Millions of queer and trans people lead rich lives in the south, but you wouldn’t necessarily think that from watching the news. Many are, once again, fighting for their basic rights after a string of southern states have renewed their efforts to strip LGBT residents of legal protection, most notably barring trans people from using public bathrooms that match their preferred gender. The situation has grown so dire, so dehumanizing, that President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently had to take public stands against the measures, which are most prominent in North Carolina at the moment.
Amid this growing tension down south, singer-songwriter Julien Baker—queer, Christian, native to Memphis—has found herself in front of a microphone and an increasingly rapt audience. Her debut album, Sprained Ankle,became one of 2015’s late-year breakouts, and she departs this week for her first European tour (and her first trip out of the country).
Baker came up in Memphis’ thriving DIY scene with her band Forrister, and her emo roots shine through on the folk-tinged Sprained Ankle—which is to say that her songs can feel a little like open wounds. She digs deep into depression and substance abuse, and stares her Christian faith in the face without flinching. She manages a tenuous balance between self-loathing and redemption, and she has made herself comfortable among seeming contradictions.
At 20 years old, Baker has already discerned that her queerness, her faith, and her Tennessee home do not have to be in conflict with one another. She feels compelled to stay in the south because the south, for all its problems, is “redeemable.” Below, in her own words, Baker explains what exactly she means by that.
I had a hot-pink mohawk in high school, and when I came out everyone was like, “We don’t care.” I hope we can dismantle the idea that the entire south is sitting on our porches spitting tobacco and hating gay people.
Metropolitan areas are generally more diverse. Maybe it would have been a different story if I had grown up in my grandparents’ dinky little town [Smithville, Tennessee]. It might have been a lot harder to find a community of people that I felt were supportive. Because I had access to Smith7 [a label and substance-free DIY space in Memphis] and the DIY punk scene, and had the option to come out in a non-traditional church, all these things happened to show me that sexuality is not one-sided, and neither is religion, and neither is the path to reconciling those things.
I have friends who moved far, far away because “the south is so oppressive and backwards,” and I wonder: Who is gonna fix it if we all leave? I played this awesome space in Seattle called the Vera Project. It’s a youth center where they ask for preferred pronouns [of attendees], and volunteer teens run the soundboard, and I thought I could move there and work there. Then I thought, “Memphis could use one of these.” Somebody has to start it. Someone has to stay and bring something new. I choose to stay in the south because I think it’s redeemable.
Being from Memphis, other people’s skewed perception of it really bums me out—like, “Nashville is so cool, and then you guys have Graceland and a high infant death rate.” I grew up there, I think when you grow up somewhere you familiarize yourself with the culture of the city besides just going to Beale Street and drinking a big-ass beer. When I think of music in Memphis, I think of Smith7 and Midtown and Otherlands and Republic, which just closed sadly.
I didn’t grow up on country and blues, I was just a kid listening to VH1 and then I realized I needed to expand my musical horizons. Now I have a deep appreciation for southern heritage music. I played “So Lonesome I Could Cry” in Oxford. I love Hank Williams, he’s the original emo kid. Some of his lyrics remind me of, like, Promise Ring lyrics.
The touring we have done as Forrister was primarily in the south, in places that had pockets of progressive mindsets, which is something that is happening more. Instead of moving away to a more accommodating market, people try to start shows where they are. We played podunk towns in Alabama and Louisiana. There’s a weirdly large appreciation for emo music in Chattanooga. But that’s been a big change [with my solo touring]. I think of my music as being for sad alt kids with too many feelings, but then I play shows and get an audience of folks that wouldn’t normally go to shows. So there are things that I might usually feel at liberty to say, and when I’m in the south, I wonder if all these people know I’m gay, and I wonder if I’m at liberty to make a comment about it.
Ultimately, I’m not going to change my behavior to accommodate that fear. I would rather be authentic and risk making people uncomfortable. That’s a boldness engendered in me by the people I’m surrounded by. I have this rainbow guitar strap, and I used to switch guitar straps when I played at church, and now I know I have a home there—they don’t care. But it was an internal fear of being perceived as too gay—until I started wondering, “Why am I afraid of being too much the thing that I am?” Why am I afraid to buy Doc Martens because I’m afraid someone would call me a dyke? Yeah, that word would hurt my feelings, but I like how I look in Doc Martens. It’s not like I get on stage and introduce myself as a queer musician, but anyone who reads anything about me knows I’m queer.
One of my friends at Holy Cross [Baker’s church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee] is a social worker, and she sent me this graph that showed the homosexual populations in the U.S. overlapping a graph of laws with negative impacts for homosexuals. There was a disproportionately higher instance of homosexuality in the south. And I wonder why. That sucks. I should find a better way to say it, but perhaps it warrants the honest exasperation of “that sucks.” We are here in such high numbers, and yet we are encountering the most opposition. Maybe it’s higher reported because it’s reactionary. We can’t agree to disagree when people’s lives are at risk. It’s important. If we try to behave ourselves into a society where it’s a non-issue, we’re assuming an ideal that doesn’t exist... yet.