In Dolly Parton’s song 9 to 5, she sings
“Workin 9 to 5
What a way to make a livin
Barely gettin by
Its all takin
And no givin
They just use your mind
And they never give you credit
Its enough to drive you
Crazy if you let it”
It almost made musician/singer Our Lady J crazy for sure. So profound was the prejudice this trans artist faced that abandoning the music industry seemed to be the only solution.
“I challenge you to name three trans artists in the music industry,” she says. “I know trans artists because I know them personally. Music is not being supported by the industry and neither are trans musicians. Unfortunately it is a dead end road there. Hopefully that will change in the future. I do believe it will.”
In spite of those challenges, Our Lady J can’t fully give up music. “It’s like a drug…I can’t stay away,” she says. She will be performing her Gospel of Dolly show at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday as part of the venue’s The Sorting Room series.
Our Lady J was brought up in a strict household where classical music and Christian music were in heavy rotation. But her grandparents listened to other music. “I remember hearing Dolly’s voice at my grandma’s house when I was a little kid. My grandparents were obsessed. Dolly was always playing. She was my outlet to more secular music even though I found her love of gospel music is what transcended the limits of what we were allowed to listen to in our house.”
Gospel of Dolly was first performed by Our Lady J in 2007. And it didn’t take long for Parton herself to find out about the show and the performer. “She got a bootleg copy of one of the concerts and asked to meet me. When I met her she went through the setlist and told me what her favorites were. She asked me to sing a song I hadn’t done. So I will be doing that request from Dolly. It’s a tribute. It’s in no way an impersonation. I would never dare try to impersonate Dolly Parton.”
Advice wasn’t the only thing Parton offered. In 2009 Our Lady J held a fundraiser in New York for her gender confirmation surgery. Artists like Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters), Taylor Mac and composer Nico Muhly were amongst the participants.
“She found out about a concert called Boob Aid from my very good friend Stephen Oremus who was the Music Director of 9 to 5 [on Broadway.] He was whispering into Dolly’s ear about what I was doing. She offered to donate some autographed 8x10s we auctioned off.”
When asked if that kind of support speaks to the larger issue of support and tolerance from a genre of music not always associated with acceptance of trans or other liberal issues, Our Lady J pauses before responding.
“This really plays into the times we are living in right now. There are a lot more people who are willing to support LGBT folks than we give credit for. I think my family, for example, has been very supportive of me lately. It took a lot of tears and fighting and a lot of education and understanding to get to that point. But they got there. And I would like to surprise myself, be surprised and allow myself to be surprised by the people who do support me in country music or in any other genre of music. And I think that support is what’s going to win.”
Luckily for Our Lady J there are other options for her to raise her voice beyond music. She has served as writer and producer for the Amazon series Transparent and is currently a producer and writer on the FX series Pose.
“TV kind of swooped in right when I was at the top of my frustration with music and gave me another avenue to tell the same stories I had been telling through music, but in writing. There’s a lot more I can do to educate audiences than I could in music.”
Billy Porter, one of the stars of Pose, told me how surprised he was about the life and death challenges that trans people face. I asked Our Lady J how much impact Pose can have in a deeply polarized country.
“I think Pose humanizes our experiences. And in doing so it transcends any category that society might assign us. One of the most positive things I hear over and over is how people relate to the characters they are seeing on the screen and their struggle to find love and acceptance. Everyone can see a reflection of turning hardships into something positive. To finding courage where there is fear. Finding resilience where there was once weakness. They see beyond trans-ness. And they can see their own experience in our lives.”
The cacophony of battling ideologies aside, Our Lady J still feels that Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he spoke about the arc of history bending towards justice. “Absolutely. I have to find my spiritual center first thing every day through love and compassion. If I turn into the news I’m fucked. I have to find that patience and resilience and use that frustration to fuel me. It’s about love and family.”
If in 25 years someone put together a show called The Gospel of Our Lady J, where would trans acceptance be and what would she like that show to look and sound like?
“I hope it would be uplifting and I hope it would be a celebration that we’re at the light by then. And I’m sure of it. Even though it may feel hard to be trans in 2018, in 2008 it was much worse. It was awful actually. I had come out by then. There is a lot of hysteria, but the fact is we are further along in achieving equality than we’ve ever been.”