There have been a lot of times in my life where I came out to a perfect stranger by some chance encounter. It's way easier than coming out to your family. I started high school 'out,' then I had to tell my family. I had to introduce myself to the family.
Liv Bruce
As for the drag thing, we each do it in different ways and for different reasons. For me, it's kinda about expressing a side of myself that's always in there but usually doesn't come out. Mostly because I'm too lazy to look that good every day.
'Carbs' is the first song I wrote, and 'I Wanna Boi' is the second song I wrote. I am very proud of every song I made since then. Anything I'm not proud of I wouldn't show people.
I used to listen to so many song bands that were all straight people, and my thinking on it was, 'Well, if I can kind of suspend my own perception of myself and listen to Rivers Cuomo singing about girls, then I don't see why a straight guy can't listen to a band called PWR BTTM.'
I care more about a 15-year-old queer kid in Iowa who wants to know that there's anything out there that resembles their experience and life than the hip queer person in Brooklyn.
There are a lot of bands that my parents used to go see that I haven't necessarily heard of, and asking them to dig up stuff like that is a really fun way to discover music.
I usually put on a lip and some mascara before I head out of the house. It makes me feel good. I started experimenting with makeup back in high school. One of my friends, who shall remain nameless, shoplifted a bunch of drugstore cosmetics for me, and I would just play with it in my room at night.
Sometimes I feel like both; sometimes I feel like neither. Sometimes I feel like something else completely. Gender-wise, I identify as a non-binary person, which means not male, not female.
My friend and I were talking about the band Limp Wrist, and how cool that name is, so we started bouncing other queer-punk band names off each other. The first one I thought of was The Power Bottoms, which I later shortened to Power Bottom.
Thinking of Internet chat rooms or AIM as a kind - there's such an intimacy and honesty to tapping on your phone, despite how quick people are to damn digital means of communication as emotionless or too abstract.
Music can be new to you but not new right now. It can be really fun to ask people of different generations what they used to go see.
I first went to 'Rocky Horror' when I was 14, and nothing was the same after that. For about two months afterwards, I would watch that movie in my bed every night.
My way of connecting to the community that I imagined was out there somewhere for me, but wasn't there right now was to download tons and tons of discographies of famed divas. So I had Christina Aguilera's discography, Whitney Houston's discography, Mariah Carey's discography, all of that.
I have many queer friends who I consider to be heroes of mine, and they feel the same way toward me.
If they're booking a PWR BTTM show, they know what they're in for.
In a way, a stage can be the safest place to be visibly queer and non-gender conforming because you're literally surrounded by witnesses. Any type of violence that a person might try to carry out on you, that's just not a very likely place to do it.
I want to make sure that I can stand behind every word I'm saying, because whoever I am in six months is going to have to be accountable.
I think this is the funny thing about PWR BTTM that a lot of people don't realize at first, which is that straight people have always loved us - inexplicably, seemingly.
There's something really special to me about sharing mutual admiration with another musician.
We ultimately use good art as a tool for people to contextualize themselves, and the folks in all the places we play experience it how they will. All we're doing is saying what we think. I never really wanted to be anyone's hero.
The snappy way I would sum it up is not everyone is queer, but everyone has felt different. And I think that is something that people can really relate to in our music.
In the studio, we sometimes will add bass or some other stuff, like more layers of the same guitar part that's already there, but ultimately, the sound is about guitar and drums.
I've been spending a lot of time poring over everything I've written, because I know people are going to hear it.
People, despite having the common interest in our band, might not be friends before meeting at a show. It's great bringing families together.
Only having one melody instrument in play at a time meant that we could improvise more in our practices.
I'm typically attracted to men or male-identified people 99% of the time. But I guess if I had to pick a label for it, I don't know know... 'Gay' doesn't really work anymore because it means when a man loves a man, and I don't feel like a man. That doesn't super work for me anymore.
I do think that for a queer person to speak truthfully without shame about their own experiences is political.
Growing up, I was listening to Scissor Sisters.
So many famous iconic American songs are protest songs, and I think that the vast majority of artists will only continue to add to that body of work.
I'm always excited to create space for people to relate to one another.
To a young person who can't come out to our show, make your own band. Make your own music project.
