Queering the Cowboy And Other American Institutions
Rainbow Rodeo is thrilled to present another brilliant essay about the history of cowboys in queer country by Stefanie Cuthbert! To read the entire list of queer cowboy songs Cuthbert covers — and its companion playlist — subscribe to the Rainbow Rodeo Patreon today!
“Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other”, or so Ned Sublette sang back in 1981. Although Sublette himself was straight, the song is purported to be inspired by gay cowboy iconography of the seventies (think Tom of Finland and the Village People). In the years since, the song’s taken on a wonderfully queer second life, covered by Willie Nelson in 2006 for the soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain, that most quintessential of gay cowboy movies, and, more recently, by Orville Peck (but more on him later).
Although it’s easy to imagine this unsubtle song as being the first instance of a recording artist putting to music what many strongly suspected about hyper masculine subcultures, ‘The Lavender Cowboy’ of 1930 has it beat by fifty years. There’s no denying the clearly homophobic lyrics of the original and the subsequent versions it spawned down through the decades. It wasn’t sung by a queer artist until Tom Robinson (of ‘(Sing If You’re) Glad to be Gay’ fame) recorded it in 2000 in a wonderful moment of own voices reclamation. It’s also highly likely the late great Patrick Haggerty’s inspiration for the title of his influential, unashamedly queer country band, Lavender Country.
But perhaps no contemporary country artist has done more to queer the cowboy than Orville Peck. Ironically, the enigmatic singer-songwriter is South African by birth and calls Canada home. Despite that, the genre megastar – who has duetted with Shania Twain, opened for Harry Styles, and covered Johnny and June alongside drag queen Trixie Mattel – styles himself with a Stetson and a fetching fringe mask, queering America with his image as much as his music.
On ‘Drive Me, Crazy’, Peck spins a yearning yarn about gay truckers. A subject that might result in something simply provocative in Reverend Horton Heat’s hands. Yet with Peck in the driver’s seat, the song is a delicate and needful ode of queer yearning and attraction in a hyper masculine world. Small details bring the story to life in vivid ways, strengthening the refrain “You always said you’d drive me / You always said you’d drive me crazy”. The song closes with a spoken word piece from one of the truckers – over CB radio, of course – that never loses sight of its subject matter whilst also dripping with desire.
Where grunge legends Alice in Chains sang of a rebellious young woman defying societal norms and embracing individuality on their 1999 track ‘Queen of the Rodeo’, Orville Peck went much further. His ‘Queen of the Rodeo’ from 2019 debut LP Pony offers a sensitive look at queer rodeo performers. Its beauty lies in the versatility of the word ‘queen’, where it stands for gay men, drag queens, and trans femmes alike. In case the message wasn’t clear enough, the accompany music video ends with a caption dedicated to “…all the LGBTQ+ and two-spirit community members working and performing in rodeos, ranches and roadhouses across North America”.
Of all the American archetypes, perhaps none is so endearing as the outlaw. Despite its origins as an alternative to the mainstream, outlaw country is so often straight, white, and cis. Enter D’orjay the Singing Shaman. The non-binary, full service shaman proudly proclaims their fat, Black identity as someone who’s “not here to look cute” and not “wearin’ no Daisy Dukes” in their potent single ‘New Kind of Outlaw’. They also pay it forward by namechecking a variety of amazing Black country artists: Linda Martell, Valerie June, Ruby Falls, Dona Mason, and Rissi Palmer. It’s a real “I’m here, I’m queer” moment which puts the onus on the country genre to do the heavy lifting with lines like “Country music is Black (Too, too, too)” and “I love country music, will country music love me?” The tide is turning on the latter, but time will tell how far we’ve come and how far we still have left to go.
In the meantime, Americana remains a fertile space for queer country artists to take what came before and shake things up. When nothing’s sacred, everything’s up for grabs. When people aren’t turned away and legislated against, the artform only grows more interesting, more expansive, and ever more vital.
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