With A Rebel Yell: An Interview With Amy Ray

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Your song “Lucystoners” (from Stag) marked such a moment in the music industry, as far as what I was seeing going on. It speaks directly to so many of the boys’ club issues that have long-plagued the music business — from the misogynistic humor of drive time DJs to the sexist bent of media moguls. Are women and the outcast artists, in 2014, still fighting an uphill battle on those fronts?

Welllllll… I mean, what do you think? I’d say it’s not as much of an uphill battle, but it’s mostly because we’ve been able to facilitate so many of our own infrastructures and the DIY movement on the Internet. I would say there are some things that have made it easier to have your own world. I still think the gatekeepers for the majority of major stuff that’s going on are white men, middle-class guys.

And upper-class.

Well, upper-class, too, but they aren’t all upper-class anymore! That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of really great allies within those people. I wouldn’t say it’s turned over yet — it’s going to be a long time, you know? That’s like a revolutionary thing. But, in the meantime, there are all these great infrastructures and stuff that people built like Internet radio and YouTube and all these ways to get your name and your stuff out there. So, you’re not as hindered, in some ways. In other ways, you’re hindered because you’re relegated to this one area that you’re still not able to get past. I mean, rock ‘n roll is like this thing that’s — hopefully it’s going to change — but it has been, for a long time, a boys’ club.

You namecheck Jann Wenner in that tune. Was he just an easy face to put on it or were there specific instances that caused you to call him out?

Yeah, he was an easy face. It wasn’t like I wanted to get back at Rolling Stone magazine or anything like that — at all. It’s just, for me, they were the example of a lot of stuff about the boys’ club. There’s an awful lot of good political writing in Rolling Stone, and good writing, generally. But, there was definitely this time period where it was like the Maxim of music magazines, you know?

Yeah. It was my dream starting in high school to write for Rolling Stone, and then… maybe I don’t want to write for Rolling Stone.

Yeah. Exactly.

As an out, queer, masculine-of-center woman, your experience of moving through the world and the business is different from, say, Sheryl Crow’s or Beyoncé’s. What do you think has been easier and harder about that? And is it even possible to parse what biases might be attributed to homophobia versus sexism?

I think it’s very hard to parse that out. I think sexism probably comes first and is at the core of homophobia, in some ways. I think you can look at that as almost a seed of a lot of stuff that’s gone beyond it. God, it’s so complicated. All the stuff about Beyoncé and her videos, and then people who rag on Taylor Swift… and then other people who speak up for them saying they are making their choices. And then other people saying they are degrading to women and letting themselves be run by the business. But we don’t really know what’s going on with them.

And Miley Cyrus.

Yeah, and Miley Cyrus. We don’t know. It can either be the strongest example of liberation or it can be the worst example of sexism. You know? So it’s very hard for me to even analyze it. I just have to believe that there’s a little bit of truth in both sides of it, probably.

Is it them taking their power or is it them playing to the straight male gaze?
Yeah. And maybe part of their power is making the choice to play to the straight male gaze.

That’s the big argument.

With your new album, Goodnight Tender, you’re venturing into country music for the first time — and that’s some good ol’ boy territory, for sure. What led you to make that move at this time?

But it shouldn’t be! A lot of people love country music. I’ve been wanting to make a country record for about 12 years and I just, honestly, felt like it was a pretty tall order because I have a lot of reverence for that genre, and because I haven’t done that. It’s different from… I have on-hand experience my whole life with rock ‘n roll. No doubt about how that goes. But country music, I come to as a fan first and foremost. I discovered it late in life, as well. When I was growing up, of course I had Willie Nelson records, and Dolly Parton, and Elvis Presley, and Woody Guthrie, and all that kind of folk stuff and mountain music stuff. But the hardcore Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash — stuff that I really like — I didn’t really listen to that until the ’90s.

Yeah, see, I just had Alabama and Kenny Rogers. I didn’t even have the real country.

Alabama was a cross-over, but Kenny Rogers was close for his era. It’s less and less good ‘ol boy territory, you know? Nashville is opening up in a way that it hasn’t in a long time. And I think that’s pretty cool.

It really is. What do you think about the new wave of female country artists — gals like Brandy Clark, Kacey Musgraves, and Ashley Monroe — throwing curve balls at the establishment and topping all of the Best of 2013 lists?

I love Kacey’s record a lot. I’ve heard a song of Brandy’s and I’ve read a couple of articles about her that I thought were really interesting. I love it! They’re just putting it out there. It’s interesting because their songs, to me, still fall within a category of that honky-tonk woman’s song — kind of a bad-ass Loretta Lynn take on things — and plays on words and twisting phrases and doing all these interesting things and still keeping some of the subject matter from the deep country. I think it’s interesting that they’re doing all that and putting it out there as liberated women, but it doesn’t inform their music as much as you’d think it would, which is nice. It shows you the diversity, like within the gay music realm of life. There’s a lot of diversity. We’re not all the same and we don’t all write folk songs and sing about lesbian topics. You know? We do that at some point in our lives, but there are other things that happen. And, at some point, hopefully, we’ll just be taken as songwriters. The distinguishing factor will be how you write a song. It won’t be what your lifestyle is.

The art and the song come first.

And we’re not there. So I think it’s still important to be an activist and speak out and reflect yourself and get out there for the queer community and really whoop it up. But the hope is, generally, as a songwriter, that you can just be seen as a craft- person.

That’s kind of the hope across the board, though — not just in music. To see each other as people.

Yeah, so when you’re talking about your CPA, you don’t say, “My queer CPA.” Or when you’re telling a story, you don’t say, “This black guy came up to me.” Identity must drive some people crazy because you don’t typically say, “So, I was talking to this white guy…”

We single out the “other,” but we don’t single out the same. If we could just get rid of all the “otherness,” we’d be better off.

Obviously we’re proud to be “other” and I guess I don’t mind it defining me in some ways, but you
want to be seen sometimes in a way that’s just your craft. But, then, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t dictate how you’re seen. You just have to do your best and accept and know that you have to be positive about yourself so that you don’t always take how you’re seen as a negative thing.

I was going to ask what words of wisdom would you pass on to those treading the path behind you, but I think you just did that…

Ha! Yeah, that’s it. I say, “Pick your battles.” That’s what my mom always tells me. And I think she’s right.

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