 BEERS,
STEERS AND QUEERS
Over the last year, I’ve received quite a few emails from
readers wanting coverage of country music. There are divas like
Dolly Parton, Gretchen Wilson
and The Dixie Chicks, not to mention local gay
acts. So here is my recent run-in with a few local rising queer
steers and their idols.
I recently profiled Richard Delamar AKA Strong Like Bull,
who is originally from Alberta and did a dance track with drag star
Sofonda. Strong Like Bull is now focusing mostly
on country/electronica which is a growing genre of music. His latest
project is a crazy-ass single with fiddle fag Ashley MacIsaac
called “Smack a Hippie.” Hear him at myspace.com/stronglikebullsongs.
A new one-off event called Queers and Steers on Thu. July
5 at the Dakota Tavern (249 Ossington, 9pm, $5) has some great down-homo
entertainment, including dragster Miss Conception
as Dolly Parton, Country Burlesque with the always fun Trixie
& Beaver & Male Gayze and DJs Big Eva Edna, Sigourney
Beaver and Some Random Tall Guy. The headliner will be
hot local queer band Tomboyfriend. I asked lead
singer and resident gayboy Ryan Kamstra about their name, the bisexuality
they sing about and Dolly Parton.
“The name Tomboyfriend is utopian,” says Kamstra. “We are all someone’s
boyfriend; we are all some one’s tomboy. It is best understood in
the interrogative. Will you be my tomboyfriend?” He says he “does
bisexuality so unsatisfactorily” but still “I think sex should be
like that Halloween game where you stick your fingers in the bowl
blindfolded and don’t know what you’re getting.” On Dolly: “My favourite
thing about Dolly Parton is that I know deep, deep
in my heart— under the crust and pus and the goo—that she alone
would let me sleep under her pink taffeta settee if I were alone
in the world, without a home, without a friend, and nurse me back
to strength with heaping bowls of instant potatoes and down-home
joking. Huge heaping bowls, that’s what the South is about and why
we Canadians are such tight-asses in comparison.” Hear them at myspace.com/Tomboyfriend.
An out gay male country singer making it big in Nashville, Tennessee?
It’s a dream that could come true for local gay country artist Mark
Jacob, who recently recorded a four-song demo in the world
capital of country music with Tim McGraw’s band
The Dance Hall Doctors.
Jacob’s career took off three years ago when he was invited to perform
at an industry showcase for agents, record producers and music labels
and had only a minute and a half to sing and make an impression.
He blew everyone away with his unique cover of the classic “Unchained
Melody.” He caught the attention of Grammy-award-nominated producer
Jim Lightman, engineer with country legend Tim McGraw, and the next
thing you know, Jacob is recording in McGraw’s studio in Nashville
with the legend’s backing band. Jacob has just completed his first
music video and will return to Nashville in a couple of months to
finish off his first album with hopes of releasing it later this
year.
Jacob told fab that he’s proud to be gay and wouldn’t hide
it in conservative Nashville. “I just hope that I can open doors
for gay singer/songwriters who have so much talent but are scared
to be out,” he says. “I mean, Nashville is a very strange place.
They wouldn’t play the Dixie Chicks for making
a comment about the president. I don’t think they’d play me because
I’m gay. It’s unfortunate and ignorant, yes, but they are very conservative
and right-wing down there. I actually wrote a song called ‘Nashville
Bible Belt’ and it’s all about that.”
With gay positive idols that include Faith Hill,
Alanis Morissette, No Doubt, Wilson
and McGraw, Jacob is hoping that a song of his will one day become
the first out male gay #1 country single in Nashville history. It’s
been more than 15 years since a queer Canadian shook up Nashville
the way k.d. lang did; isn’t it time for a gay
male singer to do the same? Hear him at www.myspace.com/markjacobb
 daniel
paquette
tunes@famagazine.com
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