Arts & Entertainment
Emmylou Harris on her LGBT support, love of animals
Country legend to play D.C. show next week


Emmylou Harris came to prominence in the Washington, D.C. music scene. (Photo by Jack Spencer)
Emmylou Harris
Dec. 4, 7:30 p.m.
The Hamilton, 600 14th St., N.W.
Tickets $94 and $104
202-787-1000;
Those that assume country, bluegrass and Americana artists aren’t supportive of LGBT rights may not realize that many routinely work to further the cause.
Consider 12-time Grammy Award-winning artist Emmylou Harris, who came to prominence in the Washington, D.C. music scene, and will soon perform here. Harris has performed and donated auction items to the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality Dinners in Nashville and has otherwise lent her voice to furthering LGBT rights.
“You know, Nashville still has a ways to go there, but we’re on the move,” the legendary artist said in an interview with the Blade. Harris lives in Nashville in Davidson County and says that, “Davidson is a little blue county in a sea of red in the State of Tennessee.”
Harris lent her name to hasten that move just this past May when she joined fellow musicians Big & Rich’s William “Big Kenny” Alphin, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rodney Crowell in co-signing an open letter in support of the now successful marriage equality push in Illinois.
“Traditionally speaking, country music, arguably more than any other genre, draws its inspiration from that inexplicable conundrum known as the human condition,” the letter reads. “Songs and stories of love, family, joy, and human imperfection are the root of its appeal. To deny our gay brothers and sisters the right to legally ritualize their love – to marry – is to deny that they too experience the complexity of human emotion that make a song like Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ the shared phenomenon that it is.”
Harris doesn’t recall a particular turning point that heightened her awareness of LGBT issues when she lived in the D.C. area but was caught up in the urgency of it in recent years.
“I was totally not aware of that at all,” she says of the discrimination faced by the LGBT community, especially in the 1970s when she lived in the D.C. area. “Really it just sort of came to me later in life, the urgency of the situation. You broaden your horizons as you meet people and more people come into your fold as friends. I just believe in equal rights for everyone. Everyone has the right to happiness — to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, you know, it shouldn’t be different for anyone.”
She was quick to add that she would welcome the opportunity to perform at Capital Pride and other LGBT events. For now, fans can support Harris by attending her upcoming show to benefit Bonaparte’s Retreat, which she operates from her Nashville home. Named after her beloved dog Bonaparte who died nearly 10 years ago, Harris takes in dogs whose time has run out at Nashville’s Metro Animal Control and houses them in a bunk house in the corner of her small backyard. She relies on support from the greater Nashville community, which pitches in to foster the dogs. “We keep them, socialize them and love them until we find homes for them,” Harris said.
Key to the success of the retreat are the many fundraising efforts Harris undertakes around the country on top of her regular – and busy – touring schedule. The show next week is another homecoming for Harris who fondly recalls her years in D.C. and often returns. “I was kind of a staple there at Clyde’s and my mother and I used to shop there at Garfinckles,” she says of the famed department store that was at the site currently occupied by the Hamilton. Harris says she hopes the Hamilton benefit becomes an annual tradition.
She also fondly recalls performing at the now defunct Childe Harold bar and restaurant in Dupont Circle, which saw early performances by Bruce Springsteen, The Ramones, Al Jarreau and Bonnie Raitt. Harris laughed when told her name was used for a sandwich at the Childe Harold. “Right, well, you know, you get publicity any way you can, a sandwich, or whatever,” she said.
Now, of course, Harris receives publicity everywhere she goes, and everywhere almost always includes her dogs. During her March show in the D.C. area with Rodney Crowell in support of their album “Old Yellow Moon,” she welcomed a special canine guest appearance by her yellow rescue dog Keeta. “I love it when I can travel with the dogs,” she says. “They make life so much richer, especially when you’re on the road and away from home.” She recalls that Bonaparte was an incredible travel dog and went everywhere with her. Her one regret during her many years on the road was that she spent many of those years without a dog. When Bonaparte died and Harris eventually adopted Keeta and then Bella, “the big black dog that came into my life, they were just great!”
Fans know that Harris wrote the song “Big Black Dog” based on her experience meeting and then rescuing Bella from the pound. Listen for her to likely include that song in her upcoming concert. Although her show will take place after Thanksgiving, she says her heart is always full of thanks for the joys she has found in life. “As far as music, I think I’ve been able to do whatever I want. I’ve been able to play with extraordinary musicians, all of whom have remained friends,” she says. “You don’t work alone; it’s all sort of a group effort, whether in the studio or on the road. I’ve been so fortunate to work with so many wonderful musicians on my own records and then with so many of my heroes like Neil Young, Mark Knopfler and, of course, Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton. It’s been like being at Disneyland, my whole career, you know, it never gets boring.”
Television
ICYMI: ‘Overcompensating’ a surprisingly sweet queer treat
A sweet, savvy show about breaking free to embrace your true self

Pride month 2025 is now behind us, and while it’s safe to say that this year’s celebrations had a darker edge than usual, it’s also true that they came with a particularly rich bounty of new queer movies and shows to entertain us – so many, in fact, that even if we are facing a lull until the fall another harvest of fresh content, there are still plenty of titles – which, for whatever reason, were off your radar – for you to catch up on in the meantime.
One of the most notable of these – the bingeworthy series “Overcompensating” (now streaming on Amazon Prime) – will most definitely have been ON the radar for the plentiful fans of creator and star Benito Skinner, the actor/comedian who rose to viral fame through his content on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. For anyone else, it might have easily slipped through the cracks.
Created and written by Skinner as a loosely autobiographical “college comedy,” it aims for the kind of raucous, explicitly sexed-up tone one expects from the genre as it centers on Benny (Skinner), newly arrived as a freshman at prestigious Yates University. A former football jock and “golden boy” at his midwestern high school, he’s the picture of idealized youthful masculinity; he’s also deep in the closet, struggling to keep his sexuality hidden and maintain his macho front under the intense scrutiny of the college’s social scene – and under the resentful eye of his older sister Grace (Mary Beth Barone), who has already secured her own place at the top of the pecking order.
In the first episode, Benny’s difficulties are eased when he meets Carmen (Wally Baram), another freshman trying to navigate the politics of college life; a gamer from a home marred by tragedy, she’s an outsider who feels like she’s putting on an act, too, and they click – giving him the convenient “cover” of female companionship while providing them both with much-needed support and encouragement. He’s also befriended by a handsome film major from England (Rish Shah), who has already caught his eye, stirring other kinds of feelings and possibly even reciprocating them. Meanwhile, he’s being courted by the school’s “exclusive secret society” – headed by his sister’s aggressively “alpha” boyfriend Pete (Adam DiMarco) – and trying to stay interested in his studies, despite a growing realization that a career in business doesn’t actually appeal to him all that much.
That’s a lot to juggle for anybody, even an overachiever like Benny – whose “lucky” life so far has largely been the result of playing a role he is finding harder and harder to maintain. As the series goes on through its eight-episode arc, it becomes clear that he’s not the only one who is “keeping up appearances,” and he, along with the other confused and damaged young people in his orbit, begins the painful (but often hilarious) process of evolution that is required in order to become truly oneself.
Directed toward appealing to a younger demographic, “Overcompensating” is the kind of show that requires a few episodes worth of invested time to make an impression that feels like substance. Full of the bawdy farcical antics that go hand in hand with stories about hormonally charged college kids, it’s not above leaning into the formulas and tropes that have always driven these kinds of comedies. At first, while its broadly comedic strokes and frequently explicit sexual hijinks might elicit plenty of chuckles, the show might easily feel tiresome for more mature audiences; there’s a nostalgic fun to it, made even more appealing, somehow, by the “political incorrectness” of its frequently sexist and homophobic humor, but for a while things may feel like an unnecessary attempt to reinvent “Animal House” for the Gen Z crowd.
By the time the season reaches its halfway point, however, things have started to get real. The antics of these horny almost-adults take on a more pointed absurdity, informed by the increasingly tangled web of defensive deceit they weave among themselves – and, as things draw toward a cliffhanger climax, the consequences of maintaining it – until it achieves a sense of empathy toward them all. There’s a wisdom that smacks of lived authenticity underlying the whole affair, transforming it from the “sexploitative” teen comedy of its surface into something deeper. To be sure, things stay expectedly wacky, and the soap-operatic melodrama of its twists and reversals continue to maintain the show’s “mature YA” appeal; but beneath those trappings, by the end of the season a truer identity has begun to emerge, just as its characters have begun to find their own levels of self-actualization for themselves.
As creator, primary writer, and star, it’s obviously Skinner who deserves much of the credit. While it might be tempting, early on, to dismiss the show as an “ego project,” the internet-spawned sensation proves his talents quickly enough to get past such judgy suspicions, delivering a pitch-perfect blend of sauciness and sensitivity that extends its appeal toward both ends of the taste spectrum; just as crucially, he brings the same aforementioned “lived authenticity” to his winning performance – after all, he’s essentially playing himself in a fictionalized version of his own life – while also making sure that equal time (and compassion) is afforded all the other characters around him, each of whom are pushing at the boundaries of their own respective “closets,” too. It’s unavoidable to notice that – like most of his co-stars – he’s plainly a decade too old to be playing a college student; but by the time we reach that crucial halfway turning point, we’ve become too engaged by him to care.
The show is full of excellent performances, in fact. Relative newcomers Baram and Barone offer layers of complex nuance, while the more familiar DiMarco (“White Lotus”) is close to heartbreaking as the toxic BMOC clinging to the illusion of power as his life begins unraveling around him. Other standouts include the mononymic actress Holmes as Carmen’s “wild child” roommate, solidly likable turns as Benny’s parents from mature veterans Connie Britten and Kyle MacLachlan (whose presence, along with stylish elements in several key scenes, hints at an homage-ish nod to the late David Lynch), and podcaster Owen Thiele as an openly gay fellow student who has Benny “clocked” from the moment they meet. Finally, Lukas Gage makes a deep impression as a former high school teammate at the heart of Benny’s most haunting memory.
There’s no official word yet on whether “Overcompensating” will be renewed for a second season, despite the multiple loose ends left dangling at the end of its first; it has proven to be popular, and Skinner’s large fanbase makes it likely that the story will continue. Even if it doesn’t, the place of uncertainty in which it has left its characters rings true enough to serve as a satisfying endpoint.
As for us, we hope that won’t happen. For all its sophomoric humor, generic plot twists, and purposefully gratuitous sexual titillation, it’s one of the sweetest, kindest, and most savvy shows we’ve seen about breaking free from conformity to embrace your true self – and that’s a message that applies whether you’re queer, straight, or anywhere in between.
Photos
PHOTOS: Independence Day Weekend in Rehoboth
Wicked Green Pool Party, fireworks among festivities

Vacationers and residents alike enjoyed Independence Day Weekend activities in Rehoboth Beach, Del. The Wicked Green Pool Party drew hundreds to the CAMP Rehoboth fundraiser on Saturday. That evening, revelers went to the rooftops to watch the fireworks display.
(Washington Blade photos by Daniel Truitt)













Music & Concerts
Red, White, and Beyoncé: Queen Bey takes Cowboy Carter to D.C. for the Fourth of July
The legendary music icon performed on July 4 and 7 to a nearly sold-out Northwest Stadium.

Just in time for Independence Day, Beyoncé lit up Landover’s Commanders Field (formerly FedEx Field) with fireworks and fiery patriotism, bringing her deeply moving and genre-defying “Cowboy Carter” tour to the Washington, D.C. area.
The tour, which takes the global icon across nine cities in support of her chart-topping and Grammy-winning country album “Cowboy Carter,” landed in Prince George’s County, Maryland, over the Fourth of July weekend. From the moment Beyoncé stepped on stage, it was clear this was more than just a concert — it was a reclamation.
Drawing from classic Americana, sharp political commentary, and a reimagined vision of country music, the show served as a powerful reminder of how Black Americans — especially Black women — have long been overlooked in spaces they helped create. “Cowboy Carter” released in March 2024, is the second act in Beyoncé’s genre-traversing trilogy. With it, she became the first Black woman to win a Grammy for Best Country Album and also took home the coveted Album of the Year.
The record examines the Black American experience through the lens of country music, grappling with the tension between the mythology of the American Dream and the lived realities of those historically excluded from it. That theme comes alive in the show’s opening number, “American Requiem,” where Beyoncé sings:
“Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but
If that ain’t country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don’t, don’t know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song…”
Throughout the performance, Beyoncé incorporated arresting visuals: Black cowboys on horseback, vintage American iconography, and Fox News clips criticizing her genre shift — all woven together with voiceovers from country legends like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. The result was a multimedia masterclass in storytelling and subversion.
The “Cowboy Carter” tour has been a social media sensation for weeks, with fans scrambling for tickets, curating elaborate “cowboy couture” outfits, and tailgating under the summer sun. At Commanders Field, thousands waited in long lines for exclusive merch and even longer ones to enter the stadium — a pilgrimage that, for many, felt more like attending church than a concert.
One group out in full force for the concert was Black queer men — some rocking “denim on denim on denim on denim,” while others opted for more polished Cowboy Couture looks. The celebration of Black identity within Americana was ever-present, making the concert feel like the world’s biggest gay country-western club.
A standout moment of the night was the appearance of Beyoncé’s 13-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Commanding the stage with poise and power, she matched the intensity and choreography of her mother and the professional dancers — a remarkable feat for someone her age and a clear sign that the Carter legacy continues to shine.
It’s been nearly two decades since Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child parted ways, and since then, she’s more than lived up to her title as the voice of a generation. With “Cowboy Carter,” she’s not just making music — she’s rewriting history and reclaiming the space Black artists have always deserved in the country canon.
-
Federal Government1 day ago
Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege
-
Virginia2 days ago
Defying trends, new LGBTQ center opens in rural Winchester, Va.
-
District of Columbia1 day ago
Gay GOP group hosts Ernst, 3 House members — all of whom oppose Equality Act
-
Opinions3 days ago
USAID’s demise: America’s global betrayal of trust with LGBTQ people