Shawna Virago Reflects on LGBTQ Country Music: 'Breaking the Mold and Keepers of the Flame'

Country music isn't exactly known for its inclusiveness or progressive views on the sexual identity spectrum, however, country music has been a source of inspiration for many LGBTQ artists over the years, from Lavender Country and Peter Grudzien in the decade of the 70's to Orville Peck and Brandi Carlile today. .

With May 31 release of Blood in her dreams, it's time to give trailblazer Shawna Virago her wild flowers. In the early '90s, long before the fight for transgender inclusion and representation entered the mainstream discourse, she was one of the few openly transgender female musical performers in America.

After years of performing solo and in bands, Virago released her debut album, the mainly acoustic Objectifiedin 2009. While the flavor of Los Angeles punk pioneers X has always inspired Virago's music (relatively quieter), Blood in her dreams finds her adding an electric jolt of cow adrenaline to her lyrically detailed, emotionally resonant Americana. Songs like “Ghosts Cross State Lines,” “Eternity Street” and “Climb to the Bottom” paint empathetic, vivid portraits of tough guys who've been abused but haven't been beaten by life. Like Lucinda Williams, Virago finds a dusty beauty in the hard-nosed troublemakers who live a mile from genteel society.

Talking to you Advertising signvirago talks about everything from queer country to changing opportunities for trans musicians to trying to “understand the anger that's been unleashed in this country” on her best album to date.

How long did it take to put this album together?

I would go into the studio about once a month and work on songs. I wanted to work with the engineer Grace Coleman, and they are busy, so it was whenever I could work with them for two years. One day we were in the studio finishing “This Girl Felt Hounded”. Once we finished it, we just looked at each other like, “I think we're done. I think we have an album now.” I didn't know when we were going to finish it, but I think all the songs speak to each other.

“Ghosts Cross State Lines” is such a lyrically impressive song. What is your songwriting process like?

It's always different. This song was mainly based on the lyrics. I was thinking about this idea [that] you can move geographically, but there may be things where you came from that are still in you. They may always be within you, whether they have the power they once had or not. I was thinking about someone leaving a domestic violence situation and they can get away, but there was still this mental residue that they would have to deal with.

It is primarily a serious album. There is humor throughout the record. There's a song about the beginning of a relationship, so there's hope in that song, it's called “Bright Green Ideas.” There is some light on it, but not much light on the disc. I was reading some notebooks recently from that time when I was writing these songs, and it was very bleak. I think the stuff I didn't write was a lot bleaker. We all live through this kind of recalibration. And here, locally, we spent this in San Francisco. We went through this massive shift because of the tech industry when it got here. And then when it started to decline, a lot of those same people left the city — but it's still too expensive for people to come back here.

Blood in her dreams really started by trying to understand the kind of anger that has been unleashed in this country. The anger I'm talking about seems very one-sided, and many of us are its targets. I think the loneliness, the sadness that jobs have been sent overseas, all those things are really at the bottom of so much anger, but it's displaced.

You mentioned the changing landscape of San Francisco. As a resident, do you think there is still an art scene that has survived the tech boom and subsequent exodus?

There is definitely an art scene or art scenes happening. There are some really great drag scenes. I think in the greater Bay Area, there's this kind of alt-country scene going on. Somehow, I'm not sure how it happened, but it kind of embraced me. It still amazes me. And there are some great performance art scenes.

It's different than when I first moved here in the early 90s. But that was primarily a lot of, I would say, cisgender gay guys doing stuff. There was this thing called the Mission Art Scene which was largely cisgender d-kes, people like Michelle Tea. Twenty years ago, there was still this window of a critical mass of trans communities that had either been here for a few years, or were just coming here, and we had this short-lived, very vibrant trans performance scene that we didn't have. he hadn't really before. I saw some friends of mine the other night who also went out around the same time I did in the early 90s, and there were really only two or three bars to go to. It was really hard to break out of it. So that had finally changed. Yes, there are still good things going on here. Although people may have [to live with] five roommates. Probably also in New York, Brooklyn.

It certainly is. Traditionally, country music was more conservative and not open-minded to transgender people. As a trans person who's in this world and loves a bit of music, is it ever hard to come to terms?

Trans and queer communities in country music are a relatively recent phenomenon. Now we have bona fide commercial stars like Orville Peck and Brandi Carlile. Part of my upbringing was in the South, and we had three radio stations that played country music. Charlie Rich, Charley Pride, Loretta [Lynn]Tammy [Wynette] and also Lynn Anderson and Jeannie C. Riley. So many queer folks love country music. We love a lot of the traces of traditional country music, in a way that other people have moved on and don't know or care about. If you look at Porter Wagner, he did Ziggy Stardust. [laughs] What was going on with this guy? There are things [in country] that attracts us. We break the mold and the flame guards at the same time.

When you started playing live music in the 90s in San Francisco, was there an audience for you beyond that? Have you ever performed in more rural areas and what was that like?

It's a really big question. I know someone will get their Ph.D. sometime in the 90s in San Francisco with transgender communities. Because many things were happening for the first time. Getting health care through San Francisco health clinics was new. There was a Department of Health study that focused on trans people and how we make money, on possible drug use, on the HIV situation, and that had never been done before. The work of police accountability was being done for the first time. So I didn't play — in that period of time — I didn't play in any rural communities. I played in Los Angeles, some small clubs there. I just played wherever I could play. It was also a mixed bag. The world wasn't ready for transgender performers in music. There were about six months where I just didn't play at all because it's so frustrating because then people would just want to talk about my gender. I was often the only trans out trans person in the club or bar we played. The worry about getting home from the club was real.

There weren't many people doing what you were doing at the time.

There was a performer who came out about a decade before me named Bambi Lake. She already had shows in the 80s and her drug use affected her with stable housing and I think she had some mental health issues. He didn't play much in the early 90s, but he was someone who broke a lot of ground and has been largely forgotten. I would call her crazy. It could be provocative. He called in a bomb threat every time Oasis came to town because he thought they were cute. And he wanted to meet them, so he used a payphone and waited around. He was arrested. I gave her money in jail, to buy some shampoo and stuff. As time went on, I think they got really bitter, because the trans world changed so much, and they weren't really a part of it. I like to shed at least some light towards her. I'm not sure any recordings were ever released. Justin Vivian bond covers one of her songs [“Golden Age of Hustlers”].

I've seen Justin Vivian Bond do this song! I go to see them quite a bit at Joe's Pub, their show is so soulful.

I remember in the early 00's I met a trans man who had what you would call traditional aspirations as a musician. And I never thought it was possible. For myself, I still don't think this is really possible, which is fine. [Most of us were] I was really just trying to survive and didn't think ambition was an option. So that has changed. The idea of ​​ambition has changed.

What are your plans after the release? Blood in her dreams?

I have modest goals. We wanted to create a band sound on the record, so I worked with engineer Grace Coleman, who also co-produces, but performance-wise, I still do solo acoustic shows. My plan is to get out there on the road in, say, a 100 mile radius around San Francisco. Over the past few years I've toured a few times with a friend of mine, Secret Emchy Society. And I always felt more and more insecure about getting out of that particular bubble. I would see militia men out there on the street. And I'm really starting to feel it even more with us calling him “the bad guy who wants to be president,” talking about extending term limits.

Does it seem worse to you now than, say, 10 years ago? Has the rise of evil made some people feel more empowered?

Yes. I think they had this simmering resentment. A huge swath of our country is filled with people with huge amounts of discontent. I also believe that many Americans are ignorant in many ways. And this is not a judgment on potential intelligence, but they are undereducated, untraveled, and find all their answers in the Bible, which they have never read. My mother, my family, lives in Arkansas and goes to a church where the preacher is a huge transphobe. It was always there. I think same-sex marriage, black lives matter, anything you might think is a sign of progress, it just pisses these people off. I think now they feel empowered. And it's scarier.

What's interesting is, having this great conversation with you, you think I'd put out an album like this London call. [But this album is] much more personal. They're not polemical, which I've done before, but the feeling of fear and paranoia is definitely in the songs.