Humor and Harmony: An Interview with Girlyman

Among folk fans, quirky, Atlanta-based trio, Girlyman is as famous for their warm, funny stage patter as for their sweet harmonies and nuanced lyrics. Friends since grammar school, band mates Doris Muramatsu, and Ty Greenstein started out as a duo. After meeting solo artist Nate Borofsky, the three formed Girlyman, and since have released four albums. On tour now in support of their recent live album, “Somewhere Different Now.” Ty took time out from touring to talk about the band’s evolution.

Queerky- How long has Girlyman been together?

Ty- Almost eight years now.

Queerky- How have you developed as songwriters over that time?

Ty- Well, we’ve always been acoustic, and we’ve always done three part harmonies and we always kind of crack ourselves up during our live show. I think our songwriting has evolved just because we’re older. For myself as a songwriter, I tend to not be as obsessed with myself; I’m more interested in writing about other people and writing about the world. As a musician, I always want to branch out as much as I can.

Queerky- What’s your writing process like?

TY- I try to make at least an hour every day. I had a writing studio built in my backyard this year which is a huge thing for me. It’s been really exciting for me to just have this space to go into and to have this process that continues from day to day. If you write just every once in a while, you find the stakes are incredibly high, because if you don’t come up with something great that day you might not be able to get yourself to write again for a while. If you’re writing everyday, and one day not much happens, it doesn’t really matter because you’re going to be back in there the next day.

Queerky- Girlyman has a seemingly very personal relationship with their fans - you post personal blogs, interact on your forum. Is that a strategic career choice?

Ty- Girlyman is just us being ourselves; it’s a very real experience. We want to give people the feeling that they’re part of what we’re doing so creating that kind of presence on the website is something we make a point to do. It’s more fun for people, it creates a sense that we’re still around and we can’t wait to see you again. It’s just like keeping in touch with our family. We’re an independent band; we’re on our own record label, so we rely on the energy sustaining itself. It’s something we can’t do by ourselves, there has to be some sort of continuous growing excitement in order for us to keep doing what we’re doing.

Queerky-You started out on Indigo Girl, Amy Ray’s indie record label, Damon records, but recently went truly independent, putting records out on your own. What prompted the change?

Ty- We were becoming more interested in releasing independently, at the same time, Daemon records was reconfiguring; Amy wanted to take time and figure out what to do next, plus our contract was up anyway. At first we thought, “Gosh, how do you do this without a label?” But it’s making more and more sense for indie artists to release their own CDs. We were excited about using the internet, making it the kind of grass roots operation we were already really familiar with.

Queerky-When can we expect another studio album?

Ty- We’ll probably be doing pre-orders in spring and a wider release later on, definitely this year.

Queerky-You’ve toured with a lot of great musicians. Any favorites?

Ty- Opening for the Indigo Girls was huge for us. We grew up listening to them, so it was incredible for us personally, but also their fans were just ready for our vocal harmonies and our lyrics, they just really got it. It was exciting for us play for these relatively huge audiences and have them really be enthusiastic.

Queerky- Girlyman plays on (fellow folk singer) Chris Pureka’s new album. What was touring with Chris like?

Ty- She’s the sweetest person in the world, really funny, and also a phenomenal musician. We did a little bit of collaboration and it was just a really good fit. It always helps when you can watch the other musician and have it fire you up for your own performance.

Queerky-What interview question are you so bored with you’d rather sleep with Sarah Palin than ever answer again? Don’t spare my feelings; even if I asked it, I still want to know!

Ty-(Laughs) You totally didn’t ask it. It’s “How did you get the name Girlyman?” I don’t know if I’d sleep with Sarah Palin, but I’d definitely rather not answer that question again.

For more information including tour dates and to read their blog, check out http://www.girlyman.com

Written by Sarah Terez Rosenblum

A freelance writer with an MFA in Creative Writing, Sarah Terez Rosenblum is at work on her first novel. When not writing, she supports herself as a Starbucks barista, figure model, Spinning instructor and college teacher. Inevitably one day she will find herself naked at Starbucks or trying to brew espresso using a stationary bicycle. She’s kind of looking forward to it actually.

Culinary Fashion Sense: Does this vegetable match my protein?

So, we have pots and pans, rasps and sieves, knives and tongs. We know that buying good ingredients will make our meals taste better and might even inspire us to cook more. And now, we move on to planning your menu.

The question I get asked most, whether online or in real life, is this: how do you come up with your menu? The restaurant where I work has a chalkboard menu. That means that every day, at the beginning of each shift, we decide what people will be choosing to eat at the restaurant that night. And it changes almost every day. There is a certain, loose formula to that decision. I like to have 6 to 7 main courses and I start with the protein element of the dish. There needs to be at least one vegetarian option. There should be at least one fish or seafood dish. There is often a burger of some kind. The rest depends on what we have in the restaurant that is fresh: beef, venison, elk, ostrich, lamb, pork, scallops, halibut, tofu, and so on. Once I have decided on the protein element of the dish, I decide how to prepare it and then I pair it with a vegetable or series of vegetables. This is the part in which people seem to be the most interested. How do you DO that?

The answer is that it takes some practice. Before I worked at this restaurant I just cooked what the chef told me to cook. It was his job to figure out the menu, it was mine to cook it properly. For my first week here, the chef did the same. He wrote out the menu, gave it to me and I prepped and cooked it. Easy. I’ve done this before.

Then came the night when he called from downtown saying he was stuck in traffic and wouldn’t be back for an hour and a half. I needed to come up with one item for the menu. The rest he had already written out. I panicked. PANICKED!! WTF?? Are you kidding me? I’m not ready for this! I can’t DO this!! He made some supportive comment like, “Don’t be so retarded. Of course you can.” Then he hung up.

Thus ended my orientation and training period. From that night forward I was expected to figure out what was on the menu. I was pretty cautious and I asked a lot of questions. Does this make sense? Will this work? Is this too weird? Eventually, I came to understand that planning a menu is much like learning a language. There is vocabulary to be learned (ingredients). There is sentence structure: some adjectives (accompaniments) just support a noun (protein) a little better than another. And there is learning to be concise: a plate with too many elements is like a run-on sentence; there are too many things happening and I just can’t comprehend it all.

There are literally thousands of combinations that work when planning a menu. Many are classical: tomatoes and basil, beef and potatoes, pork and apples, fish and lemon, game meats and berries, pasta and tomato sauce, lamb and rosemary, lentils and raisins. Many are found in dishes which may come from different ethnicities. For example, a curry can have sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, lime, nuts, cilantro, basil, sesame and coconut milk. In other words, any or all of those ingredients will work together. A South American salsa might have pineapple, peppers, red onions, tomatoes, cilantro, basil, and lime and any of those combinations will work together too. The same goes with spices and herbs. If I want to give a dish an Asian twist, I may marinade pork in soya sauce with fresh ginger and lime and a few chilies. I might pair it with a sweet potato puree because you can find sweet potatoes in a Thai curry. Maybe I’ll add sugar snap peas. And to finish the dish I’ll use Thai basil and cilantro. The dish will be far from Asian, but it will be Asian influenced. Something with a Mediterranean flair will have olives and capers, lemon and olive oil, parsley and mint. Generally, things that are grown in the same part of the world will also go well together on a plate.

I’ve been asked to end each blog with a recipe of some sort. However, for this particular blog I thought I’d try something different. Lots of people have said that they cook the same things over and over. To help get out of that rut, pick one thing that you like to eat and I’ll come up with things that would go well with it, along with a recipe for how to prepare it. That way you’ll have (hopefully) a new idea for preparing something that you like to eat. And, if many people participate, then there will also be ideas for things that other people like to eat, which may help to open up your food horizons. Include any dietary restrictions as well so I know what not to include.

Annnnd … GO!

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Written by food_geek

food_geek was once a successful finance professional. Tired of money, nice things, equity, and the possibility of retirement she decided to pursue a career in the food industry at age 35. She is now a sous chef at a small restaurant in a tiny Quebec village where she works the fry station. She looks forward to being promoted to Manager, Drive-Thru. food_geek has been cooking professionally for 30 months.

The Evolution of Desire

When Nelson Wong saw the tall, hot athletic boy across the dance floor, his reaction was straight-up primal.

“When I first encountered Cole,” recalls Wong, “I was swept up with this amazingly sexy boy I saw, struck by his eyes, his lips and his build. I was so attracted to him.”

That description of boy-on-boy desire has been written and rewritten millions of times, but this particular chemistry defied the traditional fag-traction model.

As Cole Dodsley remembers it, after seeing Wong at repeated club nights, their desire turned physical.

“We would make out upstairs,” remembers Dodsley, “and when you make out with a person your hands roam, right? I hadn’t had [breast removal] surgery yet and I knew that he could feel the binder on my back and knew that he was noticing something, so this is where I’m saying, ‘He needs to know,’ and ‘Oh shit if I tell him, will he hate me, will he not wanna make out with me, is he totally going to be grossed out and freaked out?’”

In fact, Dodsley (a transgendered man who identified as a lesbian before transitioning) and Wong (a gay man) discovered their desires were growing and made the decision to evolve along with them.

Wong wrote about the experience for Gayze magazine: “I pulled down his black jockeys to reveal a neatly trimmed mound of dark hair and warm tissue. At 28, this was my first time with a female-bodied person and I was nervous. I worried that I would be repulsed or stifled by the sight of it. Seeing him naked, however, was a total turn-on.

“Seeing his soft sensitive tissue exposed made me incredibly horny. I leaned him back on a log and licked and sucked him. It was warm, wet and heaven.”

Since that experience four years ago, Wong says his own attraction options have widened.

“My experience with Cole was fantastic and I am so happy it happened. It definitely broadened the spectrum of people that I can engage with to find intimacy. It sounds cheesy, but it has opened up my world. I don’t have to look solely to 10 percent of the population -that is gay and bio-male -to explore what turns me on.”

While Wong’s journey was a positive one, he admits he was shocked and disheartened by some of the judgments coming from his community.

“I definitely knew that some of my gay friends felt revulsion. Lots of comments dealing with female genitalia, that sort of thing.

“I have friends who don’t believe in transsexualism; they don’t accept it,” he continues. “Some of them don’t believe that trans issues should be lumped together with queer issues. They believe that it is social- and self-hatred issues rather than their gender identity. It is difficult to respond to that. ”

In a lot of ways, the simple existence of transgendered people in the gay community throws many gay comfort zones right out the figurative window.

After years of fighting for the right to exist, of coming out to family and friends and in many cases being ostracized for being attracted to people of the same sex, many gays and lesbians feel deeply attached to their hard-won labels.

Wong reveals that beyond the external pressures and chastisements from his gay male friends, his newly identified desire caused him some stress internally as well, specifically regarding his identity as an out and proud gay man.

“There was definitely a voice inside my head that alerted me to the fact that I had fought so hard to be a gay male, to create this identity and this strength of character despite this mainstream, heterosexual world and the expectations of my parents. There was a voice inside of me that worried that I was betraying some of that.”

Transgendered porn star Buck Angel -who bills himself as “the man with a pussy” -makes a lucrative living selling and starring in adult DVDs (Buckback Mountain, Buck Off) and streaming videos.

The demographics of his audience offer some surprising insight regarding gay and lesbian desires.

“Eighty percent of my customer base is gay men. Twenty percent is female -bisexual, straight and gay,” explains Angel.

“I get a lot of gay men writing me letters about how they are so turned on by me and they can’t believe it and what does that make them, are they now straight? My vagina freaks people out, especially gay men,” he says.

“They are attracted to me as a person but because I have a vagina, it just totally throws them for a loop, they can’t wrap their head around it.”

Angel says he has seen and heard many horror stories about the treatment of trans folks by gays and lesbians. “Twenty years ago, I identified as a dyke. When I started transitioning, the dyke community ostracized me; every single one of my friends wanted nothing to do with me. There was no knowledge about what was going on then.

“Funnily enough, a lot of people have called me since then, asking me how they go about transitioning now.”

If trans people are challenging many gays’ and lesbians’ notions of desire, so too are they often broadening their own scope of attraction.

For many trans people who identified as gay or lesbian before transitioning, it wasn’t just their bodies that evolved upon transition; they discovered their desires were shifting as well.

Dr. Christopher Shelley is a professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the book Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing.

He thinks the evolution in desire experienced by many trans people is the result of feeling freer in other aspects of their lives.

“When people start to become -to grow and let themselves be -they can let down all kinds of defenses and open themselves up to new experiences and attractions,” he says.

“Once you are, for the first time in your life, comfortable in the body that you should be in, new doors can open for you. There’s a lot of trans people who never had orgasms, who never let themselves go or be sexually. They couldn’t even touch themselves because they were wrongly bodied. Once they are rightly bodied, they are simply more honest and more comfortable with themselves and with others,” he explains.

“Trans people teach us about the complexities of life and that it isn’t just the easy categories of straight, gay, lesbian, heterosexual, homosexual,” Shelley says. “In many ways, I think that trans folks challenge all of our categorical assumptions. That makes them a very potent group of teachers.”

Dodsley is no stranger to Shelley’s theory of shifting desires.

“Almost all the trans men in my life are more attracted to men than they were before they transitioned. That’s not to say they aren’t attracted to women anymore, they totally are, but almost all of them are attracted to men,” he says.

“I now realize that I’ve always been attracted to men but previously thought, ‘Oh I am attracted to men because I wanna be one. Then I realized that it wasn’t that -it was that I was attracted to them!

Before transitioning, Dodsley identified as a lesbian. Now, he says, his relationship is “anything but heterosexual.”

“I don’t think that many people on the street would see us as heterosexual because my partner has her own masculine features as well,” he explains. “We still don’t look like a heterosexual couple and I think that keeps me pretty queer too. She’s queer and I’m queer.

“If everybody likes everybody, I’m happy. We should all feel free to love whoever we want to in terms of gender,” he adds.

Roz Shakespeare was the first openly transsexual police office in the Vancouver Police Department. She sees the evolution of trans desire this way: “In the beginning, we’re presenting a body that we don’t feel comfortable in. It’s not that we don’t belong there, it’s that we were pushed there. You’re not free to be engaged fully; you’re always holding a part of a veil there so nobody can see beyond that.

“As we come out and can be who we are fully, that canvas is blank, usually at an age where we’re now a little more comfortable exploring who that is and feeling safe,” she explains.

Most of the people interviewed for this story believe there is a significant difference in terms of how the gay community responds to trans men and women.

While trans men by no means have it easy when it comes to flirting, dating and even friendship within the gay community, they seem to have it easier than most trans women.

“I think it hearkens back to feminist theory -what is strong and what is weak,” says videographer and trans man Erek Tymchak.

“If you look in the gay men’s community, there is a hierarchy, isn’t there? Butch men are top of the pile; then, the young good-looking guys that can pass as possibly straight and then it goes down from there,” he says. “The effeminate men are always near the bottom. Drag queens are somewhere down there, and god forbid you want to be a woman.”

“The queer community as a whole has phobias against femininity, especially when it is expressed by male-bodied individuals, regardless of their gender identity,” agrees Gwen Haworth, producer and star of the award-winning documentary She’s a Boy I Knew (a film about her own transition and her family’s response to it).

“Whether it is an effeminate gay man or a trans women, femininity is undervalued in society,” Haworth continues.

“When trans women begin that journey, I think that their sexual power in society gets diminished. It is like watching Jack on Will and Grace, or the cast of Priscilla Queen of the Desert; they become these farcical characters. There’s a lot of other reasons behind it I think, but society’s devaluing the feminine is a major part of that.”

Shannon Summers finds it disheartening that “trans women are invisible to gay men.”

“We can go to gay bars and we are accepted there,” she says, “but it is not just that gay men don’t hit on trans women, gay men don’t pay any attention to trans women.

“They don’t talk to us, we don’t interact at all. Gay men want men who look like men and when they see a trans woman, they see a female and if we’re not a drag queen -if we’re not making fun of the gender and the genre -then we’re not on their radar.”

Tymchak says his transitioning wasn’t very well received, either, within the gay community. “I can tell you about numerous comments that people made before I transitioned, which halted my own transition,” he says.

“It is ironic that they have fought so hard and yet are being so ruthless towards another,” he adds, referring to the gay community.

That said, Tymchak believes that evolution is inevitable. Trans people have a lot in common with gays and lesbians, he says. “This is just another way for traditional gay and lesbian people to be challenged.

“It is funny to think that gay and lesbian people amongst us are conservative, but they are!” he continues. “They need to open their hearts and minds to us, just as they’ve asked the rest of the world to do for themselves. Realize the activism is not over.”

Haworth is optimistic about the future of the queer community and its openness to gender and sexual fluidity when she looks to the generations younger than her.

“Queer folks in their 20s are a lot more comfortable with gender fluidity,” she says. “As someone in my mid-30s, I’m learning from that.”

But, she says, queer desire won’t truly evolve until gays and lesbians address the transphobia that still shapes many of their responses to trans people.

“The LGBT community has to really bring this to the table and re-think where their hearts are,” she says.

“We as trans folks have to re-approach how we are going to connect with the queer community because there is this divide that is happening right now,” she continues. “Sometimes I think it has to do with the difference between proactive or preemptive politics and reactive politics. That is detrimental to us all. Let’s take down our guard and talk to each other, learn about each other, see where our similarities are and grow together. I think that is the next glass ceiling.”

As for Shelley, he hopes the future of queer love will be more focused on desire and chemistry than on conventional understandings of gender and same-sex attraction.

“If we have any impact at all, in the future it will be that queer people will be more queer, that people could be able to appreciate the complexities of human sexuality and gender,” he says.

“Rather than being fixed in the body of one thing only, and strive to be one thing only for the whole of one’s life, maybe we’ll be -to quote Bette Davis -much more ‘this and that.’”

Denise Sheppard (scribe at shaw dot ca) is a self-employed journalist/editor who likes long walks, candlelit dinners and writing for U.S. and Canadian national mags and websites. Her fave topics are human rights-related pieces and entertainment journalism.

Indigo Girl Gone Solo: Amy Ray and the Art of Letting Go

“My wife and I missed your show last night,” says a nondescript man. He’s first in line to greet Indigo Girl, Amy Ray at a Chicago Border’s in-store signing. “Our son got sick.”

Another man, not a day under sixty, carefully unloads a stack of Ray-related memorabilia, including a vinyl copy of her newest solo album. He folds his hands behind his back, and smiles as she signs each one.

In search of a landline on which to conduct our interview, I ask a friend’s boss if I can borrow a cubicle. “I can’t believe Amy Ray is gonna call here,” my friend’s boss, straight and suburban, squeals, “She’s like a real celebrity!”

Clearly, members of the mainstream can pick Ray out of a lineup; even sing a few bars of one of her songs, or at least one written by the other Indigo Girl, Emily Saliers - hers tend to get more radio play. But Ray is the Indigo Girl gone solo, the one hauling her own gear, staging a packed punk-tinged show at Chicago’s small concert venue, The Metro, pushing the envelope of queer visibility by showing the world (or at least those who are savvy enough to pay attention) another side of a forty-four year old lesbian singer/songwriter, the side that fucking rocks.

When Ray calls from outside Chapel Hill, she’s just taken a turn driving her tour van, byproduct of a stripped down tour. She’s headed out the other side of a Midwest stint that began with a broken down van and a missed Iowa gig. Back in Madison Wisconsin, she offered to make dinner for any audience member who could lend her a truck. “I make a killer sweet potato enchilada,” she said. Now she seems in good spirits, anticipating a break followed by a West Coast run, “Birmingham, Tallahassee, maybe a Mississippi show,” she says, “then out through Texas, the Southwest and up to the West Coast.” January 15th through February 7th if you’re wondering.

Not wanting to try Ray’s patience, I skip the lame background questions: “How did you come up with the name ‘Indigo Girls,’” (a serendipitous pass through the dictionary) and “Have you and Emily ever had sex?” (Absolutely not). Instead, I plunge right in.

Queerky: Didn’t It Feel Kinder is your third solo album. After making your career as half of a duo, what surprised you most about suddenly being a solo artist?

Amy Ray: When I started I thought [solo work] was just gonna be something I did a couple of times to experiment, get a few things out of my system. Then I realized it was as important to me as what I do with Indigo Girls. That was a surprise for me.

Q: Tell me about your writing process.

AR: I have a lyric journal, and when I’m in writing mode, which is probably about seventy-five percent of the year, I write maybe four or five days a week anywhere from two to five hours a day. I don’t censure myself at all; it doesn’t have to be quality, its just getting my ideas out. Then I comb through for nuggets of songs and I tape myself playing and singing along to different parts. The first part of the process when I read back through, I’m a little surprised at what comes out sometimes, but I step back from it and try to be really objective, so it doesn’t scare me like it used to. (laughs)

Q: As a writer I tend to reveal without editing and then be surprised by how vulnerable I’ve made myself. Can you relate to that experience at all?

AR: Well, when I sing live, it becomes a more vulnerable experience. But I just have to let go and be in the moment. I can’t be responsible for what my vulnerability is at that point.

Q: How has your relationship to songwriting as a discipline changed over your career? Did you always write every day?

AR: Right now on tour I’m not doing that. We just finished an Indigo Girls record so I’m not writing as much as I typically do. I’m just sort of on break to let things in. But no, I didn’t start out writing like that at all. I was really undisciplined. I believed in this idea that if the muse hits you, you write. I didn’t edit enough and I didn’t really work hard enough. Probably eight years ago, when I started making solo records, I started reading a lot about writing and talking to different songwriters and I realized I needed to create a routine around it and I did.

Q: Did that change your work?

AR: Melodically I still struggle sometimes, but I noticed that my songs got better, the images got a little tighter, I got more prolific. I feel like anytime you work on something as a discipline it improves. There’s no doubt about it.

Q: In terms of discipline, it seems like your vocal range has developed in recent years as well. Was that something you consciously cultivated?

AR: Earlier on, I just took my voice as the natural quality of what it was and didn’t work on it. I definitely didn’t take good care of it. I drank and smoked a lot and that’s not good for your voice. That stopped about twelve years ago. Probably five or six years ago, I started working with this DVD for heavy metal singers called “The Zen of Screaming.” I was listening to vocalists like Brandi Carlisle and Jeff Buckley who had a certain way they would break into their head voice. I started working on that, doing specific things around building my range. I talk to other vocalists and call this vocal teacher and ask her questions. It’s kind of nerdy; I definitely work on it a lot because I want to be able to go between screaming a punk rock song with melody within the screaming, to singing in a very strong but vulnerable kind of head voice. I want to be able to do both things because I’m writing songs that, to me, have both voices in them, and if I can’t do that it’s frustrating to me.

Q: You talk about how using your head voice goes along with the progression of your songwriting and all the work you do with gender.

AR: Yeah, when I wrote She’s Got to Be, I wrote it in that higher range cause I was trying to reflect a sort of quote unquote feminine part of myself by singing in that register.

Q: Speaking of gender, I have a theory that most lesbians-femmes included– have a secret male alter ego. If you were a man (and I’m not saying you aren’t) how do you imagine you’d look? What would your name be?

AR: Oh…what would my name be? Well, people call me Amos, so that’s probably my alter-ego name. I’d probably look about the same to be honest.

Q: Did you see how quickly you came up with that?

AR: Yeah I think because I’m so male-identified in so many ways it’s not a hard one for me (laughs).

Q: We’ve talked a bit about what it’s like to put your songs out and sort of let go of them. You seem really at peace with the whole process. Some performers, Kurt Cobain and Ani Difranco both come to mind, famously object to fans misinterpreting their songs. You use metaphor and history and personal experience to write really multidimensional songs, so I’m guessing you get a lot of fans flattening your meaning, maybe going for the obvious interpretation. What are your feelings about that?

AR: I think when Ani comments on that or when Kurt did, I think they had such frenetic fans who had a propriety relationship to their lyrics [which] probably made them feel like they shouldn’t have to be accountable for this or that. I don’t have that same intense experience. I really believe in letting the song go. I’m fully aware that people are going to have their own meanings for it. Obviously, it would upset me if people thought I was saying something inflammatory or negative or mean when I didn’t mean that, but as far as interpretations of metaphors, or taking the song and making their own meaning, or even reading into my life in a way that’s not accurate, it doesn’t matter to me actually. I don’t think about myself to that extent, you know what I mean?

Q: That probably makes it a lot easier for you.

AR: Yeah, I’ll sit and read a Louise Erdrich book, and in my mind I’m coming up with all these ways that it connects to her real life, and I’m sure none of them are true. I used to do that all the time with Bernie Taupin’s lyrics with Elton John. I just thought I had him figured out lyrically. It’s just what people do.

Q: What’s more likely to make you cry, books, movies or songs?

AR: Hmmm. Songs.

Q: And now we come to the meat of the interview, some very serious questions coming up. The L Word, positive cultural step forward or exploitative poorly-written drivel?

AR: (laughs)

Q: Or maybe both.

AR: (Still laughing) I might have to take the fifth on that. I think it’s both.

Q: Starbucks drink of choice?

AR: Soy Chai.

Q: Favorite season?

AR: Spring.

Q: Favorite time of day?

AR: Twilight.

Q: Name four activities you cannot live without. By activities I mean, like working out-

AR: Working out…being in the woods… I can’t live without… eating junk food and I can live without sex… for a while but not for more than a couple of years.

Q: Ok, well should I count that one or not?

AR: Um, let’s count that one.

Q: How many animals do you own right now?

AR: I have… five dogs and seven cats.

Q: How many is too many?

AR: I could probably fit one more dog and one more cat and then I’m at my limit.

Q: What’s your favorite breed of dog (although I’m assuming you go more for the rescues and the mutts)?

AR: Yeah, mutts are my favorite breed. I like around a forty-five to fifty pound dog.

Q: Could you have a relationship with someone with opposing political views?

AR: Not a love relationship, no.

Q: Speaking of politics, a lot of queer people describe having a circumscribed period of pure joy when Obama was elected, followed by deep disappointment, almost an estrangement, after Prop 8 passed. What was your experience?

AR: I was so overwhelmed that Obama won with such an incredible majority that for me, it didn’t dim that much, because I expect that this marriage thing is gonna be pretty slow moving. Even Obama can’t stand up and say he’s for gay marriage. The marriage issue is important to me as a human rights issue but there are so many other queer community issues that are important to me. I didn’t have high expectations, is a simple way to put it, so it didn’t blow my mind, but I think it’s important that people are speaking out about it. I think that’s great.

Q: I have a potentially dicey question for you. In mainstream culture, references to Indigo Girls, more often than not, appear as jokes. Like, Glamour magazine might write, “you’ve just been dumped, and you’re at home listening to Indigo Girls and eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s,” or I know I’ve read belittling references in Maxim for example. Why do you think Indigo Girls end up a cultural punch line?

AR: Yeah, people say “I’m a closet Indigo Girls fan.” It’s as if women are only allowed this very narrow access to music and success, and when they do have it there’s still a sense of embarrassment about recognizing it or validating it. It’s about sexism, and sort of a derogatory idea of what it means when women express themselves. When you add homophobia on top of it, and then a band that’s been together twenty something years; when you have such an attachment to such specifics, you’re gay, you’re a woman, you don’t have an image like Madonna, you put all that together, and you have a very easy target. There’s a certain almost derogatory iconic status that comes along with that. In some ways you have to expect that if you’re gonna be outspoken and so politicized, so iconically who you are, you’re gonna get cultural references that aren’t always positive, and humor that’s the lowest common denominator. Sometimes it’s clever. Sometimes it’s subversive and even flattering in its cultural way. The only thing that bothers me about it sometimes is the reflection it has on society: It means we haven’t moved that far. The gatekeepers are still the patriarchy. They still think of rock or folk or country as sort of a man’s game as far as who can lay claim to some kind of intellectual free rights. It doesn’t ruin my day or anything. It just kind of is what it is.

Q: Again, you seem to have a really healthy attitude about things that are out of your control.

AR. I used to have a much worse temper and it didn’t do me much good.

Q: One more question for you. I think kids have really specific ideas about their adult lives. Like, I always thought I’d grow up to be blond. What sort of vision did you have for your life when you were say ten? How is the life you live the same or different?

AR: When I was ten I pretty much thought I was a guy, so that was shocking when it didn’t happen. But you know I’ve been able to come full circle on that. I really wanted to be a musician so I sort of pictured myself living in a rural area and playing music and that’s what I do. I got really lucky.
Except that she didn’t. No way is Ray’s success luck-based. Sure, Indigo Girls gained visibility in the Tracy Chapman-fueled half second during which folk music was marginally cool, but Ray’s continual presence on the music scene, her growth as an artist, the evolution of her songs and voice, none are accidental. Her success is a direct consequence of her ability to both channel her will-power and sustain an objective distance. In discussing the breadth of her singing range Ray says humbly, “I’m totally not there yet,” meaning she hasn’t fully attained the vocal goals she’s set for herself. However, Ray is striking in that while she has her sights set on further landmarks on her path toward self-actualization, she’s adept at harnessing her ambition, has perfected the art of letting go; she’s already farther along then most will ever be.

For tour dates, videos, sound clips and photos (including one of Amy in a prom dress) please visit her website at http://www.amy-ray.com/.

Written by Sarah Terez Rosenblum

A freelance writer with an MFA in Creative Writing, Sarah Terez Rosenblum is at work on her first novel. When not writing, she supports herself as a Starbucks barista, figure model, Spinning instructor and college teacher. Inevitably one day she will find herself naked at Starbucks or trying to brew espresso using astationary bicycle. She’s kind of looking forward to it actually.

Touched by the brainless, shuffling, rotting reanimated zombie hand of love

Science rocks. Unless you bought 900 acres of Nagasaki farmland in 1943 and were hoping to flip that shit. But let’s assume that this is not the case.

Science rocks. And today on Science and You we’re going to be looking at Dicrocoelium Dendriticum, a tiny microscopic organism that, much like seasoned veteran cult filmmaker George Romero, speaks English poorly, weighs very little, has trouble getting a date, and creates zombies.

Dicrocoelium Dendriticum (Which we will call, for the purpose of brevity, “Dinky”) lays its eggs up inside the ugly bits of a cow. The problem is that it’s a fast and furious world inside a cow and there’s one way out and it’s pretty much the way you would expect. Not long after Dinky eggs emerge from Bessie’s Fire door, a species of snails gobbles them up and hosts the tiny parasite inside it. Please remember this last part when ordering all willy-nilly off the French Menu this weekend.

Like most heterosexual male bulls and a statistically significant number of 15 year old young men from Macomb, Illinois, Dinky wants to get back into a cow. And like most female snails in the wild have discovered, when you need a helping hand, a snail is not the place to look. So Dinky forces the snail to throw it up, along with a healthy dose of ant-attracting yummy phlegm. Ants come along, eat Dinky and that’s where the odd begins to happen.

Ants that eat Dinky find themselves partially zombified. The ant acts perfectly normal during the day but at night, when other ants are sleeping or making the ant with two backs, Dinky ants crawl along slowly, hypnotized, until they find a tall stalk of grass. Then, with their best “please eat me, cow” pose, they hang from the top of the stalk of grass, waiting for nature to take its course. If they aren’t eaten tonight, they just wake back up and do it again tomorrow.

Dinky is interesting because, as I discovered in my “Defiling the dead” class at Miskatonic University, if you inject a human corpse with a RNA bath solution containing Dicrocoelium Dendriticum and a series of other ingredients (one being Diet Dr. Pepper, which tastes much more like regular Dr. Pepper, as a quick aside) you can reanimate the dead. It’s actually a pretty easy operation, but you have to inject the solution directly into the spinal column leading to the brain and, therefore, need a honking big needle.

Here’s the thing. Dead people are like the unending, infinitely sustainable resource of planet earth. There were so many deceased folk to choose from, I had trouble figuring out where to start. So I tried to think like an American and I resurrected someone about whom there is soon to be released an almost assuredly Oscar winning biopic. Upon scanning through IMDB I decided to steal the body of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the State of California, assassinated on November 27th, 1978, almost exactly 30 years ago. In doing this I created a historical first in that the result is the only currently animated homosexual male in America with no idea who Madonna is.

I document here, for posterity, my conversation with the acrid, corrupt, mephitic (thank you thesaurus.com), zombified corpse of famed civil rights icon Harvey Milk.

Me: Harvey. Harv. You ok?

Harvey: Wow. That is, hands down, the worst party I have ever been to. Honestly. And I know Belushi.

Me: Ok, I have some good news and some bad news.

Harvey: Hit me.

Me: Bad news. You were shot to death almost just about 30 years ago today and the guy who shot you claimed it was because he ate too many Twinkies and only served a few years in jail.

Harvey: Well, bad trip. And weird, but not the dumbest thing that’s ever happened. Good News?

Me: That massive brushed gold plated needle hanging out of your nearly severed head matches your bracelet almost perfectly.

Harvey: Sweet. I can work this.

Me: So, I didn’t mean to just dig you up but I figured you’d be someone I could talk to.

Harvey: I’m in, brother, you know it. But I haven’t eaten in 30 years. (Harvey began opening and closing the drawers in the beat up Day’s Inn mid-priced suite I had reanimated him in. )

Me: all right, this might be seen by some as bad news as well, depending on your sense of humor, but the recommended diet for a newly created zombie such as yourself is human brains.

Harvey: Yeah, that’s not going to do it for me. Why don’t we just order up a couple of Kahlua and Creams and let things happen the way they happen.

Me: Excellent. (I dial down to room service, keeping Harvey in sight out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. Hanging out with Zombies gives you this feeling that your brain is absolutely huge and completely accessible)

Harvey: Ooh. And some ladyfingers. I love those. So, fill me in, doc. What’s happening in California these days? How’s Belushi?

Me: Um. Ok, well, for a while we had completely equal marriage in California. Over 18,000 couples were legally and happily married. Many of them started adoption proceedings. It was nice.

Harvey: Groovy.

Me: But then 700,000 signatures were entered into a petition that created a ballot initiative called Proposition 8 that amended the California constitution to prevent Gay people from being treated as equals as far as marriage was concerned. The amendment passed.

Harvey: ok. Ungroovy. But expected.

Me: They spent over 35 million dollars passing that amendment.

Harvey: ok, now who do you mean by “They”?

Me: I don’t know, Harvey. It’s the same they as it always is, isn’t it? I remember how young I was when you were killed. Some of my older friends told me “They got Harvey” and I remember wondering what they meant. It didn’t sink in until later that you were dead.

Harvey: And in a state of the art, silk lined casket, by the way. Comfy. (Harvey eyed the room as though under blacklight. He made a move to fold the sheet over a stain that I hoped was only semen)

Me: Sorry. They say that marriage is a religious thing and that allowing gay people to marry violates their religion. That marriage is a religious institution.

Harvey: Well, that’s untrue. People have been getting married since long before Christianity happened. Characters from the oldest pieces of literature we have were married, and it had nothing to do with religion. Beowulf’s parents were married. American Marriage certificates say marriage but have no mention of God.

Me: And they say that letting gay people marry is redefining marriage.

Harvey: Marriage is being redefined all the time. In this country alone, marriage has gone from possession to personhood to partnership. Consanguineous marriages are the norm all over the world, with polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, secular marriage, all forms of marriage in all sorts of cultures.

Me: They say that homosexual relationships are unnatural.

Harvey: Unnatural? All the animal species we observe engage in heterosexual and homosexual behavior. Some of them are monogamous, but not many. Hell, look at spiders, nasty fucking things. Natural and unnatural is a crappy argument. Eating your partner’s head after sex is natural. (Harvey leaned over to look in the mirror)

Me: Well. Hm. They say that it will cause marriage to collapse.

Harvey: Jesus. Look at my head. (Harvey was staring in the mirror at his pus filled head, large flaps of skin falling down over one eye from decay) Do I put anything on this?

Me: I don’t think it’s going to do much good.

Harvey: Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I have to look like an asshole.

Me: I hear you

Harvey: Besides (back on point) We know what the top ten or so things are that cause marriages to collapse in this country. Time, Money, Children and Childcare, Sex, Jealousy, Work, Household maintenance, Arguing methodology, Extended family, and emotional distance. If we really cared about marriage we’d put the money into newlywed programs that helped create time management skills and fiscal competence, we’d fund childcare facilities, create adult partner sex education and connectivity classes, organize group therapeutic programs to address jealousy and anger issues, offer work-life programs in small communities, teach home economics, household maintenance and mediation skills, help young couples to tell their parents to go fuck themselves and slap everyone until they learned how to cry. How do gay people factor into this unless we get to do the slapping?

Me: Why don’t they understand all this?

Harvey: this is you with the “they” again?

Me: Well, it’s pissing me off.

Harvey: Naw. Don’t fall into that trap. It’s not an us versus they issue. Or even an us versus them issue. This is just fighting bad ideas. Don’t turn it into fighting people.

Me: I think that’s big of you, but what do you say to people who think you shouldn’t be allowed to have the same rights just because you’re gay.

Harvey: I don’t say anything to them, brotherman. I say we fight the bad ideas with good ones. A hundred years ago, being openly gay would get you hung from a tree. Gay people didn’t come this far by fighting with people all day long. Not with insults and name calling. We got here a different way.

Me: Fabulously?

Harvey: Actually, yes. Gay people got everything we have in the most fabulous way possible. By standing next to people and not taking ourselves too seriously. By listening better. By being better friends than anyone ever thought possible. What does it mean now in movies to be someone’s gay best friend? It means the person who doesn’t judge. The person who loves you. The person you call at 3 am because you need to talk to someone and there’s one person who will wake up and talk to you and only half mean it when they yell at you.

Me: Is this going to be in your movie?

Harvey: A movie? About me?

Me: Yeah, with Sean Penn.

Harvey: ooh, the kid on Little House on the Prairie?

Me: Yes (I said declaratively, upon looking through his wikipedia page. Sean Penn was in freaking Little House on the Prairie. How does he not just get constant, never ending shit for that? Why the cover up?)

Harvey: I liked him. Look, gay people got where we are through love. We fought hard for it. We’re not going to give it up now just for the right to hate the people who don’t want us to succeed. We’re going to fight this the way we always have.

Me: fabulously.

Harvey: Ugh. You really need to step it up when you say that word. When you say it, it just lays there. Do you think calamine would help this any? (Harvey now held out part of his arm, below the elbow, which had apparently fallen off during the conversation)

Me: It’s really not a skin condition. More of a… Like a thing that happens when you try to defrost a chicken in the sink and you leave it out for 30 years or so too long. With the water running.

Harvey: This is sucking a little bit now. (as he tried to reattach the appendage)

Me: (perking up after the knock at the door) Oh. Here are those Kahlua and Creams. That’ll make you feel better.

Harvey: Oh yeah. That’ll take the edge off of falling apart in a Day’s Inn Bathroom.

Me: How do you do it? How do you stay so centered?

Harvey: I see the whole road, you know. It goes far back that way (he waved his unattached forearm in the direction of the bathroom) and for ahead this way (As he pointed with the appendage towards the armoire that held the small, old fashioned television.) We have to stay on the road we built. We can’t walk it any other way. (At this, Harvey took a big swig of his Kahlua and Cream, causing a spigot of Creamy Liquid to come spraying from an apparent hole in his gut. He looked at the mess on the floor.) I should probably clean that up, then.

Me: Meh. You can barely tell

Harvey: (He paused for a moment, as if to finish the thought with a flair.) I really probably could use some brains now.

That day spent with Harvey was the first day, in a way, of the rest of my life. In the way that most days that come before at least one other day before you die are. I closed the door behind me, thinking about everything that Harvey had said. The cute young bellhop rushed past me with a plate of ladyfingers.

Bellhop: I forgot. Sorry.

Me: No worries. He’s in there. And hey. ( I thought about the road and what it looked like today. I suddenly felt a little better. I handed the Bellhop all the cash I had in my pocket, about 120 dollars). I bet he could use, you know…A little head…

I winked at him and walked away.

Written by Jim Marcus

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s latest release, Vinyl88. Not the Best of DW, will melt your face and is available wherever you buy or steal your music.

‘Where’s the anger, the feeling, the fire?’

Depending on who you are and where you come from, the term “lesbian music” likely conjures up one of two images.

The first, a peaceful roomful of queer women with acoustic guitars singing about love, collective empowerment and community.

For others, the idea of lesbian music might bring to mind the image of womyn/wimmin/women with mullet haircuts and plaid jackets singing outdated folk songs on their acoustic guitars, holding each other tight while crying and singing about wombs and waterfalls.

One thing is for certain: lesbian music has - since its initial heyday in the ’70s - gained its place in history as groundbreaking, magical and inspirational to many.

Today, queer women generally don’t have much more than a historically fuzzy perspective on that period, much less a sense of the depth and breadth of its significance. Yet many of the reasons that contemporary musicians are free to be out and proud are because of those lesbian foot soldiers of yesteryear.

Young queer musicians and music industry folks often deem landmark artists, ranging from Cris Williamson and Ferron (who broke ground in the ’70s) to the Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge in the acoustic revival of the ’90s, as “too out” or “too gay” - in spite of their accomplishments.

For many 20-something recording artists, the fight for freedom appears to be over, and as a result, the need to queer-identify in one’s lyrics or to the press seems to them to be a step back - a blinkered approach to their craft that doesn’t begin to describe who they are at their core.

Some see this inconsequentiality of orientation as an indication that equality has been achieved.

However, by not gathering our queer community together through music, and not identifying and singing about it, are we losing the unique and supportive lesbian music community that united and made the scene special?

Moreover, is the lack of queer lyrics and politics in music going to be detrimental to the next generation who can’t find songs and role models willing to talk about what it is like to be queer?

Cris Williamson remembers a time when women’s music and community were virtually synonymous.

Williamson - a pioneer in that scene in the ’70s and still touring actively today - was considered to be at the epicenter with her CD The Changer and the Changed seen as one of the main soundtracks to that period of time.

En route to a gig in New Orleans, Williamson’s voice on the line softens as she remembers that era.

“Music was the centre of the circle, it was the hub around which everything revolved… bookstores, hotlines… at the center of it were these concerts that they called ‘women’s music’ and it was a way to bring people together, a way to create a community where they had none.

“Everybody had been marginalized and horrified, but when we gathered together, it was the closest we could get to church. Nobody had any money but whatever there was we shared. Now, we look back and say, ‘Wow, what a thing that was!’”

Pat Hogan, concert producer and founder of Sounds & Furies Productions, also recalls those days as being filled with power and possibility.

“It was about giving voice to and about women, specifically lesbians. There was nothing like it before. Olivia Records was one of the first - if not the first - record company that was owned, operated and run by women - music that mainstream record companies wouldn’t even touch,” Hogan recollects. “It was amazing and radical. The community then was so strong!

“In a way, I think there is a longing for that. When we listen to younger women talk, it is too bad they don’t have the herstory, because they’ve missed out on what brought them to where they are today,” Hogan laments. “It is because of lesbians who were out there as pioneers that a lot of women have the opportunities that they do, whether or not they know it.”

Vancouver singer/songwriter Kate Reid definitely echoes this sentiment and admits she’s deeply concerned that her fellow queer musicians are being apolitical. She worries about the effect on future generations.

“The thing that I see not happening right now is political stuff in the music women are making. People are saying, ‘We don’t need that, we’ve got our equal rights’ - which is bullshit. I think that there is a false belief that queer women have it made, that it is not necessary anymore, the fight is done,” Reid contends.

“I go to shows as much as I can and I wonder, ‘Where’s the beef? Where’s the substance of lyrics? Where’s the anger, the feeling, the fire?’”

Williamson agrees.

“Women still aren’t safe in the world, so when the young people coming up say they’re tired of it, they are tired of the issues that still are with us, of rape and misogyny and homophobia - those things haven’t changed so much as they’ve been softened, in that the language is less present in the culture,” Williamson suggests.

“There are still women that we don’t know who are being killed because they are gay, and songwriters still need to tell those stories. In the global reach it is really important to talk about it. The feminist revolution is not done as long as some women are dying somewhere - or just being kept from thinking freely.”

Lisa Howell, aka DJ De Lux, is the event coordinator at Lick, a Vancouver nightclub for women. She sees not only political apathy, but the future fallout arising from it.

“From what I see as a DJ at Lick, the younger crowd definitely reacts the most to hip-hop and Top 40; it is really more about the rhythm and the beats, not so much the lyrics,” Howell observes.

“I think that is a sign of the times. This hurts not just queers but everybody. When we don’t have substance to what we are doing, we’re going to start to feel empty,” she argues.

“There’s a lot of younger kids coming up into the scene. Where’s their support going to be? Where will the Indigo Girls of this time going to be when they need that? Where’s the leadership and representation when all the queers just see everybody getting drunk and partying and there’s no substance anymore?”

Across the board, it seems more young queer musicians than ever are distancing themselves from their orientation. In some cases, it’s a conscious decision to play down the queer sexuality in their music.

The reasoning behind it? The word “pigeonholed” almost invariably comes up.

“It was quite a conscious decision from the get-go of me playing music. I didn’t want to be judged as a person based on my sexuality. I wanted to be a musician, not a lesbian musician,” explains Lise Oakley, lead singer of the Vancouver group The Wintermitts.

“I was a big fan of Tegan and Sara but there was a whole gay stigma that stuck to them even when they started their career,” Lise notes. “As a younger lesbian I really looked up to them, but I decided that I really didn’t want to be seen as ‘the lesbian singer/songwriter.’

“We want everyone to listen to our music, but I have always felt that you get pigeonholed if you are considered a lesbian band, queer band or queer-heavy band.”

Sena Hussain, lead singer for Vancouver punk rock group Secret Trial Five, has also noted an increasing trend among contemporary artists to avoid what they see as the bounds of sexuality in the interest of attracting a wider listenership.

“People have been moving away from that [sexuality] label because they want to be taken seriously by all types of audiences. The topics that we cover are not queer; they are in regards to [being] Muslim. I would like to write more for a general audience and then get more specific with it. But I definitely see the potential for it down the road.”

Olympia, Washington-based performer Melanie Free - better known by her band name Tender Forever - feels the gay press shoulders some of the responsibility for focusing more on queer artists’ sexuality than their music.

“I truly hate segregation of all kinds. Who wants to be in a box? I don’t,” Free says emphatically, adding “I’ve always answered all the interviews that I got the chance to be offered. Always. But I found myself more upset with the LGBT press than by the non-gay press.

“Eventually, the interviews always end up to be related to my private life. It’s kind of cheap thinking that I would have to talk about my sexual orientation more than what I do,” Free complains. “It’s like assuming that my first thought in the morning is, ‘I’m gay’ instead of, ‘I can’t wait to work on that new cover song!’

“Being queer is definitely not on my mind and I don’t want it to be ’cause it would give a good purpose to people to make it something different enough to be put apart.”

Yet a number of musicians acknowledge that the lack of present-day queer musical role models could have adverse consequences. Shay Faded, a 24-year-old Vancouver hip-hop emcee says she never wanted to be labeled “Shay the gay rapper.” Still, she admits that it could be more challenging for younger artists if there are few, if any, self-professed queer acts from which to draw inspiration.

“When I was a teenager, lesbian folk music was pretty out there, nothing was being hidden at all,” Faded recalls, adding “I think now it is more about the music than anything.”

She acknowledges that by not self-promoting her queer side, she may be losing a potentially devoted audience.

“There’s a huge gay audience that I have yet to reach out to and I know it is huge! I’ve seen Brigee K emcee at Lick and there’s 250 people running up to her asking her for her music. I would like to do that. As for writing queer songs, though, I don’t see myself doing that.”

Lukas Silveira - lead singer of the major-label band The Cliks - has made his own peace with mixing the personal and political. As a trangendered man whose band has done mainstream gigs (currently touring with rockers The Cult) while simultaneously participating in the True Colors human rights tour, Silveira is disturbed by what he sees as a trend among queers to fully assimilate at the expense of potential future collective empowerment.

“Gays and lesbians - the more conservative side - want to be seen as ‘normal’ people. They want normalcy in living, working, dating, having children. A lot of people don’t want to be associated with queerness which is where the community falls out from under us,” Silveira observes.

“Back in the day you had the Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, Melissa Etheridge, people who brought women together, communities of people who were ready to say, ‘This is something that represents us, this is something that we identify with.’ Now, when you look around and see lesbian artists, they aren’t really coming out and saying, ‘We’re lesbian.’ They just wanna sing, they just wanna play, they just wanna do what they do. Their sexuality is no longer up front.

“In one way, I can totally understand,” Silveira continues. “I’m transgendered, but that is not what I am in the music industry. There, I’m a musician. But I see people trying to remove that ‘I’m a lesbian’ thing because they think that in their minds they can be more successful.

“Personally, I’m very comfortable with what I do. I know that talking about it makes a difference,” he notes. “It is so powerful to come off the stage, go to the merch table and get a 15-year-old genderqueer kid come up to me with his mom and say, ‘I drove for three hours to see you. I’m the only transgendered kid that I know and I’ve come to let you know that because of you, I feel normal.’ Are you kidding me? Talk about healing! That to me is so worth what I do.”

The Wintermitts’ Oakley says she has witnessed the queer community getting smaller as a whole, but believes that it is happening because GLBT musicians are integrating into the community at large.

“I can’t think of a band in Vancouver alone that is fully queer; you’ll have bands where half the band will be queer, half the band’s not. That is community to me, because you are integrating. “For me, being in a band with two straight boys, they are learning a lot about queer community and they are supporting it as well.” Lick manager Jessy Leak sees positives and negatives regarding that trend.

“I feel like the scene is getting smaller and smaller because there is less to fight for,” says Leak. “The queer youth that I see on a regular basis aren’t concerned about a sense of community because it is already there for them. It is just handed to them on a silver plate.

“Our community is branching out and meshing with different worlds,” she explains. I don’t know if it is a good or bad thing. I think it is a bit of both because we don’t have that unity as a community but we are having our individuality.”

Vancouver-based jazz musician Erin Ward, programmer for the Sista’Hood Celebration’s Her Jazz Noise Collective event, is excited that Sista’ Hood - an annual musical gathering that celebrates women - exists. But she wonders why that same sense of collective support doesn’t seem to happen specifically within the GLBT music populace.

“I wish there was more community in the queer scene. It seems like it is not trendy to be political and that is sad.”

As for the future of the queer music community, 61-year-old matriarch Williamson says while she’s concerned about the present day, she has confidence in the lesbian music scenes to come.

“If you studied art history, you wouldn’t be surprised by any of this denial of the previous shape of things. A lot of young artists don’t have a proper sense of history, but because it is a pendulum swing, on its way back it picks up almost all the ones that we lost,” Williamson asserts.

“It skips a generation but the next one gets it. I’m finding that it is the 12 and 13-year-old feminists who are fierce, who say, ‘I wish I lived in the ’70s, that sounded so cool!’

“I’m so glad I’ve lived to hear this instead of hearing, ‘We’re not feminists’ or ‘Who are you old grandmas?’

“Ultimately,” Williamson concludes, “the personal is political. You’ve got to connect it. It has to be in the music, in the language, in the presentation. If we isolate people further by not making community, then I think that is anti-art. If people don’t want to make community, then they won’t. But the young people after them will be the ones sure as shootin’ that will make community. I have faith in the pendulum.”

Written by Denise Sheppard

Denise Sheppard (scribe at shaw dot ca) is a self-employed journalist/editor who likes long walks, candlelit dinners and writing for U.S and Canadian national mags and websites. Her fave topics are human rights-related pieces and entertainment journalism.

An Interview with Chris Pureka

Back in December, I did time at a feminist bookstore. Our music stock was limited, a little Ani DiFranco here, a little Holly Near there, however store policy dictated that we could only spin CDs from the artists we sold. As the holiday season slowly sputtered to a stop, our staff, exhausted and cranky from long hours, irate customers, and the constant pressure of selling enough product to keep the store on its feet for another year, could only agree on one thing: if we had to listen to the same artist all day, it had to be Chris Pureka. The New England native’s vocals, both stark and soothing, were at once a backdrop and a focal point for our chaotic shifts; they simultaneously calmed us and intrigued our customers. Needless to say, Dryland, Chris Pureka’s latest release, was one of our top sellers.

While Driving North, released in 2004 is lovely; ruminative and haunting, Dryland, which hit stores in 2006, is evidence of Chris’s impressive artistic trajectory. As a writer, Chris travels ever inward. She manages to write from an internal place of intense vulnerability and specificity without ever excluding her audience. Instead, the personal nature of her music and the exactitude of her vision radiate out like spokes on an emotional wheel, providing multiple points of contact for her fans’ feelings and experiences to intersect with hers.

Recently, during a much needed respite from her grueling touring schedule, Chris took time to chat with me. We touched on a multitude of subjects, from her former job as a lab assistant at Smith College to her preference for boxers over briefs. However, it was this topic - the intensity of her writing and her consequential connection with her fans - to which we circled continuously back.

Queerky: First of all, thank you so much for taking time to talk.

Chris Pureka: No problem. I have a lot of down time right now. (laughs)

Q: Right off the bat I gotta ask you a serious question - boxers or briefs?

CP: Boxers.

Q: Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about your background. You have a degree in biology and you worked as a lab assistant. What compelled you to exchange such a secure, practical career for the quixotic life of a musician?

CP: I didn’t make the transition from scientist to musician overnight. I spent four years working in a lab but the whole time I was also working on music. I was aware of the ways in which having a day job was holding back (but) I didn’t actually leave that job until I was busy enough with music that I thought that I could make it work full time.

Q: Have you ever regretted that choice?

CP: (No) especially because I don’t think of it as irreversible. If in the next ten years I decide that I really want to do science again, I would do that.

Q: You list Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Patty Griffin, Kris Delmhorst, Peter Mulvey, Paul Simon, and Josh Ritter as influences. Have your influences changed over time? Who did you grow up listening to?

CP: Definitely. When I was growing up I listened to The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens. When I got older I listened to a lot of the alternative rock that came out of the 90’s - REM, Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket. Toad was actually my favorite band in high school. I listened to a lot of Ani DiFranco too. When I got to college I was introduced to the smaller indie artists that hadn’t been on my radar when I was younger, Dar Williams, Peter Mulvey, Melissa Ferrick, Kris Delmhorst, Martin Sexton, to name a few. Since then, I have been discovering the Alt-Country/Americana and indie scenes so my most recent influences are folks like Gillian Welch and Ryan Adams.

Q: Talk a little but about your writing process. Do you write every day? Only when inspired?

CP: I am pretty far removed from my writing process right now, which is sad. I have been touring so much that I haven’t had any time at all to work on new songs. That is something that I have found really hard about being a full-time musician. Usually I’ll work on writing and playing everyday for a few hours. Then eventually riffs and melodies evolve into songs. Most of my songs do come from a specific point of inspiration or intensity. I definitely use music as a cathartic process and a way to work through something emotional.

Q: Do you find you censor your writing either because you don’t want to hurt or expose someone in your life or because you feel like your fans have grown to expect a certain style from you?

CP: I have always censored myself a lot - but it is usually just trying to keep the bar high musically and lyrically. I only release or play a fraction of the songs that I write and I like to keep to that standard. I think that people that release every song they write usually end up releasing a lot of bad songs. I am a big fan of editing.

Q: Your fans relate to you in large part because of the personal nature of your lyrics, but I assume your identity also contributes to their allegiance. How do you define and why?

CP: I define myself as “queer” because it has implications in terms of gender and not just sexuality and also because it seems more political in nature.

Q: I’ve heard your music characterized as “womens’ music.” How do you feel about that phrase?

CP: I don’t favor labels like “lesbian musician” or “women’s music.” I think that those labels have specific implications that tend to pigeonhole artists. I define myself as a singer/songwriter. As an out musician I have a specific relationship with the queer community and I am constantly grateful for the loyalty and support that I have found there. Still, first and foremost I am a musician. I happen to be queer. My sexuality does not define my music and I don’t write songs about being queer. I am also not writing music for the queer community. I am writing music that I hope that a lot of people can relate to.

Q: Lesbians make fierce, loyal fans. On the surface this is a positive situation, but I wondered if you feel like having such a strong lesbian fan base has held you back in any way.

CP: There’s this escalating thing that happens, where the queer community is extremely loyal and that can really deter a wider audience. It’s unfortunate that it is that way. I think even more mainstream people can find themselves in a similar situation. For example, I feel like Dave Matthews ended up with the reputation of having a frat boy following. I liked Dave Matthews but at a certain point, that deterred me from listening more. I feel like people get hit with a label, these are their fans, and people that don’t identify with that label get deterred from being their fans. It’s the same in queer culture. I’ve seen straight people really connect to my music and then come to my show and feel alienated and not come back, and I hate that. That’s a really strong word but it’s frustrating. But that’s what happens when you come out. There are a lot of queer artists who don’t come out and you’re like, “Why aren’t you out? Come out!” because if they all did, it would be less extreme, it would dissipate the effect, but because people stay closeted the people who do come out end up taking on all of the energy from the queer community. It’s just a theory, but I feel like it makes sense.

Q: You mentioned relating to the label queer because of its political implications. Do you feel like as a queer performer there’s pressure for you to be overtly political?

CP: Yeah, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that that’s not what I do. I can be insightful in specific ways and that’s just not one of the ways that I’m insightful. I’m interested in music for the sake of music, not for a political outlet.

Q: Speaking again of writing versus performing, I have this theory that the writing impulse and the impulse to perform are pretty radically different and that writers are not necessarily natural performers and obviously vice versa. If you had to define yourself as either a writer or performer which label would you prefer to own? Why?

CP: I think that you are entirely correct. I think that it takes some very, very different skills to be able to write versus being able to perform - and not everyone that is good at one will be good at the other. I definitely identify more with being a writer. I think that I am naturally a more introverted person, so the need to be in the public eye hasn’t always appealed to me. I used to get really nervous before I would play. But that just meant that I had to work harder at being a performer.

Q: As an artist you tend to produce raw, emotionally charged songs. What is it like for you to go out night after night and present such honest, vulnerable work?

CP: It is an extremely vulnerable thing to do to put your emotional and personal thoughts out there for public scrutiny. It is always really hard the first few times that I play out a new song. Sometimes the act of performing a song will be cathartic and feel almost necessary. But there are definitely times when I really don’t feel like I want to share my experience. Those are often days when I would rather just be working on writing.

Q: So let’s say it’s one of those days where you just think, “I cannot play Compass Rose, I cannot be this vulnerable.” Do you alter your set list?

CP: I alter set lists based more on if there’s a show where there’s a specific energy people are interested in. There are two kinds of shows I play, one is a listening show where people are being quiet and attentive - that’s what I prefer - so I’ll play songs that work in that context. But there are definitely shows where I feel like people are there for a social reason, and it needs to be a more upbeat set. There are shows where I’m in a really bad mood and don’t want to play but then I end up having a really good show. There are also shows where that doesn’t happen, but you just have to take it as it comes because we plan our lives three months in advance, and you can’t change your mind at last second.

Q: Back to performing, arguably a performer/fan relationship is largely one sided; a performer puts out work; a fan relates and responds, and ends up feeling like she really knows the performer. What do you think about this dynamic? What sort of relationship are you comfortable having with your fans? Has anyone tried to push your boundaries?

CP: People do feel like they know me in a specific way, and I get it, I understand it. For the most part people are really respectful. There have been times where I feel like people have crossed the line, for instance people will be like, “Oh you should come have drinks with us,” and that’s fine, but sometimes I’ll be like “Nah, I’m cool, no thanks.” And sometimes people will really press the issue. I don’t appreciate that. People I don’t know will e-mail me and will be like, “Do you want to have dinner after your show?” and that just doesn’t make sense to me, and the Myspace thing makes people feel a lot closer than they would have ten years ago. I don’t have a problem with people asking me to hang out, that’s not the issue, it’s more like when people don’t respect me or try to push me - even physical boundaries, sometimes people feel like they can touch me and I’m like, “Don’t do that.” Sometimes people will be like, “Can I have a hug?” and that’s cute, but if they don’t ask first it can be weird.

Q: Can you relate at all to where your fans are coming from? For example, are there performers to whom you relate in a fanatical way?

CP: Growing up, you know like when I was fifteen, there were people I really admired. I understand that side of things really well. I feel like if I met my favorite artists now - I can’t really say how I would feel if I weren’t a performer - but I pretty much would want to shake their hand and be like, “Hey, cool, nice to meet you.” Actually, one of my favorite songwriters is Ryan Adams. I was in New York one time and he came into a bar I was at, and I was so excited but I couldn’t…I actually felt so strongly about performer boundaries that I didn’t even say anything and I actually regret that. I feel like there’s a compromise, a middle ground that needs to be met, there’s obviously an acceptable way to communicate with someone you like, so I feel like my reaction was actually extreme.

Q: Let’s talk a little about the business side of things. Dryland is self-released - I’m assuming that’s a hard option, but probably a freeing one. What are the pros and cons of that choice?

CP: I feel like the way I’ve been doing things - totally independent, (has) been working for me pretty well. At this point I’m inclined to stick with that. I have to work a lot harder to get to the same place (as artists signed to major labels), but if I get there, I have a lot more control, and I make more of a profit. I’ve been doing this for six, seven years, and I see people who started a year ago and signed to a major, and they’re where I am now. That can be hard to witness. With a major, you’re basically paying for opportunities to get your music out there, which is ultimately what everyone wants. It’s frustrating when I feel like I’m overlooked cause I’m not a priority in the press or in the venues. But I want all of my decisions to be my decisions - that’s really liberating. I’m particularly interested in not having pressure to release a record at a specific time. I already feel pressure just from myself and my fan base to constantly be writing all the time, and if there was a label that was like, “You need a record out by October,” I would hate that and it wouldn’t work with my personality. Basically, I’m comfortable where I am, but if a smaller label came along, I would be willing (to sign with them) if it made sense.

Q: Can you take us through a day in your life when you’re on tour?

CP: Wake up, get coffee, drive, drive, drive. Get to destination, unload the gear, sound check, eat something, play the show, drink something, find a hotel, sleep: repeat. Touring can be really great when you don’t have to play a show every single night. If it is a packed schedule, then there isn’t really any time to enjoy all the cool places you get to go, and you are literally sleeping in a different bed every night. It is also very, very tiring.

Q: When you come home from touring is it a hard transition?

CP: Yeah, I think that when I first come home, especially if its been a long tour, there’s a little bit of adjustment that needs to happen. It feels weird to be so still all of a sudden. Now that I’ve been doing it for a long time, it’s easier, the adjustment is faster. But when you first get home from a long tour you’re always like, “I can never do that again.” A lot of people will do two weeks, then home, and that’s a lot more manageable. I mostly don’t do that. If I’m gonna drive to Nashville, I might as well do Atlanta and all the cities that are down there cause otherwise you gotta spend the money on gas to get back there next time. It’s always a struggle to be at a financial place where you can afford to take more time off.

Q: Well, thank you so much. I think that’s all I need.

CP: You could write my biography at this point.

There are certainly worse ways to pass the time.

For more information on Chris Pureka, including tour dates and streaming audio, please visit her homepage or her little corner of Myspace.

Written by Sarah Terez Rosenblum

Sarah Terez Rosenblum spent the last four years of her life in Los Angeles and plans to return even though she hated it. She will be thirty in two years. Thank God she’ll have received her MFA in Creative Writing by then. That way, even though she’ll still be lacking any real idea of what she wants to do with her life, at least she’ll be massively in debt. You can contact her zeret18@gmail.com or visit her at myspace.com/raininariver. You can also buy her a pony. She’s always wanted one.

The Manic Music of MarchFourth

One drippy weekend a couple years back, I loaded up the minivan, stopped at McDonald’s, and took the kids to the Portland, Oregon Earth Day celebrations (I parked a few blocks away and made the kids leave their food in the car, understanding that not everyone would appreciate the irony). We were recent Portland transplants, still adapting to the local culture and scene, getting used to the green and gray. So, I was a bit surprised to lead my troops around the corner and come face-to-face with a tricked-out fire truck and two tail-coated stilt walkers, one in a black top hat. Women in short skirts and striped stockings, men in ruffle shirts and military band coats carrying horns and drums, an attractively faux-hawked trombone player, and more…wherever they were going, we gladly followed.

Under a handcrafted band shelter in one corner of the park, the band collected and started to play an amazing, riotous noise that one band member recently described for me as, “a big band experience that takes the marching band aesthetic and twists it, adds all the influence of world music, and throws in circus and cabaret.” And in the muddy grass, the crowd gathered.

That’s the thing about MarchFourth Marching Band, they play and the crowd gathers, stupefied by this extraordinary spectacle. This past March, for their fourth anniversary, they booked two shows at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, the largest ballroom venue in town. To their surprise, they sold out both the all-ages matinee and the 21-and-over evening show. After getting together as a ‘one-off’ band for a Fat Tuesday show in 2003 and spending their first few years playing local shows and festivals, in the last year they’ve been playing gigs all along the West Coast. They’ve built their reputation at the Burning Man experience in the Nevada desert. They’ve represented the real spirit of American revolution at the Altoona Fun Parade during last year’s World Cup celebrations in Germany. And this year, this year might just be the year they start getting paid.

For a band this big, 34 active band members who won’t play with fewer than 18 or 19 members available, and a show that is never just music but dancers and stilt walkers as well, clearly this has been a labor of love. Fortunately, love is part of their vision. When they talk about their place within a growing genre of street bands and alternative circus, MarchFourth differentiates itself by not being politically oriented, but spiritually oriented - not in the religious, dogmatic sense, but playing music and creating an experience that is about people expressing their joy. Or, as “Cymbal Dan” Herrick described their intentions, “People are constantly looking to be surprised, to see new and innovative forms of art, and to connect with the wonder and awe that we experienced when we were young. M4 brings that spectacle and big show, and then makes you shake your ass!”

Putting that big show together, though, comes with huge investments of time and talent. The band rehearses weekly, with smaller groups of dancers, stilt walkers, drummers, etc., gathering for additional sessions. With at least 16 music writers in the band, compositions draw from a widely inspired set of influences. Other members bring their day-job skills as local artisans into the mix as metal workers fashioning drum carriages, or clothing designers crafting dancers’ costumes and stilt walkers’ long pants. These musicians wear a lot of hats. Literally. While a couple of people have quit their day jobs, most have modified their work lives to accommodate the schedule of weekly practice, shows, and out of town traveling. It’s probably good, too, that many of their day jobs have some flexibility, as the performing schedule has moved to upwards of 100 shows a year.

Talking with the band members, it’s clear that many of them feel they are reaching the crest of the wave that has been building since that first show four years ago. Performing so much more has made MarchFourth a tighter, sharper group. They’ve honed their repertoire to accommodate wildly different kinds of shows, taking their cues and fine-tuning the set list, clothing, and professionalism (read: amount of drinking and revelry that happens pre-show) depending upon their audience. The trip to Germany in 2006 left them with tales to tell (German beer! German groupies!), and acted as a transformative experience for the band. “We spent two weeks together, every day, and played a lot of shows there,” commented dancer and co-manager Faith Jennings. “We didn’t have the responsibilities of our daily lives as a factor during those two weeks, so we really just got to be in the band. And that was a great thing.”

Oregon. Texas. California. Washington. Nevada. More Oregon. Back to California. The 2007 schedule is getting serious. Their new 47-person bus is being decked out with a kitchen, and features that luxury of luxuries, a bathroom, “so no more 45-minute pee-breaks!” With their growing reputation, the band has had more opportunities to turn one-show road trips into multi-venue adventures. They’re featured on one cut of Pink Martini’s new CD ‘Hey Eugene’. They plan to be back in the studio soon to record their own sophomore album. Now in their fifth year together, they admit it’s a marvel the band is still around, with relatively little internal drama. They credit their all-ages appeal to the non-generationally alienating combination of band instrumentation, world music, and circus atmosphere. Best, it seems like they’re all still having fun. The beat comes down, and the crowds gather.

I’ve caught MarchFourth Marching Band at various shows around Portland since that first encounter when I really wanted to leave my children and go join their circus (hey, I’d look good in stripey tights!). I also underestimated their ability to fill the Crystal for their birthday show this year, and ended up acquiring tickets the night of the show on the street outside. Once inside, I wormed my way past people who appeared to range in age from about 15 to 65, and staked my claim right up front. It was getting late in a long day of performances, but the band was still red hot. Feeling the music cascading in through my ears and back out through my fingertips, drums building second heart rhythms, horns lighting the air with their brilliance, beauties, tumblers, stilts, motion, music and delight all converged ecstatically and exploded from the stage. Dan Herrick stated that the climax of the MarchFourth experience is a “glorious place where the music, the crowd, the band, all come together as one. That truly rarefied place where we all get to kiss peace, if only for a moment.” Celebrating their fourth birthday with this unique Portland treasure was indeed a glorious place. And I danced my ass off.

The name of the band itself is merely a hint at the nature of the MarchFourth musical experience, but doesn’t come close to doing it justice. This is a group of individuals whose collective passion for pushing beyond a conventional, passive performer/crowd dynamic has created multi-generational entertainment that fascinates audiences ranging from diapers to, well, Depends. While they have all the pieces in place for this to be a pivotal year for the group, in listening to their ambitions it becomes clear they will have to find their balance between performing and the rest of their lives, both individually and as a band. They’re confident this organism is continuing to grow, and have a strong vision as a group of continuing their deep connection with their music and their audience. But each of the folks I listened to eventually brought it back to what’s really at stake as they move into year five together: “Maybe we’ll all make enough to get paid! In order to conquer the world, we’re going to need to do that.” Fortunately, with the enthusiasm these performers bring to their shows, their genuine love of creating an amazing performance experience, and the growing numbers of fans and followers, it is only a matter of time until they do march forth and conquer the world.

For more information on MarchFourth, including tour dates , streaming audio and even ringtones, visit their website or official Myspace page!

Written by Darby Blue

All photos courtesy of Nik Wilhelm

Watching Out for Alison Bechdel

Since 1983, cartoonist Alison Bechdel has been a political activist, social commentator and humorist, all wrapped up in the form of her well-respected and widely published cartoon, Dykes To Watch Out For. It goes without saying that every artist will show a little bit about themselves in their work; following that theory, after writing hundreds of columns about the lives and loves of dykes, trans-folk and occasional het character, one would assume that the celebrated queer cartoonist’s essence would shine through. Not entirely; but that is about to change.

With the release of her candid new book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel has opened up a lifetime of her secrets for all to see. Not only is it written beautifully, the Vermont-based cartoonist has illustrated her story with gorgeously emotive visuals that frequently resemble intricate paintings more than they do cartoons.

Fun Home is short for ‘funeral home’, the family business that her father, Bruce Bechdel inherited. As the book’s full title implies, the work is both bitter and sweet, a journey that oscillates between Alison’s analytical perspective and her deep honesty. The novel primarily focuses on her dissection of two prominent elements in her life so far: firstly, her love of fine literature and secondly, Bechdel’s own coming out process. Tying those two threads together is Alison’s father, and much attention is placed on how such a complicated man played his own part in both her art and her queer journey. “I realized at some point in my process of writing this book,” recalls Bechdel, “that it was really about becoming an artist, and my apprenticeship as an artist under my father. It was a tough apprenticeship and he was very judgmental and extremely overbearing. He wanted me to be an artist…to do things he hadn’t done.”

While away at university, the young Bechdel bloomed emotionally and creatively, eventually coming out to herself and her family. After outing herself to her parents, Alison’s mother reacted with her own family’s hidden truths. Mother Bechdel outed her husband, explaining to Alison that her own father - a local grade school English teacher — had a long history of sexual relations with men and teenaged boys. In telling these stories, Bechdel’s novel is no upbeat, dumbed-down cartoon…in fact, just the opposite. Fun Home is an in-depth analysis of a family - and their breaking points — from the inside. “To boil it down to its crudest level, I think I wanted to show the anecdotal effects of homophobia in one family’s life. It is much more than that, I hope, but I guess that was sort of my mission.”

One day while at school, Bechdel received a phone call telling her that her father had been killed after being hit by a truck, an accident that to this day Bechdel believes was a suicide. Following years of counseling and consideration, Alison made the decision to write and draw her very private family’s story. She didn’t tell her mother that she was writing it until the project was a full year into its seven-year gestation. “I was very nervous about it; she’s a private person and her friends don’t know this stuff. Over the years, I had gotten a lot of information from her and I guess she felt kind of betrayed by me going public with it. I felt bad about that but I felt that it was something that I needed to do. At the same time,” recalls Bechdel, “she gave me a box of letters from my father, and I got a lot of insight into my father from those. One of the strangest moments ever was reading my father’s love letters to my mother.”

Those letters and the couple’s earliest development - a courtship that included quotations of F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Shakespeare - was the formation of a bond that was intellectually stimulating, if not romantically so. Growing up under the tutelage of such literarily-fueled parents provided Bechdel with the opportunity to access great literature and language, yet she admits that her desire to rebel against her parents led her to the land of comic strips. “My parents had passionate, creative interests; I carefully chose my own mode of expression so that I could elude their radar. In a way I became a cartoonist by default. It was one mode of expression that they didn’t know anything about, didn’t care about, and I could work without their scrutiny. Consequently, you don’t get taken seriously. I didn’t mind…I liked that…it enabled me to be free.”

Ironically, one of the reasons that Bechdel’s Fun Home book stands out as unique is the juxtaposition of the perceived simplistic cartoon form against her own broad use of complex language. Throughout the novel, Alison uses heady comparisons of her life to classic literature, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Homer’s Odyssey. Truth is, the autobiography is often so intellectually complex that it occasionally risks alienating its audience. At one point of our conversation, I quote a line from the book back to Bechdel: ‘My father’s life was a solipsistic circle of self, from autodidact to autocrat to autocide’ and then ask her if her frequent use of symbolism and elevated language is possibly the result of her trying to ‘raise the bar’ of cartoons — consciously or unconsciously — in hopes of gaining her late father’s approval, or perhaps her own. “That’s a very good question. I won’t deny that that is a possibility, but I really do passionately care about words…they are extremely important to me. The thing about cartoon is that you’re using language and images…that is a potent mixture. That is something that really interests me, that interplay between language and reality, and how language can’t - no matter how precise you are - quite capture reality in the same way that an image can. Besides,” she defends, “there’s no point in dumbing it down. I feel like everyone can go to the dictionary, and I think they should. We have richer lives when we have richer language.”

One of the reasons that Fun Home took so long to complete was Bechdel’s painstaking process of capturing as much literal and expressive detail as possible in every frame. Her secret technique? Photography. “I took tens of thousands of photographs,” explains Bechdel, “dressing up and reenacting each scene to come up with each image. One very intense part of my photographic research was going back to the spot where my father was killed, standing there on the side of the road and taking pictures of trucks as they whooshed past. Even though I was acting things out matter-of-factly, the experience entered into my body in some way. I was in a jacket and tie at one point impersonating my father in a casket. I could either emotionally explore that or shutdown…I feel like I did both of those things.”

As a result of her groundbreaking work, advance copies of the book have received rave reviews from a wide variety of respected writers and cartoonists. Oprah-heralded author Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina) called this book ‘brave and forthright and insightful’, while American Splendor comic legend Harvey Pekar dubbed Bechdel as “one of the best” in the cartoon genre. “My work does span the comic world and literary world,” explains Bechdel. “I’ve been getting feedback from writers that is thrilling to me!”

Throughout the writing of the book, Bechdel kept one foot in the Dykes To Watch Out For world, both out of enjoyment and economic necessity. “I could have done the book in half the time, but I had to keep doing my comic strip; I’d have two weeks to do my book, two weeks to do my comic.” After years of working on the strip, she admits “I started to yearn for more recognition and I hope that this book will get me some of that. I love my comic strip and I don’t want to demean it…I just feel like this book has a different quality to it.” Bechdel’s future plans include touring and promoting Fun Home and hopefully - if the reception to the book is positive - continuing to work on further autobiographical work. She admits to still being fueled by Dykes, although the cartoonist admits that her dedication has a personal cost of its own. “It is really getting to be a ‘can I afford to keep doing this?’ situation; I get $30 - $60 a paper, sliding scale. I couldn’t possibly live on my comic book income.” In an effort to keep the characters in print, she is currently working towards a cyber-answer to aid her financial problems. “I have a plan of Dykes To Watch Out For premium,” she explains. “You could get the strips emailed to you right off the drawing board, right when they are most current and have a connection to the current news. And I would leave them uncensored, or I could have occasional frontal nudity…it could be like HBO!” she laughs. After 23 years of working on that project, when asked if moving on from Dykes is an option, the ever-activistic Bechdel explains where her fuel comes from. “The strip is still really exciting to me. Especially at this point in history, as it is dissolving into totalitarianism, it is just vital to me to have an outlet.”

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is available from Houghton Mifflin Books.

Written by Denise Sheppard

Denise Sheppard (scribeatshawdotca) is a self-employed journalist/editor who likes long walks, candlelit dinners and writing for U.S and Canadian national mags and websites. Her fave topics are human rights-related pieces and entertainment journalism.