Arts & Entertainment
On the rise
All-girl lesbian rock band set to play Jammin’ Java this weekend
Antigone Rising is, from left, Dena Tauriello, Cathy Henderson, Nini Camps and Kristen Ellis-Henderson. (Photo by Anthony St. James)
Antigone Rising with Mama’s Black Sheep
Jammin’ Java
Saturday
Doors at 5 p.m.; show at 6
Tickets: $15 ($18 at the door)
227 Maple Ave. E
Vienna, Va.
Jamminjava.com
Antigonerising.com
It’s been a good year for Antigone Rising.
The all-girl country/rock band got strong video play on CMT with current single “That Was the Whiskey” and founding member Kristen Ellis-Henderson made the April 8 cover of Time magazine for the lesbian version of its controversial “Gay Marriage Already Won” issue with her wife, Sarah Kate Ellis-Henderson.
The band — all lesbians in the current lineup — plays Vienna’s Jammin’ Java Saturday night. We spoke with Ellis-Henderson by phone two weeks ago from her home in Sea Cliff, N.Y. Her comments have been slightly edited for length.
WASHINGTON BLADE: The band has such great vocal harmony. How integral is working out the harmony parts when constructing the song as a whole?
KRISTEN ELLIS-HENDERSON: It depends. We’ve been doing it so long now that a lot of times we just kind of fall into a certain role. But very often when we’re writing melodically, we’re also thinking about the harmonies too. We often say if we have to work too hard or think too hard about it, we must be going about it the wrong way. Often we’ll just go with what flows the most naturally. This has been a philosophy that has held true in other areas of our career as well. Certain songs will just click faster and every once in awhile we have to really push for something but often they’re the ones that aren’t really well received. We’ve just found that to be a kind of rule almost.
BLADE: Do you all write?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: (Lead singer) Nini (Camps) and I are the primary songwriters but we’re a band so we all have a part in it. Again, we’ve been together so long now, I almost know instinctually what Cathy (Henderson, Ellis-Henderson’s sister) and (drummer) Dena (Tauriello) will bring to it. But yes, technically Nini and I hole up in a room, then we bring it to the band and the band takes it to the next level.
BLADE: By now we’ve seen out singers be out in every way possible from coming out late in their careers, being out right from the start and every step in between. How calculated was the handling of that early on in the band?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: In the earlier part of our career, we were often methodical about trying to keep it on the inside. I never was comfortable with trying to keep it quiet because we’d always played gay bars and anybody who paid attention knew it. But there were some in the band at the time who felt in the ‘90s, that it would be pigeonholing ourselves to be more out. We had some straight people in the band at the time and some members who felt pretty strong about that. I never really felt that way and I always knew our strongest support came from the lesbian and gay community. Then over time, the band has shifted members. I started a family and have a wife and kids so I can’t really live my life in the closet. We say now the music and the band are pretty much an open book. We’re here, we’re gay and we’re proud and we feel that goes hand in hand with being in a band. I know there are some artists who feel differently and that’s fine. Everybody has their own approach. Some feel it’s not their place to try to change hearts and minds but I feel we have a bigger role and that’s something we can all contribute to.
BLADE: So it just kind of worked out that all the current members are lesbians?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: Nini has been with us since 2008 but Cathy and Dena and I have been together almost 20 years. Cathy and I started the band and maybe five years after that, Dena joined us and has been with us about 15 years. Nini and I were always writing together and she toured with us some and was like an honorary member in some ways for a long time, back when we did some shows with the Bangles. But she’s been officially with us about five years.
BLADE: “That Was the Whiskey” got some strong attention this year. Was that from an album or is it slated to be on one?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: It wasn’t and here’s the thing — and we are literally still in talks about this — but we are discussing whether we want to ever release another album. We’re seriously thinking about just offering a different download every other month and kind of making that our business model. … Even with big acts like Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry who are on these huge major labels, they have these huge hits that everybody downloads and it’s like nobody even cares anymore about the rest of the album. I mean that’s what the numbers are really showing. The whole industry is in disarray so we’re thinking of changing our business model and thinking this could be something we could be really successful at — just going one song at a time and make each one an event.
BLADE: But isn’t there something creatively satisfying with a longer-form artistic statement, both for yourselves and for the hardcore fans who do want something to sink their teeth into?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: I understand what you’re saying, but it’s just an art form that’s practically non-existent anymore. I can feel that way as an artist but I have to be realistic too and that’s just the way music is being consumed. I am one of those people who likes to ooh and aah over a tangible product so we’re thinking about the end of the year, maybe putting out an EP of that year’s songs. We’ve always had a slightly different business model, though. We record our shows and sell them and it’s just different from the Katy Perrys of the world and these huge artists. Yes, I could sit here and lament the death of the record album and CD and I do, but at the same time — I mean even with me, there are only a handful of artists, Shawn Colvin for one, who I want to hear start to finish. I don’t really care about Katy Perry’s full album. I want her singles though. … I think this could be a more interesting way to go than disappearing off the face of the earth for two years.
BLADE: How rigid have you found the lines to be in various markets? It strikes me as pretty cool that CMT would play your video.
ELLIS-HENDERSON: Yeah, I find it kind of shocking. Nashville as a rule is still pretty closeted. There are certain artists there whom I know are gay who will intentionally not join us for dinner out there or they just never seem to be able to make it to our show when we’re in town. There are others who support us wholeheartedly but Nashville is definitely about 25 years behind New York and L.A. and even D.C., you know the more forward markets. Even Atlanta is more progressive than Nashville. I kinda love the contradiction. Here’s this really rowdy band and a song about whiskey but in the video, she leaves with a guy and a girl. I love pushing that boundary. I think it’s changing too. We have people like Kacey Musgraves singing her song about “make lots of noise/kiss lots of boys/or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into.” GLAAD Tweeted about it. It literally gave me chills to see her on the CMAs singing that to the whole country community. I think the fact that she’s not gay actually helps. It’s one inch closer.
BLADE: Is your show at Jammin’ Java part of a larger tour or do you just go out here and there?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: We’re kind of on perpetual tour. It goes in spurts. We’re raising families, which is really contradictory to the rock and roll lifestyle, so we’re always going out in little fits and spurts. We’ll do some holiday-themed shows since it’s December.
BLADE: Is this show part of that?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: Yeah. We have a new Christmas single and we’ll definitely two or three other Christmas songs too. We’ll give the show a little Christmas twist.
BLADE: How long is your show on average?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: We do about 80 minutes and play maybe 18-20 songs. We’re a live band so we’re always a little spontaneous. It’s always a slightly different show.
BLADE: Does Cathy braid her own hair?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: She doesn’t. She’s got this woman, Nancy, who’s been doing it forever. If we’re going out, she needs like eight hours the day before to get her hair braided. In a pinch or like on really long tours, I’ve done it and oh my God, it is a process. I’m always thinking, “Just get dreads already.” If I have to do it, she just gets six or seven big rows. That’s all I have the brainpower to be able to handle.
BLADE: If you had to guess, what percentage of the people who come to your shows are LGBT?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: It’s so hard to say. I kind of always assume they’re gay. I’m like, “Oh my God, you look gay to me.” I would guess about 60 percent are LGBT. In some ways it seems more mixed than ever. But we have a large gay following and I love it. We’ve always had that support. Even when we were just a tiny little indie band we’d be out in these random markets, these little college towns, and we’d have clubs willing to book us on a Tuesday night because there was never a room that there weren’t 10 or 15 young lesbians who traveled to see us. That’s the great thing about the gay community, we support each other. Then we’d have people say, “Wow, you got a little crowd even on a weeknight, we’ll have you back” and the next time those 10 or 15 would bring a few more so there’d be 15 or 20 more and we’d have 50. We’re so grateful for that support.
BLADE: But do you ever fear that that ends up becoming the band’s whole shtick, or at least that some will have the perception that that’s all you’re about?
ELLIS-HENDERSON: Not for me. I find it a blessing and an honor to talk about it and maybe be a role model or an advocate. I love talking about activism, that’s why I blog. It’s a passion.
Antigone Rising live. (Courtesy photo)
Movies
‘Thelma and Louise’ remains landmark of unspoken queer rebellion
Celebrating iconic film 35 years after its release
Hard as it is to believe for those who were around when it happened, “Thelma and Louise” celebrates the 35th anniversary of its release this year.
Deeply popular with both critics and audiences at the time, its reputation continues to ride high; it’s a movie that manages to exist within a nexus of intersecting genres – the “buddy picture”, the “crime thriller,” the “action adventure,” the” “western,” the “neo-noir” – by blending them seamlessly into a crowd-pleasing wild ride of a story, all while delivering a powerful feminist message of outrage, defiance, and empowerment.
And no, “Thelma and Louise” is not a “queer movie” – but it feels like one.
That’s partly because It exists within another genre, too: “lesbian noir,” which blossomed in its wake with films like “Bound” (1996) and has re-emerged in recent films like “Love Lies Bleeding” (2024) and “Honey, Don’t” (2025) – but that also stretches back across decades into the days of old Hollywood, when coded queer characters were a regular fixture in the seedy film noir classics of their time, never overtly identified as such but obvious to spot for anyone savvy enough to read the subtext. That’s why “Thelma and Louise” resonated (and continues to resonate) with lesbian and bisexual audiences who see themselves reflected in its two lead characters, even if there is nothing queer about their relationship — on the surface at least.
Of course, that can be a sore subject; subtext might seem like a “cop-out” for those who long for more open representation for LGBTQ people on the screen – but it’s everything when it comes to recognizing the queerness of older movies (and a lot of newer ones, too), and just because something is not explicitly stated, that doesn’t mean it’s being hidden. After all, most good stories rely on the transcendent power of nuance, which always relies on subtext to shine through. And if any movie relies upon subtext, “Thelma and Louise” is certainly one of them. In its masterfully crafted narrative of a weekend “girl’s trip” that goes horribly wrong, a lot of the most important information is left unspoken.
Take Thelma (Geena Davis), to start with: a naive young housewife whose husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald) treats her like a possession, she blithely ignores his mediocrity and disregards – or at least, pretends to – his repressive tactics to control her, choosing instead to live in a tenuous illusion of “traditional” marriage dynamics; yet when her bestie Louise (Susan Sarandon) offers her a chance to escape for a weekend, she jumps at it – even if she has to skip the part where she asks his permission.
Louise (Susan Sarandon), a bit older and a lot more worldly, is a waitress who spends her days fending off the insults and advances of her male customers at the diner where she works; she sees Thelma’s situation clearly, and hopes that a temporary respite from Darryl will help her recognize the dead-end reality of her marriage. We understand this immediately, even though a direct word is never said about it, and she’s right, of course. They’ve barely even gotten on the road before Thelma’s longing for attention from someone other than her inadequate husband – a honky-tonk Lothario (Timothy Carhart) she meets in a roadhouse where they stop for drinks on the way out of town – leads to an attempted rape that is only prevented when Louise shoots the predator dead in the parking lot.
That killing is the catalyst that turns them into fugitives; as Louise rightly understands, there’s no evidence of sexual assault, just a dead body and a pair of runaway women, and the letter of the law is not on their side. But in truth, that fatal shot is fired not to save Thelma, who has already been freed from her would-be rapist’s clutches when it happens, but because Louise has traumatic memories – and a chip on her shoulder – over something that “happened in Texas,” years before. We never find out what it was that happened, and we don’t need to; our imaginations tell us all we need to know, just as we know that the killing, while it may have been cold-blooded murder, is a justifiable homicide all the same.
There’s more of that subtextual nuance throughout, from the perversely inspiring motivations of hitchhiking hustler J.D. (Brad Pitt, in the sex-on-a-stick performance that launched him on his trajectory to stardom), who takes advantage of Thelma’s gullibility to rob the heroines even as he teaches her the tactics that will soon launch them on their fateful ride-or-die fugitive adventure; to the self-serving “chivalry” of Louise’s erstwhile boyfriend (Michael Madsen) as he casts himself as the “martyr” in letting her go. And yes, even to the benignly sublimated patriarchal programming that drives police investigator Hal Slocumb (Harvey Keitel in an uncharacteristically empathetic role) to act as the would-be savior of these two “fallen” women, though they want no part of his well-meaning attempts to “rescue” them from the consequences of their choices. And when the two fugitives terrorize a piggish trucker (Marco St. John) before blowing up his big-rig tanker, nobody says – or needs to say – why it feels to them like the right thing to do; it simply IS the right thing, and we, as the audience, know it. What we have seen up to that point has placed us firmly on Thelma and Louise’s side already, and we’re as ready to watch the puerile patriarchy burn as they are.
None of this is spoken aloud, nor is it even alluded to, but it comes through, nonetheless. Chalk it up, if you like, to the power of cinema, especially in the hands of a versatile, stylish, and seasoned director like Ridley Scott, to communicate what is inherently beyond the power of words.
Thelma and Louise may not be “a couple,” but we can’t help but notice as their clothing evolves from frilly-femme to “butch” utilitarianism along the way, or how their connection to the men in their lives easily dissolves without fanfare. And by the time we reach the movie’s thrilling denouement, when all they have left is their commitment to simply stand up against all the things that have kept them feeling incomplete, unfulfilled, and unacceptable, it’s an achingly familiar feeling for any queer viewer who has experienced the same.
We all know what happens, so it’s no spoiler to say that, when they drive off into oblivion in the Grand Canyon, they choose freedom over life itself – and when they head over that cliff, fully embracing their fate as a feminist iteration of the Bonnie and Clyde brand of “noble” outlaws, they seal their fate with a kiss.
At that point, no explanation is needed. Their love for each other transcends anything they’ve felt with the inadequate men in their lives; and in that final freeze-frame moment, when they drive off the cliff and sail into oblivion, we like to think that their car – like Danny Zuko’s at the end of “Grease” – simply flies away into the bliss of an endless summer, and you can’t get any queerer than that.
Out & About
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
In-person gathering to be held at Tom’s Watch Bar
Modern Military Association of America will host “Pride in Service: An LGBTQ+ Military Happy Hour” on Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. at Tom’s Watch Bar.
This in-person gathering is the perfect chance to connect, share stories, and celebrate the diversity within the military community. Come relax, meet fellow LGBTQ+ service members and allies, and enjoy a fun, supportive atmosphere. Don’t miss out on an evening full of pride, camaraderie, and good vibes. Visit Eventbrite for more details.
Friday, September 11
Go Gay DC will host “Out in DC LGBTQ+ Community Social” at 7 p.m. at Hotel Zena.This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Women in their Twenties and Thirties will meet at 8 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social discussion group for queer women in the Washington, D.C. area. For more details, visit Facebook.
Saturday, September 12
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host screenings of “Princess Sparkles” and “Kiloran Bay” at 1:30 p.m. “Kiloran Bay” is a 13-minute musical short set amid the wild beauty of the Scottish Hebrides and the fierce joy of a wedding cèilidh. “Princess Sparkles” is about a girl who accidentally signs up to pet-sit a princess only to discover she’s actually a nippy, Fox News-watching pig. More details are available on the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
Sunday, September 13
“Nellie’s DC Drag Brunch” will be at 12 p.m. at Nellie’s Sports Bar. Come get served like a queen by a queen. Join Sapphire Blue, Deja Diamond and their team of amazing drag performers for the most fun you’ll have all weekend. Tickets are $58.51 and are available on Eventbrite.
Monday, September 14
“Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch” will be at 10:00a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).
Tuesday, September 15
Center Bi Pan+ Roundtable will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is an opportunity for people to gather in order to discuss issues related to bisexuality or as Bi individuals in a private setting. Visit Facebook or Meetup for more information.
Wednesday, September 16
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host “Movement for Healing” at 3 p.m. This trauma- and yoga therapy–informed class is designed to help guests gently reconnect with their body and their breath. Through mindful movement, somatic awareness, and grounding practices, guests will explore how to release tension, increase mobility, and cultivate a deeper sense of safety and ease within. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Thursday, September 17
The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5:00 pm if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breathwork and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
‘Thelma and Louise’ remains landmark of unspoken queer rebellion
Comings & Goings
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
Calendar: September 11-17
Multi-billion-dollar 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund to continue until 2090
Nominate your favorites for the Blade’s 25th annual Best Of LGBTQ DC Awards
Md. groups receive state grants to fight hate crimes
PHOTOS: SUNFESTIVAL
Gloria Steinem’s life of substance and consequence
