Music & Concerts
Out of the country closet
Chely Wright on how her faith led her to come out
Last month, for the first time in the history of country music, an established country singer came out. In the May 17 issue of People magazine, Chely Wright discussed how she knew she was gay by age 9, but thought she had to hide it to succeed in music — living a lie that drove her to consider suicide in 2006.
Wright had her biggest hit in 1999 with “Single White Female,” which went to No. 1; made People’s list of Most Beautiful people in 2001, and dated fellow country singer Brad Paisley. In her People interview, she described how she decided to come out when making her new album, “Lifted Off the Ground.”
Wright also has a new memoir, “Like Me,” and has spent the days since the People story hit newsstands in a whirlwind of interviews, from Oprah to Larry King,
She performed at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards on June 5, and is scheduled to serve as grand marshal of Michigan Pride on June 12 and headline Capital Pride in Washington, D.C. on June 13.
She is also headlining Chicago Pride and recently joined the board of Faith in America, a nonprofit group that works to end “religion-based bigotry” against LGBT people.
“Chely’s decision is creating an opportunity for the voices of acceptance and equality to be heard and history has shown that those voices reflect the true hearts and minds of most Americans,” says FIA founder Mitchell Gold.
In an interview, Wright talked about growing up closeted in rural Kansas and her assertion that it’s possible to be gay and a Christian.
“I knew that I was different, but from the minute that I realized what the difference in me was, I went into hiding. It was an undefined prison without bars. I thought I had a birth defect or that I was possessed by the Devil,” she said.
“I spun my mind around all day long trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Then, I had that preacher standing there telling me what was wrong with me and that I was going to hell. I was being told that I would never fit in anywhere.”
She added, “The most compelling things that I have been told by the LGBT community is, ‘Thank you for coming out and for talking about your relationship with God.’ My faith defines me more than anything else.”
The country music industry is considered conservative, so many LGBT advocates have praised Wright for bravery in coming out.
“It was a result of my finally submitting to God. In my new book, ‘Like Me,’ I detail the tipping point for me was getting on my knees the day after I had a gun in my mouth about to kill myself. I prayed, ‘Dear God, give me a moment’s peace. We’ve been doin’ it my way for 36 years. Now, I’m ready to do it your way. Show me the way.’
“His answer was, ‘OK, You’re going to stand up and tell your truth.’ … Not only do we damage ourselves when we hide, but we wreak havoc on those around us. I detached from my family and it confused them. I tried to have relationships with men that hurt them. It’s a no-win situation. People get hurt when you lie.”
She continued: “When we try to be in a relationship that we know we’re not supposed to be in, whether it’s having sex or just going to the movies and holding hands with a man when we know we’d rather be there holding hands with a woman, that’s a lie. It’s wrong.
“I just got a letter from a man who came through an autograph line. He said, ‘I’m a gay man and I’ve been married to a woman for 15 years and I’ve ruined her life. I haven’t made love to her in years. She’s been eating herself into oblivion and now weighs over 300 pounds, she’s depressed, and she feels ugly. She’s a beautiful woman trapped inside of a fat body because of what I’ve been doing to her. Your book has made me realize what I’ve done to her. This isn’t going to be easy, but I am going to come out to her.’”
Washington Blade: You made a statement when you were on Oprah where you were talking about the gay children in this country who are hearing churches preaching that they are damaged goods and that their parents are echoing that in their homes.
Do you think that if the parents and churches would just let these children know that they are unconditionally loved and accepted, they wouldn’t grow up thinking that they must attempt a “normal” life where innocent people are dragged into their attempts to “be normal” like this poor man and his family?
Chely Wright: The parents are quite as culpable as the church. When parents take a child to a church and say, “This is my baby, help me raise them,” they’re well-intentioned. I don’t want to point fingers but I do want to identify where we are going wrong. We need to start looking at churches where kids are hearing this message of “You are broken.” This whole “Love the sinner, hate the sin” — I’m so tired of that. That’s a problem for me. Isn’t that so empty?
Blade: Yes, because a gay person rarely, if ever, sees any “love” from someone who uses that phrase.
Wright: Sin is decision-making. I don’t have a choice to love a man. It’s a sin for me to try to love a man. I will mess a man up. I will mess me up and I will leave a wake of carnage behind me.
Blade: Do you get the feeling that country music was ready for your coming out?
Wright: Not entirely. People who are supportive are so excited that there is someone who has finally stepped out. That’s been so amazing that people are posting positive comments on my Facebook page.
On the other side, people really hate quietly. Let that not go unnoticed. Some of the most damaging hate in history has been done privately behind closed doors or with hoods over their heads.
For the first time in 10 years, my charity concert, “Reading, Writing and Rhythm,” [on June 8] isn’t sold out. Only about half the tickets have been sold. It could be that because Nashville had the flood, people might just be all charitied-out.
I can tell you this, though: We’ve been begging the other acts to please put the event on their social networking sites. That’s never been a problem in the past to get them to help us advertise it to their fans. Other than Rodney Crowell, SheDaisy and Jann Arden, nobody else is telling their fans that they are performing at my event.
Blade: That’s eye-opening.
Wright: Isn’t it? I think that they don’t want to cancel because what would it say about them if they canceled? So they just want to quietly slip in, sing their few songs and get out of there.
Blade: Next week is Fan Fair in Nashville. [The official CMA Music Festival is June 10-13.] Are you expecting to get a better feel for the reaction from country fans when you’re there?
Wright: Nashville whispered about me for years. I didn’t come out to confirm it to the people in Nashville who had heard that I was gay. I came out for the 14-year-old kid sitting in church being told, “Don’t be that, because you’re doomed to a life of ruination. You’re not going to be a good human being if you’re going to be that.”
Blade: When you and your dad recently appeared on Oprah, your dad spoke of his immediate change of heart when you came out to him.
Wright: When I told my dad that I was gay and he heard that word “gay” next to his daughter’s face, name and heart, it changed that word for him. My dad was more effective in moving a million small mountains on the Oprah show than I was.
Oprah asked him, “Stan, what changed? You went from thinking that gay meant sinful, perverted and sick to being accepting the moment Chely said she was gay. What changed?”
He looked at Oprah and he said, “I know her heart.”
Music & Concerts
Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule
Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1
I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of music consumer who purchased music on impulse. When I stumbled across “Things Here Are Different,” Jill Sobule’s 1990 MCA Records debut album on vinyl in a favorite Chicago record store, I bought it without knowing anything about her. This was at a time when we didn’t have our phones in our pockets to search for information about the artist on the internet. The LP stayed in my collection until, as vinyl was falling out of fashion, I replaced it with a CD a few years later.
Early in my career as an entertainment journalist, I received a promo copy of Jill’s eponymous 1995 Atlantic Records album. That year, Atlantic Records was one of the labels at the forefront of signing and heavily promoting queer artists, including Melissa Ferrick and Extra Fancy, and its roster included the self-titled album by Jill. It was a smart move, as the single “I Kissed A Girl” became a hit on radio and its accompanying video (featuring Fabio!) was in heavy rotation on MTV (when they still played videos).
Unfortunately for Jill, she was a victim of record label missteps. When 1997’s wonderful “Happy Town” failed to repeat the success, Atlantic dumped her. That was Atlantic’s loss, because her next album, the superb “Pink Pearl” contained “Heroes” and “Mexican Wrestler,” two of her most beloved songs. Sadly, Beyond Music, the label that released that album ceased to exist after just a few years. To her credit, the savvy Jill had also started independently releasing music (2004’s “The Folk Years”). That was a smart move because her next major-label release, the brilliant “Underdog Victorious” on Artemis Records, met a similar fate when that label folded.
With her 2009 album “California Years,” Jill launched her own indie label, Pinko Records, on which she would release two more outstanding full-length discs, 2014’s “Dottie’s Charms” (on which she collaborated with some of her favorite writers, including David Hadju, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Jonathan Lethem), and 2018’s stunning “Nostalgia Kills.” Jill’s cover of the late Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” on “Nostalgia Kills” was particularly poignant as she had toured with him as an opening act.
Jill was a road warrior, constantly on tour, and her live shows were something to behold. My first interview with Jill took place at the Double Door in Chicago in early August of 1995, when she was the opening act for legendary punk band X. She had thrown her back out the previous day and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. To be comfortable, she was lying down on a fabulous-‘50s sofa. “I feel like I’m at my shrink’s,” she said to me, “Do you want me to talk about my mother?”
That sense of humor, which permeated and enriched her music, was one of many reasons to love Jill. I was privileged to interview her for seven of her albums. Everything you would want to know about her was right there in her honest lyrics, in which she balanced her distinctive brand of humor with serious subject matter. Drawing on her life experiences in songs such as “Bitter,” “Underachiever,” “One of These Days,” “Freshman,” “Jetpack,” “Nothing To Prove,” “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” “Island of Lost Things,” “Where Do I Begin,” “Almost Great,” and “Big Shoes,” made her songs as personal as they were universal, elicited genuine affection and concern from her devoted fans.
While she was a consummate songwriter, Jill also felt equally comfortable covering songs made famous by others, including “Just A Little Lovin’” (on the 2000 Dusty Springfield tribute album “Forever Dusty”) and “Stoned Soul Picnic” (from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute album “Time and Love”). Jill also didn’t shy away from political subject matter in her music with “Resistance Song,” “Soldiers of Christ,” “Attic,” “Heroes,” “Under the Disco Ball,” and the incredible “America Back” as prime examples.
Here’s something else worth mentioning about Jill. She was known for collaboration skills. As a songwriter, she maintained a multi-year creative partnership with Robin Eaton (“I Kissed A Girl” and many others), as well as Richard Barone, the gay frontman of the renowned band The Bongos. Jill’s history with Barone includes performing together at a queer Octoberfest event in Chicago in 1996. Writer and comedian Julie Sweeney, of “SNL” and “Work in Progress” fame was another Chicago collaborator with Sobule (Sweeney lives in a Chicago suburb), where they frequently performed their delightful “The Jill and Julia Show.” John Doe, of the aforementioned band X, also collaborated with Jill in the studio (“Tomorrow Is Breaking” from “Nostalgia Kills”), as well as in live performances.
On a very personal note, in 2019, when I was in the process of arranging a reading at the fabulous NYC gay bookstore Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, I reached out to Jill and asked her if she would like to be on the bill with me. We alternated performing; I would read a couple of poems, and Jill would sing a couple of songs. She even set one of my poems to music, on the spot.
Jill had an abundance of talent, and when she turned her attention to musical theater, it paid off in a big way. Her stage musical “F*ck 7th Grade,” a theatrical piece that seemed like the next logical step in her career, had its premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The unique staging (an outdoor drive-in stage at which audience members watched from their cars) was truly inspired. “F*ck 7th Grade” went on to become a New York Times Critic’s pick, as well as earning a Drama Desk nomination.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Jill’s eponymous 1995 album, reissue label Rhino Records is re-releasing it on red vinyl. Jill and I had been emailing each other to arrange a time for an interview. We even had a date on the books for the third week of May.
When she died in a house fire in Minnesota on May 1 at age 66, Jill received mentions on network and cable news shows. She was showered with attention from major news outlets, including obits in the New York Times and Rolling Stone (but not Pitchfork, who couldn’t be bothered to review her music when she was alive). Is it wrong to think that if she’d gotten this much attention when she was alive she could have been as big as Taylor Swift? I don’t think so.
Music & Concerts
Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’
Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Singer Tom Goss will bring his “Bear Friends Furever Tour” to D.C. on Sunday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Among the songs he will perform will be “Bear Soup,” the fourth installment in his beloved bear song anthology series. Following fan favorites like “Bears,” “Round in All the Right Places,” and “Nerdy Bear,” this high-energy, bass-thumping banger celebrates body positivity, joyful indulgence, and the vibrant spirit of the bear subculture.
For more details, visit Tom Goss’s website.
Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue brings her acclaimed “Tension” world tour to D.C. next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.
The show features songs spanning her long career, from 1987 debut single, “The Loco-Motion,” to “Padam, Padam” from her album, “Tension.”
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