly and poignantly. That realism remains throughout the album, which unfolds as a masterful look at the human condition through the micro view of Gavin’s relationships with the world, herself, and others. Many times, she sounds so thrillingly close to the microphone it’s as if she’s singing right into your ear.

As she winnows down her experiences to a few kernels of truth, Gavin deliberately and deftly seeks accessibility and relatability without catering to weirdness or discomfort simply to make a point. “I am pleased with the same chords, over and over, as long as there’s a story and someone is saying something compelling,” she explains.

Her lack of pretense serves as shorthand for her palpably raw portraits of life: “But I think this is as good as it gets, my love/ I think this is as good as it gets/ Pray to god that you think that it is enough…” she sings in “As Good As It Gets” – which features guest vocals by Mitski – about a relationship that is not always a fairy tale. It’s an acknowledgement that you can both love someone and be underwhelmed by them, at least some of the time.

“‘As Good As It Gets’ reflects this big question that I’ve had for a long time, and I still have about what is reasonable to expect from a romantic relationship. And how good is it supposed to feel?” she says.

Elsewhere on the album, in “Sanitized,” Gavin carefully takes a wet washcloth to the bottoms of her dirty feet, afraid to stain her lover’s clean bed (“I lie perfectly still so I don’t mess up my hair/ I’m a sanitized girl, I clean up for you my dear”); or promises not to stalk her ex online, except “once in a while I’ll wanna know if you’ve died,” as she muses in “Keep Walking.”

Growing up in Illinois, Gavin’s parents gave her free reign to explore music and she gravitated unsurprisingly to pop music, entertaining preteen love for the Spice Girls and Samantha Mumba, and teen obsessions with Riot Grrrl, Gravy Train, and the Weepies’ “Gotta Have You.” She also gravitated toward queer, explicit music (Gavin is queer, but was in the closet at the time). When she started writing her own music as a teenager, her mother introduced her to Imogen Heap and her father stoked her folkie music interests with Jackson Browne and Jim Croce.

Gavin’s broad musical tastes inform her writing of course. In the case of What A Relief, she draws particularly on her love for John Prine’s flawed, human characters, and perverse, weirdo songster Loudon Wainwright III whose Attempted Mustache remains one of Gavin’s favorite albums.

“It’s the same magic that’s in a lot of John Prine songs, where these people aren’t afraid to talk about what real people experience in their real lives, even if it’s really silly, and then really mixing that with the profound.”

Silly mixed with the profound is perhaps the best possible description of Gavin’s own music. In the middle of the album, Gavin drops the bluegrass-folk portrait “Inconsolable,” about generational baggage’s impact on our well-being. Wrapped around a divinely-gratifying fiddle melody (she brought in Nickel Creek’s Sara and Sean Watkins to add a little extra bluegrass cred to the track) the song is first and foremost a reflection on learning to be vulnerable while falling in love.

It’s an experience that feels every bit as familiar as Gavin’s messy bed, but in a way that seems to make sense for the very first time – the gift of a stellar songwriter. More than that though, “Inconsolable” is a study in the way tiny moments elevate Gavin’s songs through her allegiance to the balance between silly and unvarnished experiences. We’ve all curled up on the couch hesitant to show how we’re really feeling.

But I’ve seen baby lizards running in the river
When they open their eyes
Even though no one taught them how or why
So maybe when you kiss me I can let you
See me cry
And if we keep going by the feeling
We can get by

Mid-verse, Gavin pivots from the endearing image of baby lizards learning to swim to emotional vulnerability in a fledgling relationship with the blockbuster realization that salvation and connection again might just come from that blind leap of trust.

Gavin’s quest for an honest examination of emotional intelligence stems in part from time spent with her grandparents, two of whom she lost in the last few years. Soaking up their stories, she thought about how much they endured and how many times older generations weren’t afforded a chance to be heard, or to feel their feelings.

Elders teach both by omission and by passing the torch. In “The Baton,” What A Relief’s anthemic third track, dedicated to the lineage of socially and generationally inherited womanhood, Gavin outlines her understanding of resilience as it passes from mother to daughter. Imagining what she’d say to her own daughter, Gavin also reaches to the wisdom from generations before her:

I’d pass her the baton and
I’d say you better run
‘Cause this thing has been going
For many generations
But there is so much healing
That still needs to be done

Not for rebellious reasons, but rather to instill a deep love of self, by the end of the song, Gavin’s come out the other side as her own mother.

“It’s a sense of learning, a sense of ownership and agency and learning to really listen to myself and trust myself, like if I’m going into a situation that I’m nervous about,” she explains. That’s a transformation not unlike her experiences writing the album, which she started when she was 24 and concluded at the age of 31: “You’re kind of moving from this archetype of maiden to mother.”

“I’m aware of a younger part of me that might be nervous and might have needs,” she says. “I often talk to her and say, ‘I got you, you’re coming home with me.’ And, ‘You don’t need to worry that I’m gonna forget about you or give you away to somebody else, or make you tap dance for somebody else.’”

Part of mothering yourself is finding your pitfalls and learning to prevent them. For Gavin, that includes thinking about addiction a lot, well beyond drug use.

“I can get addicted to a lot of different things; I can get addicted to different processes; I can get addicted to people; and I can get addicted to looking at furniture on Facebook marketplace,” she says. “I was thinking about this idea that when we as humans get stuck in the process of addiction, the things that make us feel good, and our actual relationship with the world gets smaller and smaller.”

That idea became the song “Sketches,” wherein Gavin distills addiction into a two-dimensional study of self reduction. In a simple acoustic guitar and cello-accompanied track, she imagines her character reduced to a sketch by an overbearing relationship: “That the deeper I’d go/ The smaller I’d get…” until she takes back control, painting herself back to size.

“The process of recovery has been really one of expansion, learning that I can feel intimacy and connection and pleasure and joy from so many different experiences in life and from so many different people,” Gavin says. “And there’s something that just feels very profound about that for me in this time.”

Even when it comes to writing about climate change, Gavin filters her stories through our relationships to one another. It feels more effective than shaming people for not recycling, she says. In “Sparrow,” she ruminates on the dangers of the quick fix, hoping in vain for the song of a sparrow in spring, only to discover that the tree it would perch on has died of a cure applied rashly and without thinking.

But perhaps Gavin’s most profound relationship moment on the album comes when she eulogizes her dog in “Sweet Abby Girl.”

“She’s taking up most of the mattress/ Can’t imagine being so un-self conscious/ She’s pushing her back up against my legs…” Abby becomes a foil for Gavin’s insecurities, as throughout the song she considers the vulnerability within unqualified love for another being.

Buried late in the album, “Keep Walking,” its penultimate track, reveals Gavin’s raison d’être: “What a relief / To know that some of this was my fault.” Superficially, it’s a breakup song. But it’s also a relief for Gavin’s to put these songs into the world, to share another side of herself, and forge new connections with listeners.

Fundamentally, we get through hard times by laughing with our friends, Gavin says. As she’s matured as a songwriter, she’s been drawn to including those moments of levity in her songs. Invariably, they feel like the best of conversations with friends and lend themselves well to What A Relief’s stripped-down, singer-songwriter format.

“There was just something funny about this idea of putting out this part of me that had up until this point been unexpressed; it does feel like a relief to just let it out,” Gavin says. “I like the sentiment in the song … ‘what a relief to know that some of this was my fault,’ which is just agency. I haven’t behaved perfectly, and that gives me some space to have compassion and forgiveness for you.”

“Real life” is such a tired phrase. Gavin’s version, though, feels scintillatingly, comfortingly relatable, and like her messy bedroom, gives the listener agency to let go and just be, too. What a relief.

Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius

A Little Less Insecure: The Story Behind Brandy Clark’s First Grammy

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Despite her well-earned reputation as one of Nashville’s strongest songwriters and nuanced singers, Brandy Clark had gotten used to not hearing her name called at Grammy Awards ceremonies. Two years ago, her friend Brandi Carlile decided to do something about that. Carlile produced Clark’s fourth studio album, Brandy Clark, which earned five of the six nominations she got this year, upping her tally to 17 — one of which turned into her first win. Clark was honored for Best Americana Performance for “Dear Insecurity,” a duet with Carlile. After her win, Clark told a backstage interviewer, “Brandi is the reason why I made this record and why this song is what it is.”

But as Clark explained in an earlier BGS interview, the catalyst for that collaboration — her most personal, affecting work yet — was one of those Grammys she didn’t win.

So how did Brandi’s involvement come about?

Brandy Clark: The label wanted me to record two more songs for a deluxe version of Your Life is a Record. I had made that record with Jay Joyce, and he couldn’t do it. Tracy Gershon, a mutual friend of Brandi and I, said, “What if Brandi produced?” And Brandi was willing to do it. It was a really good experience, mostly because Brandi really follows her gut instinct, which is so amazing. I tend to overthink. And then “Same Devil,” which was part of that, ended up nominated at the next Grammys. We didn’t win, and she leaned over to me and said I looked really devastated. I didn’t remember feeling particularly devastated, but she said I just looked really sad, so she said, “Hey, buddy, we’ll get one. I’d love to do a whole record with you.” I was like, “Really?” And she said, “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. I think these things through when I get involved in a project; I think about the artwork, I think about everything. I’d see it as your return to the Northwest, because I’m from the Northwest.”

It was such a different experience for me, because Brandi’s an artist. I think producers lead with whatever their original instrument is; if they were a guitar player, they lead with that. If they were a songwriter, they lead with that. I’ve never worked with a producer that could sing to me what they heard, and also keep me from over-singing. And she wanted as many live vocals as possible. That was different for me. And she really challenged me to get to the heart of who I am as an artist. No producer’s ever asked me to make lyric changes; she said, “I just want to believe that you believe everything you’re saying.”

What’s an example of a lyric she asked you to change?

“Buried;” the second verse used to start out, “I’ll read ‘Lonesome Dove,’ I’ll start doing yoga,” and she said, “I don’t like that yoga line.” I was thinking, “I don’t care if you like it or not.” That was my first [reaction]. I said, “Why not?” She’s like, “Well, I just don’t believe that you do yoga.” I said, “I don’t.” She’s like, “Then it shouldn’t be in the song.” And she was right.

You do heartbreak songs so extraordinarily well. Even the ones that aren’t sometimes feel like heartbreak songs, because they’re so full of emotion. “Dear Insecurity” — to hear that coming from the perspective of two women who are both stars now, and yet it’s so believable — it’s not like two women just singing “Oh, yeah, we’re insecure,” you really believe it. That’s what’s so striking about all of your songwriting, but to be able to do that, and do it well, and to know that it doesn’t matter how big you get, you still experience that …

Oh, I have massive insecurities. I think everybody does. That’s why I think that song hits; to be human is to be insecure. And the more willing you are to admit those insecurities, the less they rule you. That song came from— I had gotten my feelings hurt. A really great friend of mine says insecurity is the ugliest human emotion; it’s what makes people do mean things. So I was trying to remember that on the way to my writing appointment that morning, because I wanted to get into a good headspace to write with someone I had never written with. When I was sitting in the car, I started to think about my own insecurities, and the things that they have messed up along the way for me. I thought, “Wouldn’t that be something, to write a letter to insecurity?”

Why did you and Brandi choose to duet on that song?

Well, going in, I never heard that song as a duet. The first day we were in the studio, she said, “What do you think about ‘Dear Insecurity’ being a duet?” I loved the idea; I heard it as a duet with a guy, because men have insecurities just like women do. She really wanted Lucinda Williams. Because we hadn’t secured anybody yet, she said, “I’ll sing the scratch [vocal], and then we’ll see about getting Lucinda in here.” So she started to sing, and we really got lost in it.

Brandi had also been pretty adamant that she didn’t want to be a feature on this record, because of producing it, and because we had done that other feature, [“Same Devil”]. She just didn’t want it to look like she was trying to get featured. But when it was going down, I could just feel this magic happening. When I listened to the board mix, I thought, “Oh, God, what am I going to do? I don’t want to hear anybody but her on this now.” I loved the way that our voices battled each other and melded together. So I said the next day, “Brandi, I really want it to be you.” And she was like, “Oh, that’s all you had to say.” It was perfect because we have similar insecurities. We’re around the same age, both gay, like, there’s insecurities in that. We’re very similar, and very different. And it just worked.

In what other ways did she influence or impact this album?

There were a couple of things that I’ll take with me forever. When she was asking me to make lyric changes, that really bothered me. It felt disrespectful to the co-writers to do that on the fly, and I told her that. I said, “These songs, none of them were just slapped together, because I don’t write that way.” No offense to anyone who does, I just have to put a lot of thought into songs for ’em to be good. And it took other people to write these songs that I respect and that put their heart and soul into this, too. And I like to be in service to the song. And she said, “Well, I understand that. I think this time, you need to be in service to the artist.” It put me in a different space as an artist than I’ve ever been in. I always come at things as a songwriter first. This record, I came at it as an artist first.

The other thing – and I’m so glad that I asked her this question, and that she answered it the way she did, because it makes me think differently; I’ve never worked with a producer on a record that I was a co-writer with. So they’re always, to me, the last writer on the songs. The positive is that they’re making choices based on what they feel when they hear them the first time, like a listener. …I always give a producer probably 18 to 24 songs, then I’m just too close to pick the 10 or 12. So she picked the songs that she thought should be on this record. When she gave me her list of what she really wanted us to dive into, I said, “Why did you choose those 10?” And she said, “Well, they were all great songs; but I chose the songs that I felt like you wrote in your bedroom.” That was such a great thing… it reminded me that when all of us picked up a guitar or pad of paper the first time, it wasn’t to impress anybody. It was to just get some emotion out that we could only get out through song.

There’s another song on here, “She Smoked in the House,” that I wrote about my grandma that I never thought would be on any record. I thought I was just writing it for me. People have responded so strongly to that song, it just helps me know I need to double down on me and what I’m feeling, instead of what I think people want to hear. That sounds really simple, but it’s easy to forget that if we’re feeling something, other people are gonna feel it. And if we’re not, nobody’s gonna feel it.

You once told me your mission was to write a classic like “Crazy.” While listening to this album and Shucked [the Broadway musical for which she and Shane McAnally co-wrote the music and lyrics], it occurred to me that you have. A song like “Friends,” that’s gonna be sung at thousands of weddings and graduations, and “Take Mine” and “Up Above the Clouds” and these other tracks… I kept thinking of the great Randy Newman tearjerker songs in Pixar films.

I’ve always thought “Up Above the Clouds” should be in one of those.

Totally! Are you working on that?

Yes. It makes me feel amazing that you feel like I have written a classic song like that. I’m going to hang on to that today, and then I’m going to let it go. Because what keeps me hungry as a songwriter is to think I haven’t.

You mentioned you might do something else with Brandi. Are you already talking about that?

No, but we clearly work well together and people like what we do. She’s a little bit like Shane for me; I feel like the sum of our parts is greater than two people.

I love that you’re all part of this connected group of people, especially women. I remember Allison Russell crediting Brandi with elevating her family out of poverty, and to be able to do that for so many people …

That’s a testament to Brandi. She’s on top of the world and she’s choosing to elevate other people; she said to me when she approached me about this, “You deserve to be in the same spot as me on festival posters. That’s what I want.” A lot of people have a scarcity mindset. She has an abundant mindset and wants to raise up the music of other people that inspires her. That inspires me to do the same.

My trajectory is on a really great path right now. And then I look to someone like her and think, “OK, where do I pay it forward? Where do I lift someone else up?” Because it’s really easy when you’re just grinding and trying to get your own star to rise, to not look around and think, “Oh, how can I help someone else?” But she really inspires me to do that.

Photo Credit: Victoria Stevens

Country’s Genderf*ck Tradition

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: Sign up here to receive Good Country issues when they launch, direct to your email inbox via Substack.)

Country music’s gender politics have always been, well, kind of fucked up. The genre itself is rooted in class-based declarations of authenticity and individualism, all while negotiating assimilation into urban life. Like any other large group of people, country music artists are by no means monolithic, and the genre’s approach to gender – especially femininity – is diverse. But for all the treacly love songs and mincing breakup songs, the ones where country divas’ lives are at the mercy of men, there are songs that flip that dynamic right on its head.

Stephanie Vander Wel’s Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls illustrates how this dichotomy has existed since the genre began. Country music has always sold the story of rugged individualism, and that sense of individualism has paved the path for women who present themselves as more rugged than the “Pollyannas” they’re expected to be. That tradition continued well into the classic country era; Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” and Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” masterfully display centering women’s agency, while couching that drive in humor and a catchy tune.

It’s no coincidence that if you ask someone on the street to name a country music artist, they’re most likely to list a woman. Dolly, of course, or the ‘90s run of divas like Shania, Faith, or The Chicks. As has been oft-discussed, this generation of country stars tapped into the ‘90s exuberance for individual freedom while questioning the traditional ties that bind us to our scripted gender roles. Faith Hill’s “Wild One” and, of course, The Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice” portray a femininity that is self-confident: there will be no more shrinking behind men in too-large ten-gallon hats.

Marissa Moss and Dr. Jada Watson have extensively documented the decline in women’s presence on mainstream country radio since the aughts. But that doesn’t mean women are shutting up, and we are starting to see queer women, as well as nonbinary and trans artists, use their inspiration from the ‘90s to continue using country music to challenge gender norms. Roberta Lea’s “Too Much of a Woman” is brash, rejecting any sexist norms that would expect her to dim her light. Jessye DeSilva’s “Queen of the Backyard” and Paisley Fields’ “Periwinkle” are touching tributes to young people who know they don’t fit in and never will. Desert Mambas’ “Buzz Cut Blues” is a nod to Leslie Feinberg’s legendary no novel Stone Butch Blues, making good on country music’s promise of non-normative gender performance with a meditation on moving through the world as a transmasc person.

Throughout the century’s worth of country music canon, there is one throughline: this genre that celebrates outlaws and misfits must always celebrate women, femmes, non-men, and others who are doin’ it for themselves.

Photo of Dolly Parton from the Michael Ochs Archives.

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Out Now: Lila Blue

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: Don’t miss the exclusive premiere of Lila Blue’s new video, “Stranger,” as part of this edition of Out Now. Watch below.)

Lila Blue writes songs with angst, tender love, detailed guitar lines, descriptive lyrics, and witchy energy. Their lyrics pull you into scenes and stories. They sing with great variation, Lila’s vocals are sometimes harsh, like aggressive growling and howling, while at other times they’re a soft and soothing sound. Their craftsmanship is top-tier; their story lines are intricate and engaging. Lila has been working with several of their collaborators since they were a child, developing strong and meaningful relationships. That kind of connection, understanding, and growth creates the perfect grounds for a cohesive sound.

I’m honored to feature this phenomenal artist. I think you’ll find their sound to be engaging, creative, and distinctive. I hope you enjoy Lila’s music as much as I do.

Do you create music primarily for yourself or for others?

Lila Blue: My creative process has become so tied to performing for others that I’m actually not sure anymore. I think before anything else, I make music because I love what storytelling can do. My first love was the written word, and as a sensitive and frequently-overwhelmed individual, it’s been there for me at every turn. I know that I would still write songs even if I never got to play them for anyone again, but I love watching what stories can do to those they touch and how deliciously unreliable they can be to make and ingest.

What is your greatest fear?

I kid you not, my greatest fear is steep inclines that have unsteady ground. If you ever want to catapult me into a state of pure horror (which as I write this down I realize I’m giving any future foe the ability to undo me…), put me on a hill with loose gravel, a sandy bluff, or even a shaky pair of stairs and my nervous system is toast. I fell down a bluff when I was a kid and it’s been ingrained in me since to avoid shifty ground.

What is your current state of mind?

It’s the final day of 2023 as I’m writing this, so I’m feeling more quiet and reflective than usual. There’s been so much pain this year, personally and globally, and I think I’m trying to hold reverence for the grief that comes with that, while also uplifting joy and mindful action whenever I can.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

I had a poetry teacher in college, Marie Howe. In our first class, she made it very clear that if we didn’t know an answer and pretended to, we would be missing the entire point of being a student and a person. I have pretended to know many things that I don’t for fear of missing out or being deemed less smart because of it. Having someone give me the permission to let that go – and illuminate how much I was actually missing out on in doing so – is something I’ve reflected on time and time again.

For anyone reading this who might not be out of the closet, were there any specific people, musicians, or resources that helped you find yourself as a queer individual?

I grew up on the Indigo Girls and Brandi Carlile and those folks held out a light for me in their songs to feel seen, to have the thought, “Oh, I can do this as a calling and be vocal about who I am and who I love.” I got to share that with Brandi this year, which absolutely knocked my socks off in the most full-circle way.

I also had a middle school music teacher, Rachel Garlin, who was a proud lesbian folk musician and a huge support in my life at that time. Being in the presence of her living her life happily, full of queer love and music, woke something up in me around how I dreamt about my own future [and that it] was a possible reality. Reading Zami by Audre Lorde in high school was also a big turning point for me and what’s been beautiful about coming out and continuing to grow is that I realized the questioning doesn’t have to end at the point when the closet door opens – we all deserve to have a lifetime of discoveries! I felt that when I found Adrianne Lenker’s work or when I recently read The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson.

What does it mean to you to be an LGBTQ+ musician?

I had a hard time answering this, as there’s so many paths to choose with a question so wonderfully vast. I don’t know how it would feel to not have who I am and who I love intertwined with the art I make, they feel inextricable to me and because of that, I have a hard time pinpointing what it exactly means to me that they intersect. What I do know is that uplifting queer and trans stories that make myself and my community feel desired, honored, seen and held is what I feel called to do with my life, and each time I get to do so and share it with the world, it feels holy to me.

What are your release and touring plans for the next year?

We’ll be releasing two videos for “Stranger” [watch above] and “I Met the Devil,” and a music video for “High on a Hill,” as well as dropping the new merch and vinyl available on my Bandcamp page. I’m planning to tour with my friend and dear collaborator NOGA in the spring, am continuing development on an original musical in February, and in the meantime will be consistently playing shows in NYC starting in mid-January!

Can you tell us a bit about the new video for “Stranger?” We’re so excited to be premiering it within this interview. 

I wrote “Stranger” in the green room 15 minutes before going on as an opener for Kevin Bacon’s band in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Father’s Day in 2018 – which sounds like a fever dream when I write it out. Being in the midwest with the Bacon Brothers led to me ingesting a lot of country and folk music on the road and left me with a deep craving to write a tried and true country-folk tune. I wrote it a cappella, and then found the instrumentation a week or so later.

When I wrote it, I thought I was singing it to an “other,” a figment of someone I hoped could love me and see me. Now looking back, it feels like a letter from my closeted 18 year-old self to who I am now: Still ashamed of so much of themselves, trying to write to the stranger they craved to become. It makes me endlessly happy to sing this song to them every chance I get from the proudly queer, and deeply loved self I am now.

The video we got to film in Nashville felt like such a beautiful close to the chapter of bringing “Stranger” to the world. With the small and scrappy team at MOXE, and the amazing Elizabeth Olmstead, I feel we got to showcase what that song is about for me; the music and the words, and the creative lineage that got me there. Myself and long-time collaborators Saskia Lane and Phillip Roebuck got to play through “Stranger” on the beautiful land that MOXE is built on. I got to gaze at the studio in the distance as we sang through a song that means the world to me; I couldn’t have asked for more.

Like you mentioned, you’ve been working with some of your team members and bandmates for over a decade. Could you share that process of growing alongside folks you’ve been working with for years?

I was on a flight the other month with Saskia Lane and Phillip Roebuck (who were the first people I learned how to write songs from) and while the two of them were snoozing, I looked over and had a deep, reflective moment on how lucky I am to be able to collaborate with those who are part of my direct creative lineage. The folks who I made Sweet Pea with literally taught me how to play music, taught me how to be a musician’s musician, and I wouldn’t be the artist and human I am today without them. These songs wouldn’t have bloomed the way they did without Saskia Lane, Phillip Roebuck, Ashley Frith, Gabriel Ebert and Damon Daunno, and Kat Cook’s presence in my life.

You have a distinctive witchy-folk sound. How did you develop your sound and style?

Music has always been a ritualistic and spiritual space for me. As a kid, I was surrounded by folks and relatives who practiced witchcraft and around then I started writing songs in my sleep. Looking back, I wonder if that’s when I was least vigilant to certain turmoils I was going through, but I like to “yes and” when it comes to the rational and the mystic!

From the jump, what’s come out of me is tied to the lineage of folk music and those that taught it to me at the Lake Lucille Project, an artistic commune I’ve been a member of since I was eight years old. Learning to meld my practices of ritual and channeling, with the muscles I’ve built over the years in studying writing and music, has let me feel like I’m not powerless to what comes through me; I think if anything from here things will only get witchier.

Your music plays with intense variation in tempo and dynamics. Some of your songs whisper while others growl. This contrast creates engaging collections of songs. What is it like for you to write with so much diversity in sound?

Thank you for noticing that. I’ve always been really drawn to artists whose bodies of work are full of contradictions. A few months ago, someone asked me what I like most about music. It took me a moment to articulate it properly, but as someone who’s faced a fair share of trauma in my life, with that has come a distortion and “fossilizing” of time. I felt really trapped by my memories and through that felt trapped by time itself. But with music, I found that I could suspend time in the way my trauma did, but not from a foundation of harm. A good song can do that for someone – at least it does that for me. I figured out that for me to keep that suspension going, I needed to make music that felt surprising and dynamic to my ear.

You recently released your fourth album, Sweet Pea. Is there anything you’d like to share with our audience about the new album?

I’ve been so lucky to experiment with every record I’ve done and explore the current themes I felt drawn to at that time. When my producer Jordan Brooke Hamlin and I began to meet and discuss what this record would be about, I realized that I wanted to make a project where if someone asked me who I was when no one was looking at me, I could hand them a piece of music and show them. This is that record for me. If you listen to it, it will tell you all you need to know about me, and it wouldn’t have become that without the amazing crew at MOXE and my bandmates, some of whom have been my collaborators the past 12 years.

Photo Credit: Frank Theodore

“Stranger” Video Credits: Recorded at MOXE in Nashville, TN.
Produced by Lila Blue & MOXE.

Elizabeth Olmstead – Direction, cinematography, & editing
Lila Blue – Acoustic guitar & vocals
Phillip Roebuck – Resonator guitar & percussion
Saskia Lane – Upright bass

Special thanks to Jordan Brooke Hamlin, Lake Wilkinson, Kat Cook, & the MOXE crew.

Bluegrass Pride Invites LGBTQ+ Roots Music Fans to Porch Pride Festival

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Out of 270 floats, companies, and queer associations, a roots music organization’s marching contingent was crowned “Best of the Best” at San Francisco’s world-famous Pride parade in 2017. And they did it on their very first try — the only organization to ever achieve such a feat. Who was that overalls-and-rainbow-glitter-clad crew of more than a hundred bluegrass fans, pickers, and professionals? Bluegrass Pride.

The Bluegrass Situation has been proud to support Bluegrass Pride since 2017, with our logo emblazoned on the inaugural float that carried three bluegrass and old-time bands down Market Street to the cheers of thousands of brand new “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” fans. In 2020, the nonprofit organization had planned its biggest Pride celebrations yet (in San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Nashville, Tennessee) while still welcoming the rural and non-metropolitan LGBTQ+ folks who love and make these musics, too.

Enter our most familiar villain, COVID-19. In response, Bluegrass Pride has shifted to a new concept, Porch Pride: A Bluegrass Pride Queer-antine Festival. Featuring more than ten hours of music by queer and allied artists such as Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Molly Tuttle, Sam Gleaves, Jake Blount, Rachel Baiman, and more, the livestream event will air June 27 and 28 on Bluegrass Pride’s website, YouTube channel, and Facebook and Instagram pages. Porch Pride will raise money for Bluegrass Pride and all of the musicians on the bill. Fans and followers are encouraged to donate now.

To celebrate Porch Pride with our longtime friends at Bluegrass Pride, we connected with Executive Director Kara Kundert and powerhouse singer/songwriter and the digital festival’s “headliner” Amythyst Kiah.

BGS: For those unfamiliar with Bluegrass Pride, how would you describe it?

Kara Kundert: Oh, what a big question. In a purely statutory sense, I would say that Bluegrass Pride is a nonprofit organization devoted to the advancement of LGBTQ+ people within the bluegrass, old-time, and broader roots music traditions. To get a little bit more descriptive, we work every day to make bluegrass a more welcoming place for people of all backgrounds. Our mission is to show the world that bluegrass is for everyone, so we try to create programs that serve all kinds of people who love and participate in American traditional music. We put on local beginner-friendly jams and create introductory video content to help people get involved with the community even as they’re just starting out, and we host concerts and showcases to create paid opportunities for professional musicians.

Amythyst Kiah: …Simply, my idea of what something like Bluegrass Pride represents: It is about accepting all forms of identity and expression in a style of music that is known for having a more traditional culture, and it’s also an outlet for queer people who don’t fit the stereotype of gay club culture. As iconic and important gay club culture is historically, it isn’t everyone’s experience.

How did the idea for Porch Pride come to you? 

Kundert: Via the incredibly talented Jake Blount! Jake is on the Bluegrass Pride board of directors and he came to me back in March (just as everything was starting to shut down and we were holing up for quarantine) to suggest that Bluegrass Pride host a digital festival to support artists in the face of the first round of gig cancellations. He had participated in the first iteration of the Stay At Home Festival and had seen how much energy and support there were for these artists, and thought that it was a natural fit for Bluegrass Pride and our mission.

At that point in time, it was still really unclear how long and how bad the COVID pandemic was going to be — we still believed that SF Pride was going to march down Market Street in June — so I was a little nervous to take on the project. I was worried that we wouldn’t have the resources to do everything and do it well. We started discussing smaller-scale projects, like weekly concert series or short little weekend showcases, things that we would have the budget to do in addition to our regular programming.

But within a couple of weeks, it became pretty clear that our whole season was going to change dramatically, and that was when the plan shifted from being “maybe we’ll host a couple of digital concerts to keep momentum before Pride” to creating Porch Pride and really making it the center of our entire year.

People don’t tend to think of bluegrass or roots music when it comes to Pride celebrations, and obviously y’all think that needs to change! Why? What does bluegrass and string band music bring to the greater LGBTQ+ community? 

Kiah: I see this event and organization as a way to formally recognize that LGBTQ+ have always been present in the communities where bluegrass and other roots-based music originated from. Historically, media has projected many ideas of what being queer looks and sounds like, and it’s high time to recognize and celebrate other ways of being and doing when it comes to music.

Kundert: I think that there’s a problem whenever people aren’t being represented. So it was a problem for bluegrass that LGBTQ+ stories and music weren’t being heard onstage. It was a problem when queer folks were being excluded from jams and from gigs just because of their identity. And it’s a problem for the LGBTQ+ community that this portion of our family isn’t being included in the conversation about what “gayness” is. We as a culture have this extremely metropolitan, white, male-centric idea of what the LGBTQ+ community is, which is what you really see on display on these corporate floats at the major cities’ Pride parades, and it leaves out so many people. There are as many ways to be queer as there are colors under the sun, and that’s something that we as a [bluegrass] community need to do more to embrace in order to support and uplift every single person in the LGBTQ+ community.

Amythyst, with your songwriting and your work with Our Native Daughters you’ve been a powerful voice, lifting up Black songs and stories. How does that perspective as a Black woman complement Bluegrass Pride for you? What do these two movements have in common, and what do they combine?

Kiah: Both movements involve recognizing and uplifting marginalized voices, due to the continued generational trauma that both have had to endure. Being Black, a woman, typically gender-nonconformant, and queer, I have experienced some form of questionable actions, treated as if I was invisible, and [received] looks of contempt by other people. I am fortunate that I haven’t experienced much worse, but that being said, I was terrified of my own shadow for years before I really started to embrace myself and be myself. So Bluegrass Pride is about recognizing that we all have value, just as Songs of Our Natives is about.

Kara, planning a Pride event can be a major undertaking. What is the reward for you, on a personal level, after putting in so many hours to prepare?

Kundert: Creating and running these events is always such an emotional rollercoaster. There’s so much anxiety and energy in the planning: Are people going to show up? Is it going to go well? Are people going to connect with it, or are they just not going to care at all? But then in the moment, you get to listen to this wonderful music by talented people, and be with a crowd of people that want to support Bluegrass Pride, and it’s euphoric. So far, I haven’t been let down by that moment of standing in a crowd and experiencing that kind of threefold-payoff of enjoying the music as an audience member, enjoying the crowd and energy as someone standing on stage, and enjoying the sheer relief of not totally fucking up as a producer.

But beyond that very selfish gratification, I also know how much these events mean to people. I know there are people who play bluegrass right now — people who are showing up at jams and forming bands and going to festivals — because Bluegrass Pride made them feel welcome and safe to be there. There are people who found Bluegrass Pride and realized that maybe they could come out after all. I know that these events — our parade float in San Francisco, our LGBTQ+ Musician Showcase in Raleigh, our beginner-friendly jams — they mean something to people. So when I get to stand in the crowd and see people’s smiles and feel people’s energy, both on- and off-stage, it makes me feel like what we’re doing matters to people. That all of the work and the hours and the stress: they add up to something bigger than just myself or my own feelings of relief and exhaustion. And that’s what keeps me going after four years of being a part of Bluegrass Pride.

What are you most looking forward to during Porch Pride? 

Kundert: I know this is a cliche to say, but I’m looking forward to all of it — I put together the lineup after all! We have so many talented artists, I’m just looking forward to hearing all of their great music and seeing how people come together to celebrate Pride with us this year.

Kiah: I am looking forward to (hopefully) finding a quiet place outside to share some stories and music! If only it could be done in person, but I’ll take what I can get! Being safe [is a] top priority.

How can we all celebrate Pride “better” this year? 

Kiah: I think one thing to keep in mind is that not everyone can safely be out of the closet, and that we should always keep those folks in our thoughts and to remember that [there is] more than one way to live out our truths in a way that we see most fit. Whenever we are waving our rainbow flags or wearing our rainbow suspenders, we’re also wearing them for the ones that can’t be with us.

Kundert: I think the key to best celebrating Pride — and to best doing most things in life — is to take a page from the author John Green and put energy into imagining people more complexly. If we imagine Pride more complexly, we see beyond the metronormative, white, cis, corporate stereotypes of Pride and begin to see new possibilities — for a Pride without all the weird classist, toxic binarism and gate-keeping. If we imagine bluegrass more complexly, we can break out of these same tired tropes that we’ve been falling into years and start telling new stories — using this art form as a way to create authentic and fresh connections with people.

We must do everything we can to see and honor people in all of their nuance. By forming connections with people, we are able to glimpse outside of our own lives. To do so enables us to generate empathy for each other, to see each other as family rather than strangers, or worse, as adversaries. To expand our circles and grow our vision of humanity will help us to better fight for justice for all, rather than justice for a few.

Photo credit: Anna Hedges
Artwork: Courtesy of Bluegrass Pride

Kacey Musgraves is Country’s Queer Icon, but These Roots Artists are Actually Queer

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Kacey Musgraves’ dominance during Sunday’s 61st Annual Grammy Awards has certainly solidified her place as country music’s newest queer icon. She offered simply stunning, near-perfect performances during the primetime broadcast and took home four trophies: Best Country Solo Performance, Best Country Song, Best Country Album, and one of the most prestigious awards of the night, Album of the Year. So-called “Gay Twitter” devolved into a tizzy as the show unfolded through the afternoon and evening with Musgraves decidedly at the top.

Said Album of the Year, Golden Hour, saw a critical mass of LGBTQ+ fans embracing Musgraves’ music, but her relationship to the broader gay community has been percolating since her debut album, especially given its overt “Follow Your Arrow” message. All combined, her eye for gratuitous-yet-effortless glamour, her acid-steeped, anime-meets-California-meets-trailer park aesthetics, and her singular, pop-influenced countrypolitan sounds are gay country manna from heaven. And it’s not just in the music. This year, she made an appearance as a guest judge on VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars and she routinely advocates for LGBTQ+ fans and their causes on her social media feeds.

To be sure, Musgraves fits the diva-idolized-by-gays criteria impeccably, but there’s a certain passive erasure that can occur when fans consciously or subconsciously become myopic in their praise of and infatuation with straight, cisgendered, female artists. It’s true that Musgraves has played an important role in expanding country music’s borders — musically, socially, and otherwise — but at the same time a burgeoning community of LGBTQ+ writers, artists, musicians, and creators are carving out their own space within country, Americana, folk, and even bluegrass and old-time.

This writer would never go so far as to suggest that one ought not squeal with delight at Musgraves’ fierce-as-fuck costumes, her tear-jerking solo performance of “Rainbow,” or her impossibly long and flowy Cher-callback, bump-it wig. Rather, if you love Kacey Musgraves and Golden Hour — because queer identities can be seen and reflected within her work, because she opens the door to the idea that country isn’t a forbidding place for these identities, and/or because she’s unabashed and unapologetic in her pursuit of these goals — you’re going to love these eleven badass, talented, inspirational, openly queer roots musicians, too.

Time to get stanning:

Brandi Carlile

After last night’s show this name should no longer need mentioning or introduction, as Carlile and her twin collaborators, Tim and Phil Hanseroth, absolutely brought down the Staples Center with one of the most moving performances of the night, the soaring, galvanizing, overtly queer, and now Grammy-winning masterpiece, “The Joke.” Carlile is openly gay, married, a mother of two daughters, and a tireless voice for representation and progress in Americana and its offshoot genres. If “The Joke” resonates with you (i.e. if it makes you sob uncontrollably, as it does this writer), check out “That Wasn’t Me,” “Hurricane,” and, of course, “The Story.”

Mary Gauthier

Gauthier’s latest, Rifles & Rosary Beads, was nominated for Best Folk Album this year and though it didn’t take home the prize, the album has received universal acclaim for its message of hope, empathy, and visibility for members of our armed services and the struggles they face during and after their service. Gauthier collaborated with veterans of the military in writing all of the record’s heart wrenching, honest, raw songs — which might seem counterintuitive given gays’ historically tenuous relationship with the military writ large. But Gauthier’s own life story, and the trials she’s faced, make her the perfect writer to prioritize empathy above all else in these songs.

Don’t sleep on the rest of her discography, though. The simple profundity of her writing is consistently awe-inspiring. Check out “Mercy Now” after you’ve given Rifles & Rosary Beads a listen.

Karen & the Sorrows

Jewish New York City native Karen Pittelman may seem like an unlikely frontwoman of a country band, especially when you factor in her past punk and queercore experiences, but it turns out she grew up bathed in the country compilation albums her father produced and sold for a living. Her voice recalls country mavens of bygone eras — it’s delicate yet powerful, with a pin-up girl quality that’s as subversive as it is natural. Also check out “Take Me for a Ride,” a Pittelman original that plays like a trad-country, queer version of Sam Hunt’s smash hit, “Body Like a Back Road,” but without the cheese.

Little Bandit

All of the hollerin’, barn-burning, hell-raising country soul of your favorite outlaw country rockers, but with lacy gay edges, Little Bandit (AKA Alex Caress, et. al.) is as honky-tonk as it gets. It’s a beautiful balancing act, presenting as an impossibly big-voiced, piano-smashing, charismatic frontman while singing male pronouns without hesitation. He leans into a beautifully paradoxical queerness that equally embraces diamonds, Waffle House allusions, platform shoes, and plain ol drinkin’. If you like it — and you will — check out “Diamonds,” too.

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

Outspoken outlaws in a crop of alt-country artists who align with that eponymous country movement of the 70s, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers are a road-dogging band that would seemingly fit that mold, excepting Shook’s deliberate efforts to challenge the inherent heteronormativity of country music at every turn. For Shook it’s not necessarily about having a political message, as she put it in a 2018 interview with BGS, “I feel like doing what I’m doing — touring relentlessly, putting out records, and being unapologetically myself — is a very powerful and political maneuver as well… I’ve never been concerned about that because I feel it’s important to be honest and forthright as a human being, and as an artist and certainly lyrically as well.”

Indigo Girls

Both Amy Ray and Emily Saliers — the two halves that make up the absolutely iconic Indigo Girls — have released solo albums in the past year, both of which draw heavily on folk, Americana, and country influences. This should be no surprise to even the most casual IG fans. Banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, and so many other hallmarks of roots music have been integral to the Indigo Girls’ sound all along. But the songwriting, devastating and personal and oh so very real, is the real takeaway from both projects.

kd lang

This list might as well not exist if it excluded kd lang. Before her crossover to more mainstream genre designations, kd pretty much originated the role of badass queer making unimpeachably trad country music that refused to shy away from its queer touchpoints. Just take a look at this video! “Honky Tonk Angels,” sung with Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee, Kitty Wells, and finally, kd in all of her butch, gender-bending, binary-eschewing glory — complete with a Minnie Pearl cameo! Country has always been (more than) a little queer, y’all.

Lavender Country

A man well, well ahead of his time, Patrick Haggerty (AKA Lavender Country), released his debut, self-titled album in 1973. It was a groundbreaking work, but the world, let alone the country music community and its commercial machine, were not ready for it. A Seattle DJ was fired for playing “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” on the airwaves, only one thousand copies of the album were printed, and the band was relegated to performing exclusively at LGBTQ+ events and programs. But, despite being largely shut out of the industry, Haggerty and Lavender Country never ceased. In 2018, at the age of 74, Haggerty took part in AmericanaFest’s very first queer-focused showcase.

Amythyst Kiah

Amythyst Kiah’s booming, captivating voice, and her haunting, Southern gothic approach to Americana, bluegrass, and old-time set her apart from almost anyone else on the scene at this moment. Her reimagination of Dolly Parton’s magnum opus, “Jolene,” is a perfect example of how she carefully turns tradition on its ear. Based in East Tennessee herself, she draws on the rich musical heritage of the region, adding her own spin, creating space to allow herself to soar. And there’s plenty more soaring in her future, as she has opened shows for artists such as Rhiannon Giddens and Indigo Girls across the country and in Europe, and her collaboration album with Giddens, Allison Russell (Birds of Chicago), and Leyla McCalla, Songs of Our Native Daughters, is set to drop February 22.

Alynda Segarra

Singer/songwriter, activist, and Hurray for the Riff Raff frontwoman Alynda Segarra entrances with The Navigator, a concept project that focuses on the life and times of a fictitious Puerto Rican youth living in New York City. Themes of immigration, identity politics, displacement, disenfranchisement, and capitalistic overreach are threaded throughout the album, which offers its songs as tableaus of this girl’s — Navita’s — reality. It’s a stunning reminder that the intricacies and nuances that define us, and by doing so, separate us, are not so difficult for us to overcome with empathy and understanding. “Pa’lante!” (which translates to “forward!”) is the album’s battle cry, a song that turns utter despondency, grief, and a sore lack of humanity into a glimmer of hope.

Trixie Mattel

While almost all other drag queens who delve into the music scene release dance tracks, rap albums, or similar club-ready jams, Trixie Mattel (AKA Brian Firkus) draws upon her rural Wisconsin roots on two folk-adjacent, country-ish albums, Two Birds and One Stone. (Get it?) This isn’t just an opportunist attempt to punch up Trixie’s Dolly Parton-esque, country barbie aesthetic, she’s really got the chops. Not only is she a talented humorous-while-poignant songwriter, her technical skills on guitar and autoharp (yes, autoharp) are precisely honed to showcase her original music. This is no gimmick — though the Doves in Flight Gibson guitar and the custom, pink d’Aigle autoharp are jaw-droppingly perfect additions to Trixie’s lookbook.