National artists join forces to show True Colors by Larry Nichols Philadelphia <strong>Gay</strong> <strong>News</strong> Special to the SGN One of the highlights of summer has to be the non-stop stream of touring musicians that bombard the amphitheaters and arenas with the opportunity to see anywhere from two or three to 20-plus acts in a single day. Unfortunately, the majority of these summer outings tend to be short on eclecticism at best or exercises in extreme crowd control at worse, with GLBT-friendly events few and far between. Not that there haven’t been some good efforts. The Lilith Fair came damn close, but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of that cross-genre all-female summer tour since 1999, which is why the inaugural True Colors tour is such a welcome and long overdue event this summer. True Colors brings together an intriguing mix of artists who are touring this summer to support the <strong>Gay</strong> and Lesbian community as well as human-rights issues. The tour is headlined by Cyndi Lauper and also features Erasure, Deborah Harry, The Dresden Dolls, The Gossip, The Cliks, The Misshapes and Margaret Cho as host and comes to Atlantic City June 15. Other artists will make special appearances on various stops on the tour like Rufus Wainwright, Indigo Girls and Rosie O’Donnell. Cyndi Lauper Lauper is an artist who needs no introduction. She has been making her presence felt in the music industry for the past 25 years as an outspoken and colorful personality and a successful Grammywinning recording artist. Lauper, a longtime supporter of <strong>Gay</strong> issues (her sister is a Lesbian), conceived the True Colors tour, named after her 1986 hit song, to give back to the community that supported her music throughout her career, raising money for the <strong>Gay</strong>-rights advocacy organization Human Rights Campaign, $1 for every ticket. Even with Lauper’s success in the music industry, she says it took a lot of time and effort to get the True Colors tour off the ground. But now that the tour is about to spring to life, Lauper has found herself busier than ever with rehearsals and promotional duties. PGN was lucky enough to get a few minutes of her time to talk about how she pulled the tour together. PGN: How did you go about choosing the artists for the True Colors tour? Cyndi Lauper: There are many great artists on the tour. Some are dear friends like Debbie Harry and Erasure and some are artists that I was really blown away by like The Gossip, The Cliks and Rufus Wainwright. PGN: Did you initially plan the tour to run for just 15 dates or did you want it to run longer? CL: Actually, we are up to 16 dates. We really wanted it to run for about a month [but] trying to coordinate everyone’s schedules would be insane. PGN: Do you think the concert industry sees True Colors as just another package tour or does it stand out as something more meaningful? CL: I think the response from the industry has been incredible. We’ve had nothing but love come at us from the industry. PGN: Is there a chance that the artists on the tour will join each other on stage to perform? CL: Definitely. I’m looking forward to the spontaneity factor. PGN: What kind of impact do you expect the True Colors tour to have? CL: I’m hoping that beyond it being a kick-ass party, people get the message that it’s presenting. The tour isn’t just for GBLT people, it’s for everyone and it’s about opening up the discussions for equality and basic freedoms. If a parent of a <strong>Gay</strong> kid — or not <strong>Gay</strong> for that matter — sees the coverage of the tour on the local news, it opens up a discussion. Even if it becomes a debate or even a negative discussion, they are being discussed. In that case, I’ve done my job. PGN: Have you gotten any criticism about the tour? CL: Sure, some of the conservatives have come at me, but that’s their right. It’s my right to have a tour in support of <strong>Gay</strong> rights to further the cause for equality and civil liberties. Once again, it’s all about the debate and discussions. PGN: Who would you like to see on the 2008 edition of the True Colors tour? CL: Oh my god! I can’t even think that far ahead yet. I just want to focus on the people who are on the tour this year. This really has been a labor of love and an insane amount of work, but worth every minute of it. It’s taken five years to pull this together. So honey, call me next February or March and we’ll see. Margaret Cho Anyone who’s ever done comedy will tell you that mixing live comedy with live music is never the chocolate-hitting-the-peanutbutter experience people think it will be. But a seasoned comedy vet like Margaret Cho is more than up for the challenge. “Who else is going to keep all those queens in line?” she said, describing her role on the tour. “I’m going to be on and off stage all night,” she said. “I’m going to be emceeing the whole event. I’ll be there for everybody for a long time. I’ll be guiding everybody through it.” Cho is a force to be reckoned with as she, armed with her razor-sharp wit, has built up a considerable amount of success and acclaim in the worlds of comedy, television, movies and activism. And even though she has shared the stage with musicians on a few occasions before, she says being part of an event on the scale of the True Colors Cyndi Lauper tour is going to be new to her. “I’ve done a couple of shows here and there with music,” she said. “I did some shows with The Dresden Dolls in London. I haven’t done tours with musicians, so it’s going to be a different experience.” Ushering so many talented performers on and off stage most of the night will not be a chore in Cho’s eyes as she’s a fan of most of the acts on the tour. “For me, I would go see all these people individually on my own,” she said. “The people that are on the tour I just love. I think they’re planning on doing it again. It would be great to see an artist like Marc Almond or an artist like Morrissey.” While Cho agrees that the tour will raise some eyebrows and ire in some circles, it shouldn’t have an effect on its success. “I think because we are focusing on a <strong>Gay</strong> audience in sort of a mainstream idea, it’s controversial among Christians,” she said. “There’s that kind of a backlash. I think it’s perfect timing for this to happen. Even now, it’s weird that anybody would have a problem selling the tour because the tickets are almost sold out everywhere. The Dresden Dolls The Dresden Dolls, with their punkish and romantic cabaret style, should fit in nicely among the artists of the True Colors tour as well as win some new fans. But this isn’t the type of band that worries too much about fitting in. “I think it’s perfect,” singer and pianist Amanda Palmer said of the tour. “The one really nice thing about The Dresden Dolls and the music that I write is that it defies genres and it fits nicely with a lot of things, but this tour seems an especially perfect match just because of the sort of expressive, eccentric nature of everybody else on the bill. It’s sort of like a freak’s club.” The Dolls’ contribution to the “freak’s club” is a dramatic and seductive style of music that, through its mercurial nature, draws a wide range of listeners. “Luckily, there’s not much you can label us with,” Palmer said. “We slip out of that Courtesy of cyndilauper.com predicament pretty easily. The only thing that we’ve been in danger of being labeled as is goth, which is completely wrong. We’re just too hippie and happy to be considered gothic. So I think we escaped that one too.” Try telling that to the legions of loyal goth fans that show up in force at their energetic and wildly entertaining shows. “I think that those kids gravitate towards us for obvious reasons,” Palmer said. “There’s definitely a lot of stuff in the music that is very dark and personal, like the goth days of yore. But also I can’t discredit my roots. I grew up loving The Cure, Depeche Mode, Joy Division and Bauhaus. I feel like goth, when it was what it was in the ’80s; it’s certainly very different from what they call goth nowadays.” The Dresden Dolls have been known to throw odd and brilliantly chosen cover songs in their sets along with their own magnificent songs. “I think what’s most important is that we actually just do what we want and what we think is going to sound good,” Palmer said. “It’s fun being irreverent and it is fun confusing people, but it certainly doesn’t come before the music and the art. We’ve covered Britney Spears [‘Baby One More Time’] and people seem to love it. I think we don’t even know when we’re doing something tongue in cheek. That Britney Spears song is a fantastic pop song and [Black Sabbath’s] ‘War Pigs’ is a fantastic metal song. To be completely honest, ‘War Pigs’ is fucking fun to play, partly because of the reaction.” When it comes to the subject of sexuality, Palmer, who is Bisexual, doesn’t go out of her way to address the issue. “I definitely don’t feel the need,” she said. “I definitely grapple with sexual tension between myself and with others in my lyrics. But as far as feeling the need to do that or feeling like I have to be vocal about how I orient, it’s not something I’ve ever been particularly concerned about one way or another. I’m always just very blunt and honest when people talk to me about stuff like that and that’s something in itself.” Palmer went on to say that just being on the True Colors tour will speak volumes on issues of sexuality, acceptance and tolerance. “I think all the performers are going to maintain an awareness throughout the night that there is this sort of umbrella under which we’re all gathering,” she said. “I think in music, as in anything, it’s dangerous to get too preachy. The very fact that we all will have gathered is a statement in itself. We’re looking at this tour as a fantastic way to let loose and have fun in front of people you know will appreciate it. In general, when asked about politics, we make a very bold statement by doing what we do how we do it without needing to interrupt ourselves and get up on a soapbox and say, ‘By the way, it’s really important to be individuals.’ I think you send a much stronger message by example than by shouting.” Hopefully that example will include some of the artists on the tour joining forces for a song or two at some point during the evening, a possibility that Palmer thinks definitely will happen. “Everybody is planning different things,” she said. “We’re all working together. There’s going to be a lot of cross-collaboration and I think we’re going to try to do one big ensemble number. And then individually we’re going to play around. Margaret [Cho] and I have performed together before. She’s a fucking riot. So we’re trying to work up a number with her. We have very little time. I think our set is going to be a half an hour, so we need to try and pack it all in. The fun about package tours is they tend to evolve. So we may, as we travel around and make friends with different performers, we might start inviting and trying different things out. Hopefully we won’t be playing the same set every night.” The True Colors tour pulls into the Borgata Hotel Spa and Casino at 7 p.m. June 15, One Borgata Way, Atlantic City. For more information and tickets, see www.truecolorstour.com. © 2007 Philadelphia <strong>Gay</strong> <strong>News</strong> 18 <strong>Seattle</strong> <strong>Gay</strong> <strong>News</strong> PRIDE ‘07 Music June 15, 2007
June 15, 2007 PRIDE ‘07 Music <strong>Seattle</strong> <strong>Gay</strong> <strong>News</strong> 19