a&e features
BETTY’s triumphant return
D.C. band gearing up for World AIDS Day show
From left are Elizabeth Ziff, Amy Ziff and Alyson Palmer of BETTY. (Photo by Erin Schaff)
BETTY
World AIDS concert
The Hamilton
600 14th St., N.W.
Tuesday, Dec. 1
Doors 6:30 p.m.
Show 7:30 p.m.
$20-30
For fans of “The L Word,” BETTY has been in your living room for years.
The band, originating in Washington, formed after performing at a party for the original owner of the 9:30 Club, Dodie Bowers. Since then, sisters Amy and Elizabeth Ziff and Alyson Palmer have performed at numerous LGBT rights, pro-choice and HIV/AIDS awareness events. With Amy on vocals and cello, Elizabeth on vocals and guitar and Palmer on vocals and bass, the trio, who now reside in New York City, are approaching their 30th anniversary and performing at the Hamilton for World AIDS Day on Tuesday, Dec. 1. A portion of the profits will benefit Whitman-Walker Health.
During a phone interview in the recording studio, Amy and Elizabeth discussed their new album, ties to D.C. and how they feel about being called a lesbian band.
WASHINGTON BLADE: What are you working on in the recording studio?
ELIZABETH: We’re working on our next album it should be out in springtime. Our next full album with the producer Mike Thorn.
BLADE: What’s the recording process been like so far?
ELIZABETH: It’s been good and interesting because Mike produced our first album in 1991, so it’s nice to be working with him again. We’ve done a couple of albums with him. It’s an interesting process to go back and look 20-something years ago and then to look now. I think it’s a little bit more open about change when you get to work with somebody that you’ve known a long time. You trust them a little bit more.
AMY: We’re looking at some songs that we’ve been performing and looking at them differently to record. It’s fun, it’s really opening them up.
BLADE: How did the band get started?
AMY: We started in Washington. We advertised on the radio for a bass player and I think Alyson was the third. Alyson called me at the job I had at the time and we talked for a really, really long time. She came over to audition and basically stayed almost all night.
ELIZABETH: Amy and I were actually still living at our parents’ house. We were little kids.
AMY: We laughed and starting working on songs and that was that. It was the beginning.
ELIZABETH: That was our first band together. Then Dodie Bowers from the original 9:30 Club asked us to sing at her Valentine’s Day party. She heard that we sing a cappella sometimes so we sang a cappella and then people loved it. So we decided to start BETTY. Coming up in 2016 this is going to be our 30th anniversary.
BLADE: You’re also very involved in LGBT rights and women’s equality. What made you decide to use your music this way? Was it always the plan to be so political?
AMY: I think we’ve always been political. We came of age in D.C. and it was a very political time. D.C. has always been political and I’m sure it still is, because the industry there is politics. So we were involved with feminist causes and LGBT stuff and AIDS work very early on. It was just a part of who we were. You went to Take Back the Night marches and you went to pro-choice stuff. When we started doing music we performed at them. It was sort of a synthesis of who we were as feminists and who we were as women at the time.
ELIZABETH: Also, AIDS started affecting a lot of our friends. As musicians, we tried to start singing or performing in any kind of way, on any scale, that would make us feel less helpless. Because our friends were getting sick and dying. I don’t know what comes first whether you’re an arts activist or an activist artist but they just seemed to happen at the same time.
AMY: Also, at the time we actually did some stuff for Whitman-Walker and early stuff for gay Pride. No one played at gay pride in the early days because people were afraid. It was back when it was hidden sort of behind P Street.
ELIZABETH: We were like, ‘Of course we’ll play for gay Pride,’ and we thanked our friends in the hospital and things like that. Whitman-Walker is such a great organization and has been around for so long and it’s in D.C. so it’s really fun to be back and to be able too give back a little to the community in D.C.
BLADE: The band has also provided the theme song for “The L Word.” How did that collaboration come about? Did you expect the show to be as popular as it became?
ELIZABETH: Ilene Chaiken asked four different bands to submit a theme song because she really wanted the theme song to reflect the actual song. So we submitted ours and three or four other bands did and the network chose the song, and they chose ours. We didn’t know the show was going to be such a seminal, groundbreaking show. It was really exciting to be a part of it. You have to understand that we had been together for 20 years already and then the show happened so it opened up a whole new thing for us. Especially in Europe and South America so that’s been really great and really fun.
BLADE: Since the band has been involved in things like “The L Word” and LGBT rights, how much of that is a part of your band’s identity?
ELIZABETH: As an identity, its female-identified. Now, we’ve never really labeled ourselves as a lesbian band because Alyson is straight. We’ve always played for gay rights and lesbian rights and trans rights. We’ve done a lot of pro-choice work, cancer and AIDS work. But our music hopefully transcends politics.
AMY: Our music isn’t really political. It’s fun and dance or folky or thoughtful. But we like to involve ourselves in causes that are important to us. But our music is pop music.
ELIZABETH: Other people can label us however they want. If they want us to be a lesbian band then right on. If they want us to be a gay band, fine. But we don’t really label ourselves because we don’t need to. I think labels hopefully are going away a little bit. Except for the label of being women and feminists.
BLADE: How do you find performing in D.C. different from your home base New York?
AMY: We are always really excited to go back to D.C. to perform. We actually did the soundscape for an exhibit at the Freer/Sackler museum right now. It’s called Peacock Room: Remix. It’s the re-do of Whistler’s Peacock Room. We were so excited to be a part of that and to be a part of Darren Waterston’s amazing piece. So we did some events in synthesis to promote that and to be a part of the Smithsonian. A lot of old friends came out and a lot of people that we hadn’t seen. When we did our off-Broadway show “BETTY Rules” we were excited that all of the references that we put in the show really came to life when we were performing in Washington. That’s when we started as a band. That was a really great time to perform our show there. It was so exciting.
ELIZABETH: We haven’t been back to play at a club in D.C. in a while. The last time was at the 9:30 Club and that was a few years ago. We heard the Hamilton was fun. What’s always been great about D.C. is that hopefully we get what we always get, which is a nice mix of race and gender and sexual identity as well.
AMY: People who knew us when we lived there can bring other people that don’t know about us or their kids or their parents.
ELIZABETH: People who know us from “The L Word” and are curious to see how we are live because we’re fun live.
BLADE: This show is also a holiday show. What can people expect? Will you be performing any of your new music?
AMY: I think a couple of our fresh new songs that we’ve never performed before will be there. And also some of our holiday songs that we’ve written. And some of our songs that aren’t holiday, but can be put in a holiday context. So you can expect to have a good time. Laugh a little bit, maybe feel a little bit. Move a little bit, cruise a little bit.
ELIZABETH: People will be cruising a lot.
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
a&e features
Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
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Trump’s war threats trigger rare 25th Amendment discussion
Risking it all for love during World War II
D.C. is the place for the Democratic Socialists of America
PHOTOS: The Bonnet Ball
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