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Singer/songwriters Goss, Curtis experiencing career highs

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A promo still of singer Tom Goss with actor Ben Horen who plays his partner in the concept video 'Lover.' (Photo by Michael Key)

Two indie gay singer/songwriters are making memorable career strides. D.C. resident Tom Goss pulled out all the stops for his current video for the song “Lover” while Boston native Catie Curtis gave a two hour White House concert last week.

From his 2009 “Back to Love” album, Goss’s “Lover” has been 18 months in the making. It’s his fourth concept video.

“People have wanted a video for this song,” Goss says. “The song is so big and tells such a story, that I didn’t really want to do it. If I was going to do this video, I really had to do it right.”

“Lover” tells the story of the loss experienced by partners of gay servicemembers killed in battle.

The video was inspired by a friend telling Goss about his screenplay, quoting songs from his album, especially “Lover.”

“I called him back … and I said ‘Sorry, I’m stealing your idea,'” Goss says, laughing. “As it progressed, it became this thing that was so much bigger than the people involved.”

The video flashes from Goss singing in his house, to medics trying to help his partner, to moments between the two of them.

In the end, Goss is left in his living room, holding the crumpled picture of the two of them one of the medics pulled out of his partner’s pocket.

“Loved ones don’t know anything. If they’re partner dies, the U.S. government doesn’t show up at their house with a flag to tell them,” Goss says. “This person doesn’t exist to them.”

The video features three former servicemembers, Mike Almy, David Hall and Danny Hernandez, who were discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and played the medics.

“We wanted them to be in the video, but we also wanted to be really sensitive to their experiences and their desire to still be in the military,” Goss says. “Luckily when I asked them, they were really excited about it.”

Some of the scenes between Goss and the soldier were filmed in Goss’s home.

“It was more than just me making out with some other guy,” Goss says about the intimate scenes between him and actor Ben Horen, who played the soldier. “I kicked Mike out of my house and then transformed our house from a place where we have our life and our love into a place where I have this other life and this other love.”

The video can be found on YouTube and has been picked up by many news organizations and blogs including the Advocate, AfterElton.com, Towleroad and more. It will be on Logo next month.

Catie Curtis, second from left, with her musical comrades at the White House last week. (Photo courtesy of Catie Curtis)

Lesbian Curtis has released 10 albums in the past 15 years and performed at the White House Dec. 13.

“It’s surreal,” Curtis says about performing at the White House. “There is an energy [there] … during the holiday season, when everything is so festive.”

The show came about because Curtis has a few fans working for the Obama administration and a performance had been in talks for a while.

The show consisted of holiday songs and some of Curtis’s own work. She performed with other musicians John Jennings, Ingrid Graudins and Elana Arian.

“One of the cool things about playing at the White House is recognizing that for all the disappointments of the last few years of a democratic presidency, there are some things that are certainly different,” Curtis says. “And one of them is having an out lesbian invited to perform at the White House and playing Christmas songs with a Jewish fiddler who had never played Christmas music before.”

While rehearsing the night before, Curtis and the band playing with her were so into the holiday spirit, that they rushed to a recording studio in Virginia at 10 p.m. and laid down a few tracks in three hours.

“I think on Dec. 20 … we are going to offer five songs online … called ‘Twas the Night Before the White House,'” Curtis says. “Usually people make these CDs in March and release them in November, but we were totally in the spirit, practicing these songs.”

Curtis plans to announce when and where the tracks will be available on her website and Facebook page.

Curtis, who is ordained to perform weddings, whatever the legal status, announced on Dec. 7, that she had formed a partnership with GayWeddings.com.

Each couple will be able to decide how much they want Curtis involved. She’ll be available to officiate the ceremony and perform at the reception, as well as help couples plan different aspects including assisting them in writing their own vows.

“As a songwriter, I feel like I have the skills to put their thoughts and feelings into words that can help to communicate their perspective to each other … at a celebration,” Curtis says.

Couples who book a wedding with Curtis will receive a personalized dedication and their choice of signed and framed lyric sheet or their vows along with a photo taken with Curtis.

Curtis married her partner of 14 years in a big ceremony in 2000 and they were legally married by a Justice of the Peace in Massachusetts in 2005.

Curtis will begin work recording a new album next month.

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Music & Concerts

Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule

Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1

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Writer Gregg Shapiro with Jill Sobule in 2000. (Photo courtesy Shapiro)

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.

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Music & Concerts

Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’

Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.

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Singer Tom Goss is back. (Photo by Dusti Cunningham)

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.

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Music & Concerts

Kylie brings ‘Tension’ tour to D.C.

Performance on Tuesday at Capital One Arena

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Kylie Minogue visits D.C. on Tuesday.

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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