"Being a white guy with a guitar was, as it turns out, not that special."

"I started playing guitar when I was 13. I grew up playing guitar and writing music and I always wanted to be a songwriter and a singer and play the guitar. But while I was finishing college, my drag became lucrative, so I had to pursue what was going to pay the bills — and doing comedy as Trixie was something that I was able to market. Being a white guy with a guitar was, as it turns out, not that special."

Says Brian Firkus, talking to NPR. Here's a video of Firkus as the white guy with guitar that he is and as his drag character Trixie Mattel (who won the just-concluded season of "RuPaul's Drag Race"):



Also from the interview:

Country and folk are genres where characters are really central — you get really into the heart of a person in a song, or there's a very specific story being told. I feel like there's a little bit of that in your drag too.

With Trixie, people like that I look like this fabricated painted creation, but all my comedy and my songs come from a place of reality. It's like the man behind the curtain, it's the crying clown — that's what works for people with Trixie. It's the dichotomy of someone looking like a toy, but then, you know, speaking and singing like a real boy....

In terms of country and folk music — it feels like you're bringing this very explicitly gay perspective into genres that aren't necessarily known for embracing those perspectives.

I think my music is not so much about being gay; my music is about being a human being. It's not about gay relationships; it's about relationships. It's not about feeling like an outsider because you're gay. Maybe it's just about feeling like an outsider. It's funny selling records of this type in this world ... if you look at those publications or those websites, I'm nowhere to be found. It's very weird to be, like, infiltrating....

We are all just, like, hot gluing our clothes on every day to go out into the world and do a job we're not sure we're supposed to be doing. RuPaul says we're all born naked the rest is drag. We're literally all just pretending to be someone — we don't realize how much we're all exactly the same.