at season nine\u2019s finale was the fiercest thing. <\/strong><\/p>\nNobody is a bigger fan of RuPaul than me. RuPaul and Amanda LaPore, I would throw myself on the railroad tracks today for either of them, and honestly, the older and wiser I get, my initial superficial enjoyment of RuPaul became a deeper respect and only a peripheral understanding of the gravity of a Black man putting on a blonde wig and dressing like a woman in the ’90s. People throw the word mother around, people are like, \u201cGypsy Rose Blanchard, mother!\u201d Well, maybe not her. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s probably the one person in our lifetime who we can say definitively and literally changed the entire world. The entire world is a different place because of RuPaul. <\/strong><\/p>\nIt\u2019s crazy. I also think with RuPaul, we take everything for granted, and reality TV blossomed so quickly from what it was even 10 years ago, RuPaul\u2019s impact won\u2019t even be understood until probably she\u2019s done. Because we\u2019re all actively eating the meal, we haven\u2019t even had to sit and be like, “Wasn\u2019t that so good? That 30-year-long meal that RuPaul let us eat?”<\/p>\n
15 years ago, nobody knew who drag queens were. Literally, that was not a thing the entire world knew about. Her tangible effect on real-life politics, the globe? You could go anywhere in the world and RuPaul is the language we speak now. <\/strong><\/p>\nHonestly, her ability to cross lines into everything. Everyone has put money down with RuPaul as their horse. Everybody gets something out of it. RuPaul just creates and then goes away until it\u2019s time to create again. I could talk about her forever, I\u2019m obsessed with her.<\/p>\n
I was reading one of her books, and was reminded of you in many ways, because Ru has branched out into so many different things throughout her career, and you\u2019ve constantly invented a career for yourself, like her. I don\u2019t think anyone had, besides RuPaul, a career like Trixie Mattel. When you were 24, did you ever see yourself DJing World Pride on a bill with RuPaul of all people?<\/strong><\/p>\nNo, I didn\u2019t. But also, I\u2019ve always thought that DJing was so cool. As a gay person, as a drag queen who barely had besties in other drag queens, I spent a lot of time in the DJ booth in my life. Go up there, have my cocktail, talk to the DJ. Matteo, my DJ partner who does Solid Pink Disco with me on tour, he just turned 50. He said, “Before you started DJing, I DJed shows you were in, and you were one of the only drag queens who would come to the DJ booth to say hi to the DJ.” He was like, “I\u2019d never seen that before.”<\/p>\n
When you work in nightclubs, you have DJs breaking really great dance music to you on a nightly basis. For free! You accidentally get your minor in dance music, because DJs are always sharing with you what\u2019s coming, and what other drag queens are doing. Not to mention, back in the day, I did a lot of circuit parties, so it would be like, go to work, hear six hours of music. During COVID, I was like, I miss the \u201cthumpa thumpa.\u201d I was trying to Google songs, because I wanted to put together a playlist of house music that I love, that I miss. I was like, wow, I\u2019m not equipped to do this. So then I started deep diving, and pretty much, like anything I do, if I get interested, I fall off the deep end. I have to know everything. I\u2019m probably the youngest person who plays the autoharp, like a crazy person. I don\u2019t just go on Zillow, I open motels, like a crazy person. I bought a club standard setup and put it in my living room and just dumped, during COVID. Dumped hours and hours, every day, looking for music, skill building, trying to DuoLingo myself. Luckily, I\u2019m pretty tech-savvy, because of YouTube. Obviously my background in music helps. But it took something like COVID for me to have all the time in the world to devote to DJing. <\/p>\n
A Trak just played for us at a few Solid Pink Discos, and that was so surreal. I had to almost address the elephant in the room. I had to be like, \u201cThank you for doing this, also, you\u2019re opening for me, I know that\u2019s probably weird.\u201d He is a world champion turntablist, in his teens! I\u2019m like, \u201cThis must be weird for you to open for anybody,\u201d but also, this is a room full of gay people, and if you ask them who should be the headliner, they’ll tell you. So to answer your question, no, I never saw this coming, because I loved playing guitar and I loved lip syncing. I did not ever think I would get to go down that road.<\/p>\n
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Speaking of guitar, you had such a prolific journey with music before DJing. You have albums and music videos out, have toured the music. Do you feel like DJing co-exists with that? Has it supplanted or enriched it?<\/strong><\/p>\nI grew up playing guitar because we had one, and because I grew up so remote, we didn’t have piano lessons. Not that we could afford it. I recently just watched a documentary, and I won’t say what artist\u2019s it was, but they were talking about how poor they were, but the documentary was full of video footage of them from like, the \u201860s, from when they were a kid. And I was like, \u201cOkay, I believe that you weren’t rich, but I can tell you, as a poor person, we didn’t have fucking video cameras, especially not in the \u201860s at home.\u201d Yeah, we were actually poor. We were on these programs that they try to take away in schools. If we didn’t have free breakfast and free lunch, I would not have had meals, you know? Like, we were really poor, really, poor. So, guitar came to me because my grandpa played guitar, and it just came so easy. I just loved it. I’ve always loved it. I think I played for 22 years now, crazy! It just came so naturally to me. <\/p>\n
And I guess when you\u2019re DJing\u2026 my musical relationship used to be using a guitar and my voice to talk, right? To communicate. But with DJing, you have an entire conversation with a room full of people using other people’s songs in almost a collage. That honestly is how drag queens work, I think. Drag at its core, I think for a lot of us, is collage. It’s this artist, this movie, this song, this costume, and we’re trying to tell one thing. And I guess that part of it reminds me so much of when I was 21, you know, using Garageband to make mash ups and shitty lip sync mixes. That part of it reminds me so much of DJing, because you’re using other people’s music to talk to people. I\u2019ve had the idea for Solid Pink Disco since I was 21!<\/p>\n
Oh, wow!<\/strong><\/p>\n I always wanted to throw a party that was all pink. And I just never thought I would be the DJ at that party, but I just always had that word in my mind, \u201csolid pink disco\u201d and RuPaul says you have to let the universities give you stage direction.<\/p>\n
What was the impetus to start it now? Was it the DJing, and feeling like, \u201cI can do this now.\u201d Was there anything stopping you beforehand?<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen I was younger, I thought it seemed like a big thing to take on, but I just had this dream of disco balls and all pink and everybody wearing pink. Sort of like a Barbie core party for adults that felt really girly. I don’t really believe in the gender system, but just the word girly works for me. And I love My Little Pony<\/em><\/em> and Polly Pocket<\/em><\/em> and Barbie<\/em><\/em> and all that. When I started DJing during COVID, I guess it took me maybe a season of DJing to be like, \u201cAll right, I want to start building this.\u201d And the first year, it was basically the first time I’d done like, 90-minute, two-hour sets on a regular basis. <\/p>\nHow has it evolved this year, since you started?<\/strong><\/p>\nThis year is so much crazier. Because I also do video, I spent a lot more time this year building all the visuals, putting on green screen suits and recording visuals. There’s this artist in Mexico who built all the 3D models. And then you can tell the ones I made, which are a little more unhinged and crazy. I just had a vision of making it more immersive. Some of the influences this year are like early Heatherette. Something that feels very whimsical, and so girly and gay that it goes back around to feeling overtly masculine, weirdly. I mean, this one’s really a love letter to prissy little princesses, whatever their identity is. It’s the girls who are willing to put on the shitty little tiara and the stacked boots and go thrash around. This is for them. I mean, the world has gotten so crazy, and what I’ve learned from Trixie Motel is: there’s something about an immersive environment that makes people really feel like they have left planet Earth.<\/p>\n
People walk into Trixie Motel and just cry, they just cry, and they love it. And with Solid Pink Disco, you walk in and everybody is wearing pink. There’s pink lights, pink visuals. The Go Go’s are in pink. And I really tried hard to create a set that speaks to people who maybe don’t go to dance events all the time. I wanted there to be a through line that felt really familiar and very Trixie. So the first movement of it is really disco and sparkly and cowboy disco fantasy. And the second half of it is this darker, cuntier workout section where we’re jumping rope and exercising. There’s a whole exercise section in drag \u2014 psycho! We’re doing jump rope, like it’s crazy.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s a summer tour too, so that\u2019ll go really well with drag and the heat. <\/strong><\/p>\nNo kidding. We started the tour in Australia in February, which is summer there, so we\u2019re just following summer. I guess the last couple years, when I did it, it was mostly one outfit and cool visuals. But not necessarily narrative choices. This year was the first time I was like, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m gonna do quick changes. We\u2019re doing numbers. This time we tour with two dancers who do their own numbers and do numbers with me. This year, there\u2019s these famous, famous openers too. We got Rebecca Black, we got Shea Coule\u00e9, A-Trak. I can\u2019t believe some of these producers. <\/p>\n
I loved your recent video with Rebecca Black, on that note, who I also profiled earlier this year. Such a good album, and such creative energy about her. It\u2019s exciting to see you two collaborating on this. <\/strong><\/p>\nIt\u2019s also really exciting to see people turn around on her, because I don\u2019t really have the gay bone in my body where we just like, love pop girls and fucking hate them. I don\u2019t really get down like that. There\u2019s this whole event that’s occurring to Katy Perry right now I would never participate in, unless it\u2019s Emilia Perez<\/em><\/em>. I just don\u2019t participate in this cycle of choosing famous women and being like, \u201cFuck her.\u201d<\/p>\nI want to go back to something you said about the club. I\u2019ve been going out for a long time, now that I\u2019m in my thirties, and it used to be that the club was a third place. Now, more than ever, it feels like people are looking for fantasy when they go out. They want to escape from reality, because the world is so bad. I don\u2019t think when I was 21 going out to shitty gay bars, I was like, \u201cI want to be transported to Narnia.\u201d I wanted shitty tequila and to go home with a guy who was probably going to kill me. <\/strong><\/p>\nI think we must have been going to the same bars. Like, \u201cI\u2019m gonna put on my 2010s makeup and my Lego eyebrows, I\u2019m gonna put on my Jessica Simpson heels.\u201d<\/p>\n
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My Jeffree Star beat!<\/strong><\/p>\nI\u2019ve been thinking about it a lot, actually, because I\u2019m a millennial, and I understand that on the internet, we are the road that everybody stops to piss on at this point. But I’m also like, stay mad. Do you know how much fun we had going out? Do you know how happy we were? Do you know that we drank and fucked like we were gonna die tomorrow? You know that we dressed up like the world was ending? There was this time where it was like, everyone was doing this post-hipster thing. It was like, Beyonc\u00e9, Gaga, \u201cVideo Phone\u201d era, where everything was the highest heels, gemstones to hell, a lot of makeup. We were kind of doing The Capitol in The Hunger Games.<\/p>\n
We all looked like Cosmo, the Queen of Melrose, in bedazzled hats and fur and leather and a pair of panties.<\/strong><\/p>\nI think that audiences now are more discerning, particularly female audiences. Female audiences really understand that if you like something, you have to support it, or it goes away. So girls, in my experience, will see your tours. The day your tour goes on sale, they\u2019ll buy four tickets and figure out who\u2019s going later. They will start buying an outfit that day. They\u2019ll start rhinestoning something. People are just a little more enlightened now, and they want to support something. So with Solid Pink Disco, I wanted to design something instead of just asking people to come. That\u2019s the magic of it, to me. I\u2019m on the posters, and I\u2019m up there, but it is so much more about the people dressed head to toe in all pink with blonde wigs on. They are there and they\u2019re having a great time. I think mostly because of how they look and how they dress, they self-transport? They\u2019re in a room full of people dressed up at a level they would never dress up. It\u2019s not Halloween, it\u2019s not Pride, and there\u2019s something about the color pink too that\u2019s very audacious and daring and removes you from reality a little bit. I\u2019ve learned that the energy, the vibe, is kind of like \u201cFuck it, it\u2019s the last night on earth.\u201d It comes from the feeling of people almost being in their drag. People get in their drag and they are not a fucking crossing guard or waitress or whatever. They are the queen of club.com\/diva.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about something you said during the Chappell Roan cover last year, where I think she was going to Kentuckiana Pride, and she said that these shows in places that aren\u2019t LA or New York, where we\u2019re more jaded about things like gayness or the color pink, to some people, it feels more important to them. Do you feel that energy at your shows, because I\u2019m sure it\u2019s something you\u2019ve experienced touring with Katya.<\/strong><\/p>\nWith Trixie and Katya, I felt a bigger responsibility to live up to the expectation of a diehard Trixie and Katya fan, because the people who come to see me and Katya have been watching us since they were teenagers. A lot of them are now post-college graduates who\u2019ve been watching us since middle school. So I felt like almost every night, we had to live up to a decade of their experience watching us on YouTube. Whereas for Solid Pink Disco, it feels \u2026 obviously I make money. <\/p>\n
But it feels more like, \u201cThis is a dark room, and this show is that moment where you pull the curtains open in the morning for a couple hours.\u201d Because I can\u2019t be responsible for what their life is like right now. I can take a lot of responsibility for very potent escapism at a very reasonable ticket price. It is really gay, without feeling exclusive. It doesn\u2019t feel like corporate pride. We don\u2019t want something that feels branded and we don\u2019t want: \u201cCell Phone Company presents Your Gay Experience.\u201d But we don\u2019t want something that feels too cool, because gay people have a tendency to feel too fucking cool for their own, too. So I just am really proud of it. I can tell that people have an experience that is different from any other night of the year. It\u2019s different from pride. It\u2019s not running on clockwork. <\/p>\n
With Solid Pink Disco, especially this year, my goal was to create something that had a major Trixie flavor with the approach and the look and the songs. But again, it has so little to do with me. I\u2019ve found it very freeing because I\u2019m there, but it\u2019s really the audience’s party. There\u2019s a lot more of them in drag than me, and they all know each other in these towns, and I don\u2019t know them. It really is giving people an opportunity to play a very parallel version of themselves for a night. I mean, people come and they act crazy, they fucking lose their mind, they scream, they piss their pants, they fall out, they faint, they get carried out on stretchers, splits, drunk as hell, they flip out!<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s something about costumes that has really pervaded culture. Chappell had her themes on tour, Beyonc\u00e9 and now Lady Gaga are the same. You have to get those uniforms six months in advance. People are looking for a place to be outside themselves.<\/strong><\/p>\nThey are. Pink for me has its own vibration. There\u2019s something about it that is even peripheral to pride. To me pink, because it\u2019s like its own thing, when people do pink, they base their whole jush on it. There\u2019s always that girl who wears pink lips every day, or always has pink hair, whatever. It communicates something. It communicates a willingness to suspend disbelief. It communicates a frivolity, and you want people to know that you\u2019re daring. You want people to know that you\u2019re playing a version of yourself for everyone\u2019s enjoyment. <\/p>\n
When I worked at the makeup counter, when people would wear bold lipstick, they really became a different person. Something about pink, especially when you get it on little gay boys or girls, especially high femme, sapphic women at these shows\u2026 there\u2019s something very female power about a sea of girls in pink making out. I think we\u2019re making fun of femininity, in a way, with how high femme we\u2019re doing it in the show. It gives people a lot of freedom. Like, let\u2019s all dress like little Polly Pocket sluts and thrash around in it. We\u2019re not going to be reduced to gender. We\u2019re all here together, it is a very open space. <\/p>\n
Back to the topic of RuPaul, but specifically her music: I loved your cover of \u201cLooking Good, Feeling Gorgeous.\u201d Off one of my favorite RuPaul albums, <\/strong>Red<\/em><\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>Hot<\/em><\/strong><\/em>, which has \u201cAre You Man Enough?\u201d and \u201cComing Out of Hiding\u201d. Have you always been a fan of the music, or was that something that happened to you slowly?<\/strong><\/p>\nEven though RuPaul is celebrated, Red Hot <\/em><\/em>came out a number of years after Supermodel<\/em><\/em>.<\/p>\nShe makes some \u2026. bold \u2026. creative choices on the album.<\/strong><\/p>\nBold, bold choices. But the look and the feel of it, I just love the song. If Dula Peep put this up today, it would be a hit song, I love that song.<\/p>\n
So much of RuPaul\u2019s music is like that, though, where I\u2019m like, if it was anyone else, people would respect it, but it\u2019s RuPaul. So there\u2019s a joke element that people associate with it.<\/strong><\/p>\nTotally. I was using a bootleg acapella from \u201cSupermodel\u201d and I was building this remix, and I started to like it so much. Then I did a gig at the Out 100, and Vincint was there singing, and I walked up and was like, I have this remix of \u201cSupermodel\u201d that I’m working on. And I love you, and I know that you love RuPaul. Would you be interested in perhaps providing an original vocal so I can obtain the licenses required to put it on iTunes and stuff for people to have easier access to it?\u201d So then they did all the vocals for that in under an hour. Their voice is so stupid good. It was supposed to be a bootleg \u201cSupermodel\u201d and then once I had the privilege to bump it, the universe was like, here’s Vincint. You spent the whole day on your computer working on this, and now you’re standing here with Vincint. Why don’t you just ask? The worst they can say is no.<\/p>\n
I did this story that was a taxonomy of all her Christmas music, and the amount of people who reached out after \u2014 people you\u2019d be surprised by! \u2014 who said they went back and listened to her music, and they couldn\u2019t believe nobody ever talked about how good it is. I was like, \u201cI think we do?\u201d Welcome to the club of people with actually good taste who respect RuPaul as an artist. <\/strong><\/p>\nThat Christmas shit! \u201cHey Sis, It\u2019s Christmas\u201d is amazing. Amazing, amazing. It\u2019s one of the best Christmas songs. \u201cI Just Want to Get to You\u201d is so good. <\/p>\n
Oh my god, chills!<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cThe Realness\u201d? I was just at a show the other day, and that part of \u201cThe Realness\u201d that\u2019s just the baseline, in C minor? And the other song that\u2019s in C minor is that one that goes, \u201cGet on up!\u201d I was marrying them together at this gig the other night, and I was like, am I going to have to remix \u201cThe Realness\u201d with everyone? I might have to. I am just the RuPaul stalker now. <\/p>\n
\u201cMain Event\u201d still gets me on my feet. Makes me feel like I\u2019m 20 again.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe beginning is amazing!<\/p>\n
I was going to say, do you think we\u2019ve approached a time where we can abandon the moniker of \u201cdrag queen music\u201d, which is a stupid moniker to begin with. Because it assumes it\u2019s not \u201creal music\u201d, or places it outside of music.<\/strong><\/p>\nYou know what’s been amazing, ever since I started working in dance music? Dance music is such an inclusive free for all. Dance music is like that Gaga meme: \u201cAfraid to reference or not reference, shit it out.\u201d Does she say shit it out? Puke it out? Whatever. In dance music you can beg, borrow, steal, regurgitate, mimic, reinvent. That’s kind of the fabric of dance music, that it’s a call and response. We’re all hearing each other, and honoring each other by stacking. Like, if you do this, I’m gonna play this card. But when I was doing quote, unquote, real music, I love playing guitar, and I love singing, and I love songwriting. I mean, before I did drag, I thought I was gonna be Bob Dylan, basically. But I don’t have the hair for it, obviously. <\/p>\n
You can just buy the hair.<\/strong><\/p>\nSee, I could get away with it! I love that style of storytelling, but I always felt very, \u201cWell, I’m in drag.\u201d I love playing guitar and singing, and I love drag and then when I put them together, it ended up being a little bit more synergy than I expected, because when you do comedy and then you can play guitar, it’s a really good way to work. I love Bo Burnham. I love Sarah Silverman. There are so many musical comedians that I had as proof that that was very possible. But all these interviews would be like, \u201cHey, it’s your third album,\u201d and they ask questions like what you just said about drag music, and how do we start to turn the tide on the way people refer to that. Basically creating a situation where I answer a question about the lack of legitimacy that’s suggested when you say drag music.<\/p>\n
I never know how to answer that question other than, like, listen, I was barefoot, playing a guitar halfway up a tree in a trailer park a lot longer than I was doing drag. I don’t know what to tell you! For me, it’s one in the same. And if you asked me at the time, when I was 13, would I rather be sitting and doing it in a pink dress, I probably would have said yes. But the great thing about dance music is Honey Dijon existing, and Black trans women, Black gay people basically inventing house music. If you watch a ten minute documentary about house music, you learn that it was invented halfway in Chicago and New York, and Black queer people, like everything else, fucking invented it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an art form that honestly is very: \u201cCome as you are.\u201d Even though it is very white male male-dominated. But it\u2019s funny, because once you put a drum machine behind your music, and you have a wig on, all those questions don\u2019t exist, they just fall away, it makes a lot more sense. When I play guitar and sing, I feel a lot of gravity to tell a story and really be taken seriously. I felt like it was always an uphill battle to be taken seriously. I would look for a review that didn\u2019t say that they were surprised that it was any good. It would all be like that, which is kind of a compliment, because it means somebody went in expecting nothing and you actually had to meet some expectations of that. You\u2019re better than nothing. <\/p>\n
But with dance music, it\u2019s very open. I just did Coachella two weeks ago. Using dance music in drag just feels very literate, people have some amount of literacy for that. They\u2019re not going, okay, it\u2019s a drag queen playing guitar, I don\u2019t get it. It\u2019s not a lot to ask, it\u2019s not a leap, and I guess that works in my favor, developing Solid Pink Disco, because when you see a person in a wig, you do want to party. You put a drag queen DJing anywhere, it becomes an event.<\/p>\n
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