Arts & Entertainment
From music to fashion, catching up with Steve Grand
‘All American Boy’ now focused on his clothing brand
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of gay singer/songwriter turned fashion designer Steve Grand? Some folks will undoubtedly answer his breakout hit single, “All American Boy,” and the accompanying video. Both were significant in that the song was an unabashedly queer country tune with visuals to match. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Grand was model-handsome and had a flawless body on display. So far, we have his singing voice, songwriting chops, and impressive looks and physique. It’s that gym body, and his own personal interest in the kinds of garments that show them off, that has led him to create his Grand Axis (shopGrandAxis.com) clothing line, featuring men’s underwear and swimwear. Steve was kind enough to make time for an interview, and after you finish reading it, you’ll want to follow him on his socials: @GrandAxis (Instagram), @GrandAxis (TikTok), and @Grand_Axis (Twitter). You won’t be disappointed.
BLADE: Since the release of your debut single in 2013, the country-oriented “All American Boy,” several other male country artists, including Ty Herndon, Billy Gilman, Orville Peck, and TJ Osborne have come out as gay. Do you feel that your being an out musician had anything to do with that?
STEVE GRAND: I think, more than anything, it had to do with the major cultural shift that was happening across this country. According to the Gallup polls, public support for gay marriage went from 40% approval in May 2009, to 60% approval in May 2015. Gay marriage was a big topic of discussion in the early 2010s for a lot of reasons. You had artists like (Lady) Gaga frequently talking about her gay fans, you had gay characters coming out in TV shows; you had the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in 2011, and then Obergefell in 2015. I think the internet, and the rise of social media had more to do with it than anything. Before social media, corporate press and big movie and TV studios drove the narrative on these sorts of things. And because they are beholden to advertisers, which are more conservative and risk-averse, they would often avoid even acknowledging LGBTQ+ people for fear it would upset large sections of the country. But I think social media gave regular people an opportunity to be their authentic selves. And it gave artists/content creators like me the ability to make music and videos that could be seen by millions without needing the backing of a big record label.
BLADE: Almost 10 years ago, in 2015, you released your full-length debut album “All American Boy.” When you look back on that time, how would you describe it?
GRAND: It was a whirlwind. I remember being cognizant of the fact that it was all moving fast and that I needed to make a conscious effort to stop and take in all the cool, special, unique experiences I was having. Looking back, I don’t think I listened to that voice inside me enough. I always felt like my best days were ahead; that my moment had yet to come, and that I just needed to hunker down and keep working. And, unfortunately, that often kept me from embracing the present moment.
It’s funny, my best memories of that time end up being all the times in between, like the road trips with my tour manager and whatever members of the band I was traveling with. I was always thinking about what I needed to be doing better or focused on the show, but it is those conversations on the road when we were tired, hungover, and stressing about where we needed to be, traveling from one venue to the next, that I remember most fondly.
BLADE: What kind of music are you listening to for enjoyment these days?
GRAND: I am loving the new Billie Eilish record. And the country record Post Malone just made. I continue to appreciate him more and more. Whenever I see him in interviews I am just so impressed with how centered and genuine he is; how he seems to know exactly who he is. There is a real depth and a goodness in him, and I think that really comes through in his voice.
BLADE: Am I remembering correctly that for a while, you left Chicago for LA? If that’s correct, what was that experience like for you?
GRAND: I spent some time in LA while I was making my first record. I stayed with a friend of a friend. Funny enough, I had never met them before the day I showed up at their door with my bags. It was on my 24th birthday. They gave and gave to me and never expected anything in return. I don’t think I ever went out and did any nightlife there. The friends I stayed with had a large group of friends and threw a lot of parties and events, so I really benefited from having their sort of built-in group of guys to hang out with when I stayed out there.
BLADE: How long have you been back in Chicago?
GRAND: Other than the several months I’ve spent in LA, my summers in Ptown, and winters in Puerto Vallarta, I’ve been in the Chicago area the whole time.
BLADE: What do you like best about being in Chicago?
GRAND: The lakefront in the summer. The fact that the crumby winters are something we all endure together, which means we also experience the beauty and aliveness of the spring and summer together. The winters are so cold and dead, but it makes you appreciate the beautiful weather in the summer, and all the plant life that comes back to life. The whole city comes alive when it starts getting nice. Everyone’s mood is lifted and there is a real sense that we need to make the most of the summer because it’s fleeting. I also love the people. Chicago is not as transient as cities like LA and New York where most people are not from there. Most Chicagoans have roots here. And people are genuinely nice and kind.
BLADE: In 2019, you launched Grand Axis, a clothing line designed by you that includes underwear, swimwear, shorts, socks, T-shirts, and hats. How did you come up with the name Grand Axis?
GRAND: I was about two weeks from going into production with the name “Grand.” I stupidly assumed I could use it because it was my name, but decided I should hire a trademark attorney just to be sure. I was told there were about 200 other companies that could have a copyright infringement claim, so I needed to come up with a name very quickly. I used word generators and all sorts of other methods of coming up with names. I went with “Axis” because I just like how it sounded together; I thought the word “Axis” was very strong, and I liked that it had the letter X in it, which just looks cool and strong.
BLADE: Was designing this kind of clothing a lifelong passion of yours, or was it something you stumbled upon and decided to run with it?
GRAND: Like a lot of gay men, I had my sexual awakening in the men’s underwear aisle at our local department store [laughs]. And personally, I’ve always found an attractive guy in a Speedo, briefs, or jockstrap even more sexy than seeing him naked. Even when I was a college student working a $10 an hour job and didn’t even have many regular clothes, I was buying more of this attire for myself than anything else. I started to get very fixated on the design and fit. I didn’t know how to sew, but I learned enough to make basic alterations to design and fit. Then I found some sites that made custom pieces. I began drawing my own patterns and having them sewn up. When I posted them on Instagram, I’d get lots of guys asking where they could buy them. And at that point I decided I should just produce them en masse. I thought it would be a side gig. I had no idea all that was involved. I think if I knew how hard it would be I may not have started it [laughs]! So, my ignorance kind of worked out to my benefit, because now I am deep in it and I’m happy I made it all work. So far at least.
BLADE: What’s the most rewarding part of Grand Axis?
GRAND: Going to the beach and seeing guys I don’t even know wearing my brand! It is so rewarding to see guys enjoying and looking great in something I spent hundreds of hours obsessing over every detail. That makes it all so worth it.
BLADE: What’s the most challenging part?
GRAND: A few things: Delegating. Dealing with factories to get them to make the pieces exactly how I want. Always having to make decisions about every aspect of the products and the business. The stress of wiring tens of thousands of dollars of my own money before I see any product. At the end of the day, if the factory goes under, you really don’t have any recourse. I’ve heard horror stories from other brands.
BLADE: You shared your recent pec tear workout injury, as well as your recovery, on social media. Are you fully back to 100% or still taking it easy?
GRAND: I am very grateful to be able to say recovery has been easy and painless. I had an excellent surgeon. The first surgeon I saw said it could not be repaired so I am very glad I got a second opinion. The worst part has been not being able to move much weight with it. There are so many exercises I can’t do, I’m afraid to say I have only had a handful of workouts in the last 10 weeks. I will be 75% healed at 12 weeks, but it will still be a few months before I can lift heavy. But in the scheme of things, I am just grateful I had a problem that could be fixed.
BLADE: Your second album, “Not The End of Me” was released in 2018. Because most people came to know you as a singer/songwriter first, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask if there was more music from you in the works.
GRAND: I still will write music, but most songs are incomplete. I wish I could say I had another record ready to go, but when the pandemic happened and I wasn’t able to perform and lost 90% of my income that year, I had to make Grand-Axis my full-time job to pay the bills. And now that it has, I struggle to find the time and creative energy to make that happen. But I am still hopeful I will get back to it one of these days.
The 44th annual Queen of Hearts pageant was held at The Lodge in Boonsboro, Md. on Friday, Feb. 20. Six contestants vied for the title and Bev was crowned the winner.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
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Books
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
Tuesday marks four years since Russia attacked Ukraine
Journalist J. Lester Feder’s new book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians and their experiences during Russia’s war against their country.
Feder for “The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine” interviewed and photographed LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kyiv, the country’s capital, and in other cities. They include Olena Hloba, the co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ Ukrainians, who fled her home in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha shortly after Russia launched its war on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russian soldiers killed civilians as they withdrew from Bucha. Videos and photographs that emerged from the Kyiv suburb showed dead bodies with their hands tied behind their back and other signs of torture.
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, wrote the book’s forward.
The book also profiles Viktor Pylypenko, a gay man who the Ukrainian military assigned to the 72nd Mechanized Black Cossack Brigade after the war began. Feder writes Pylypenko’s unit “was deployed to some of the fiercest and most important battles of the war.”
“The brigade was pivotal to beating Russian forces back from Kyiv in their initial attempt to take the capital, helping them liberate territory near Kharkiv and defending the front lines in Donbas,” wrote Feder.
Pylypenko spent two years fighting “on Ukraine’s most dangerous battlefields, serving primarily as a medic.”
“At times he felt he was living in a horror movie, watching tank shells tear his fellow soldiers apart before his eyes,” wrote Feder. “He held many men as they took their final breaths. Of the roughly one hundred who entered the unit with him, only six remained when he was discharged in 2024. He didn’t leave by choice: he went home to take care of his father, who had suffered a stroke.”
Feder notes one of Pylypenko’s former commanders attacked him online when he came out. Pylypenko said another commander defended him.
Feder also profiled Diana and Oleksii Polukhin, two residents of Kherson, a port city in southern Ukraine that is near the mouth of the Dnieper River.
Ukrainian forces regained control of Kherson in November 2022, nine months after Russia occupied it.
Diana, a cigarette vender, and Polukhin told Feder that Russian forces demanded they disclose the names of other LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kherson. Russian forces also tortured Diana and Polukhin while in their custody.
Polukhim is the first LGBTQ victim of Russian persecution to report their case to Ukrainian prosecutors.
Feder, who is of Ukrainian descent, first visited Ukraine in 2013 when he wrote for BuzzFeed.
He was Outright International’s Senior Fellow for Emergency Research from 2021-2023. Feder last traveled to Ukraine in December 2024.
Feder spoke about his book at Politics and Prose at the Wharf in Southwest D.C. on Feb. 6. The Washington Blade spoke with Feder on Feb. 20.
Feder told the Blade he began to work on the book when he was at Outright International and working with humanitarian groups on how to better serve LGBTQ Ukrainians. Feder said military service requirements, a lack of access to hormone therapy and documents that accurately reflect a person’s gender identity and LGBTQ-friendly shelters are among the myriad challenges that LGBTQ Ukrainians have faced since the war began.
“All of these were components of a queer experience of war that was not well documented, and we had never seen in one place, especially with photos,” he told the Blade. “I felt really called to do that, not only because of what was happening in Ukraine, but also as a way to bring to the surface issues that we’d had seen in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan.”
Feder also spoke with the Blade about the war’s geopolitical implications.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 signed a law that bans the “promotion of homosexuality” to minors.
The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in Sochi, a Russian resort city on the Black Sea. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine a few weeks after the games ended.
Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown has continued over the last decade.
The Russian Supreme Court in 2023 ruled the “international LGBT movement” is an extremist organization and banned it. The Russian Justice Ministry last month designated ILGA World, a global LGBTQ and intersex rights group, as an “undesirable” organization.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has sought to align itself with Europe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after a 2021 meeting with then-President Joe Biden at the White House said his country would continue to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. (Zelenskyy’s relationship with the U.S. has grown more tense since the Trump-Vance administration took office.) Zelenskyy in 2022 publicly backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova in 2023 applauded Kyiv Pride and other LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in her country when she spoke at a photo exhibit at Ukraine House in D.C. that highlighted LGBTQ and intersex soldiers. Then-Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson, who Feder profiles in his book, was among those who attended the event.
“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”
Feder in response to the Blade’s question about why he decided to write his book said he “didn’t feel” the “significance of Russia’s war against Ukraine” for LGBTQ people around the world “was fully understood.”
“This was an opportunity to tell that big story,” he said.
“The crackdown on LGBT rights inside Russia was essentially a laboratory for a strategy of attacking democratic values by attacking queer rights and it was one as Ukraine was getting closet to Europe back in 2013, 2014,” he added. “It was a strategy they were using as part of their foreign policy, and it was one they were using not only in Ukraine over the past decade, but around the world.”
Feder said Republicans are using “that same strategy to attack queer people, to attack democracy itself.”
“I felt like it was important that Americans understand that history,” he said.
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes won medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that ended on Sunday.
Cayla Barnes, Hilary Knight, and Alex Carpenter are LGBTQ members of the U.S. women’s hockey team that won a gold medal after they defeated Canada in overtime. Knight the day before the Feb. 19 match proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
French ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who is gay, and his partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry won gold. American alpine skier Breezy Johnson, who is bisexual, won gold in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, was part of the American figure skating team that won gold in the team event.
Swiss freestyle skier Mathilde Gremaud, who is in a relationship with Vali Höll, an Austrian mountain biker, won gold in women’s freeski slopestyle.
Bruce Mouat, who is the captain of the British curling team that won a silver medal, is gay. Six members of the Canadian women’s hockey team — Emily Clark, Erin Ambrose, Emerance Maschmeyer, Brianne Jenner, Laura Stacey, and Marie-Philip Poulin — that won silver are LGBTQ.
Swedish freestyle skier Sandra Naeslund, who is a lesbian, won a bronze medal in ski cross.
Belgian speed skater Tineke den Dulk, who is bisexual, was part of her country’s mixed 2000-meter relay that won bronze. Canadian ice dancer Paul Poirier, who is gay, and his partner, Piper Gilles, won bronze.
Laura Zimmermann, who is queer, is a member of the Swiss women’s hockey team that won bronze when they defeated Sweden.
Outsports.com notes all of the LGBTQ Olympians who competed at the games and who medaled.
Va. activists preparing campaign in support of repealing marriage amendment
PHOTOS: Queen of Hearts
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes medal at Olympics
Rob Jetten becomes first gay Dutch prime minister
Judge rescinds order against activist in Capital Pride lawsuit
Trans activists arrested outside HHS headquarters in D.C.
How do we honor Renee Good, Alex Pretti?
Calendar: February 20-26
