Preview: Trixie Mattel & Harper Grae on Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly
The upcoming episode of Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly, which premieres this Sunday, July 10, features two CQ favorites—and we’ve got an advance taste for you! Trixie Mattel joins Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly to chat about The Blonde & Pink Albums, writing for tour, and what it’s like to meet her heroes. Plus, Harper Grae discusses the journey she took to decide whether one can be gay and Christian.
Here are some key moments in the show…
Trixie Mattel on the duality of small towns
Not all of us queer people had a terrorizing home, small town experience. To say that it’s hard for kids in the country is to say that it’s not hard for kids in the city. Like everybody’s thing is different, right? And I mean, “This Town” ambivalence is kind of a word because it’s not a song about hating a small town. It’s not really a song about liking it. It’s just a song about reflecting on it and just sort of like, there’s so much to say about it, and so little to say, because these towns are beautiful, they are full of compassionate people and good people, but of course, that kind of small town breeds closed minds, and it breeds domestic abuse, and substance abuse and small towns have a darkness. They have a sweetness, but they really have a darkness that is just, you can feel it sometimes when you drive through a small town, when the only thing open is the bars, and just people’s lights are on in their living room windows, and you just can feel that there’s all these really small, sinister little storylines playing out. And then, everybody goes to work in school the next day and pretend it isn’t happening. But I love small towns. I want the best for small towns. I’m happy to be from a small town.
Trixie Mattel on playing the Ryman and following musical dreams
TRIXIE MATTEL: I just played the Ryman for the first time.
HUNTER KELLY: How’d it go?
TRIXIE MATTEL: It was cool. I mean, Katya and I played there together, so we did like a comedy show there. It was cool. It was just cool to be performing there, period. It was just weird. I honestly thought when I wanted to be a musician and then when I started doing drag as my job I kind of thought I was kind of closing the door to all that. So, it’s weird to see my musical dreams play out in this other art form in a way. When I was a kid learning guitar and trying to write music, I never thought it would be delivering it in this way. So, that’s always very surprising of like, wow, I thought drag would be the reason I would never get taken seriously. But then I got to play on Jimmy Kimmel last night in drag. So like who knows? The world is different.
Trixie Mattel on writing her latest album
I wrote this music during lockdown, basically in an evacuated Hollywood. So I wrote a lot of this music, ironically dreaming of more positive energy. And so probably that’s one of the darkest global times I wrote some of the most sunshine-y music. It wasn’t intentional. I think just a little more of a coping mechanism probably is just writing more fun, bright music. And there’s also a time where I was coming off touring with my band. So this is definitely also music I wrote more for Trixie in mind, more music that I hear Trixie singing.
Trixie Mattel on working with Michelle Branch
If anybody’s ever followed me, you know that I love Michelle Branch and her album, ‘The Spirit Room,’ was the reason I picked up a guitar in the first place. I’ve talked about her over the years in interviews as my impetus for songwriting. I mean, her songwriting was the thing that opened me up to.. “Somebody writes these songs.”
And I thought the fact that she wrote it, played it and sang it at the same time was a magic trick. I just was like, “Whoa, people write their own music and then go sing it. Whoa.” So I learned guitar in the interest of becoming a songwriter. I just wanted to write music. And so reaching out to her and saying, “Hey, I wrote this song called White Rabbit and I think it sounds like early you.” And I just think, “You want to maybe sing on it at all? That would be… Even if it’s just some oohs and aahs or something.”
And then she said, “Oh, I really like it. It reminds me of Aimee Mann.” Aimee Mann is like my Beyonce, my absolute favorite. So I was really gagged by that. So, I mean, yeah, Michelle was seven and a half months pregnant sending recording that. So right before she had a baby and right when she was releasing ‘The Spirit Room’ rerecord, so she was really cool to take time out of her… Truly nine months pregnant and promoting her 20-year anniversary of her album to record that for me.
Trixie Mattel on dancing in the “Hello Hello” video
Dance wasn’t my first discipline. I said music was my first discipline and then comedy and acting. But I had to take dance as part of my education and I really liked learning that type of movement, and I’m also very into the ’60s and I wanted to do a video… I don’t know, I’m getting up, I’m 32, which is old for a drag queen now. So I thought like, I want to do something with a lot of movement while I still can do it. And I know people don’t think of me as a dancer because in drag world, if you don’t do cartwheels and splits, you aren’t a dancer. But I clocked a lot of years in dance classes in front of those mirrors, so I was like, what about this skillset that I’m not really using?
Trixie Mattel on finding what makes sense for her sound
I do comedy for a living. Right? So, I think I’ve lowered the acts compared to my earlier records that were a little more, “Poor me, poor me.” ‘Two Birds’ is a breakup record, really. And it’s so melodramatic. Some of those songs like “I Know You All Over Again,” so sad. So, so “Poor me, poor me,” which is fine because we all feel that way. Barbara was a mix. Barbara was the end of the first two records and the beginning of this sound. And so it has “Malibu,” but it also has “I Don’t Have a Broken Heart” or some of those yee-haw energy ones. But this one, honestly, touring as Trixie for a living and doing Trixie with a band with costume reveals and 10 wigs… The soundtrack of Trixie pervaded my writing, in a way, I guess. If I didn’t do drag, I wouldn’t have written this record, in this way. You know? Which is why this one’s called ‘The Blonde & The Pink Albums.’ It’s really more of an embrace of the sound that people… I want this album to sound like people, when they see me, I want it to sound like what they see. Because otherwise, I think I’ve always had an uphill battle of having to make people understand this Malibu Barbie aesthetic with my musical taste; which my musical taste is just a little more yee-haw.
Trixie Mattel on working with Shakey Graves and the reality of going home
TRIXIE MATTEL: He and I both have drag names in a way, so, “I hear you played on the radio, but you change your name and you can’t go home.” Like, it’s almost like I hear from people from my small town saying, like, “I heard you on the radio, I saw you on TV,” but I’m kind of famous for something that I can’t really take home with me and be proud of. Does that make sense?
HUNTER KELLY: Yeah, 100%.
TRIXIE MATTEL: Like you go make the bacon, and you get the accolades, but you did it in a chicken suit. So like, it’s not like you can go home and get your cookies and have everyone pat you in the back because you kind of did something shameful.
Trixie Mattel on having Belinda Carlisle on Trixie Motel
HUNTER KELLY: You also had Belinda Carlisle on your show?
TRIXIE MATTEL: Yes. She’s on Trixie Motel, which is so crazy. I mean, she comes into the series at a time where we are very stressed out and she is sober, a yogi, she’s the ultimate zen master. And she really helps me pull it together because she’s so calm and chill and nobody’s more California than her. Her energy is so calming and she’s been everywhere and done everything. And she’s just… And by the way, I did a show with her. She’s looking and singing better than ever. Her voice right now is ridiculous.
Harper Grae on asking if she can be gay and Christian
This whole EP, I mean, it really is just taken from my journal from my late teens, early twenties, when I was navigating through coming out in an evangelical culture and in an identity for myself that was rooted in faith. And my identity was in Christ. That’s how I was raised. And so for me, I was really navigating through answering the question, can I be gay and Christian? And I didn’t necessarily think at first, I didn’t think that you could be because that’s what I was taught. But there was something in me I remembered in all the sermons is these little just nuggets of question everything. Don’t ever just take anything. And then when I turned that on its head I said, “Okay, well, I’m going to question the church.” And that’s when my journey really started where I was like, “Okay, I want to start kind of diving in and figuring out from a contextual, historical and theological perspective can I be gay and Christian?”
Harper Grae on learning about the mistranslations in the Bible
The biggest piece for me was not even learning the dead language, it was learning that the word homosexual wasn’t even in the Bible till 1946. And I was absolutely shook when I saw that. And I worked at an old bookstore, a used bookstore, at the time in college. And I got to test that when someone brought in a stack of books, and one was a Bible that was pre-1946, and I immediately got it, and I still have it today. I ended up buying it because I was like, “This is…” I didn’t believe it because everything I saw was on the internet.
Then I got this Bible that didn’t have the word homosexual in it, and it was translated, and I just felt and thought and now know that there are so many mistranslations within the Bible for us to be able to interpret it. It’s really a shortcoming of the Protestant faith as a whole, in my personal opinion, because we’re not being taught what was actually written. So what do you do with that? I guess you write songs about it in my case.
Tune in this Sunday, June 5, at 2pm PT / 4pm CT / 5pm ET, or any time afterward at apple.co/_ProudRadio on Apple Music Country.
Media and quotes courtesy of Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly on Apple Music Country.