Queer as Folk

It was the early 90’s; my whole life revolved around a fundamentalist Christian mega-church, and I was carrying the darkest secret. I was gay. Well, I still am - or “queer” as I usually say these days.

Small-town Indiana in that era was not a friendly place for kids like me. To make it worse, I was the church golden boy. I could sing and play guitar, had a charismatic demeanor, and wasn’t afraid of speaking in front of big crowds. My pastor noticed this, and by 16 I was giving sermons in front of a couple thousand people. In my late teenage years, puberty kicked in and my sexuality became obvious to me. It made for a hellish conflict. All eyes were on me, so it seemed.

I made my way to college and that probably saved my life. Until that point, everyone in my universe was telling me something was innately wrong with me. Suddenly I was in a university musical theatre department - of course - filled with people who couldn’t care less about my sexual orientation. I didn’t even know that was a possibility.

This story is loosely represented in the newest offering from my “queer folk/country” project Indiana Queen. It’s a visual album entitled Summon Without Sorrow - sort of like [Beyoncé's] Lemonade, only more gay! The themes of the film are from looking back at the past, where there once were demons, but the demons have calmed down into ghosts. Then, time does its thing, and the ghosts fade into solemn memory. That’s how I feel about that painful past. I haven’t held on to the pain, but I certainly remember it. I look back at it in strange reverence as it is a part of who I am today.

After college, I made my way to Nashville to pursue a music career. once again I found myself in a community that would not accept me. Well, sort of. Nashville itself is mostly a progressive place in a sea of red states. The music industry here is filled with liberals and people from the LGBTQI community, but it’s an industry that caters to a different demographic: one that is stereotypically straight, conservative and masculine - even more so back in turn-of-the-century Music City. Everyone I met in those days advised me to "tone down the gay thing."

Hell, from a strictly business perspective, maybe they were right. I got really close to the big break a couple of times, but it never quite happened. The first album I released won the Nashville Scene Music Awards in 2004. The cover art showed me holding hands with my drummer and us posed expressionless like American Gothic. Locals thought it was edgy. We felt like hot shit for about a minute and a half. Then, the phone stopped ringing. The tan men in sunglasses from L.A. who had flown out to see us now said, "We just don't know what to do with you." I do sometimes wonder if my story would have played out differently had I taken the advice to play down my sexuality.

I was never really interested in the mainstream anyway. I'd rather be subversive than sanitary.

I think that's what true roots music is. It's the song of the outsider - the outcast. What could be more rural-punk-rock than to be the outsider of outsider music? I was being honest, instead of mapping out some clever marketing ploy. I figured if I attempted to manufacture something with a more coy yet masculine persona, the insincerity would spoil all of it.

"True roots music is the song of the outsider - the outcast..."

We got in a van and hit the road for a decade. Smoky little clubs from coast to coast. Repeat. It would have been impressive were it 1984 when DIY bands like REM where paving their own way. But instead it was 2007. Myspace was a graveyard of bands. Napster and iTunes were taking over. We did finally get a record deal around that time, but they were following the old record biz model. The whole thing crashed and burned - Behind The Music style. I was devastated.

I quit.

I took a cheesy job performing on a cruise ship in South America. We went down the Amazon river where the water looked like creamy coffee and pink dolphins would swim alongside the ship. We went all the way down to the southern tip of Argentina where cute and fat little penguins waddled down the beach. Getting away from Nashville during that time gave me perspective. For a moment I felt like I had wasted my life. I was in my late 30s and felt like maybe I had missed that boat, so to speak. But when I returned to the states my queer folk vision was renewed. I realized I was on a much longer road. It's all about the journey, as they say. That's when Indiana Queen was born.

It was the height of the Obama years. The music industry seemed to have stabilized. Bands were finding an audience on Youtube, rather than old school touring. The culture was beginning to dramatically shift its opinion of sexuality and gender. Maybe the world - and even Nashville - was finally ready for me.

I've definitely found my audience for Indiana Queen online. Last year, I put out a video called I Don't Know What To Do, that features two fetish leather-clad cowboys making out. I thought it was an interesting way to turn the whole masculine imagery of Nashville on its head. It went viral after unexpected mainstream sites like Cosmopolitan and Huffington Post featured it. I knew this time around I wanted to go even further with the film element.

Summon Without Sorrow follows the entire album with provocative imagery about religion and sexuality as well as self-acceptance and tolerance. When I started this film project several months ago, I was in the mindset that I was living in a new LGBTQI accepting America. Then the election happened. And now a lot of things feel very uncertain.

I wonder what advice music business people in Nashville will be giving in a year or so under a Trump administration. I wonder if an ultra-conservative government will start to reshape attitudes of equality. I wonder if the film I just made will age into something much more subversive than I originally intended. I wonder if I will once again find myself existing in a space where I don't belong.

To that I can say: I've been here before, and I'm not afraid.