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Interview With Kitty Rose

Out singer-songwriter Katharine Chase’s alter ego, country singer Kitty Rose, is back with her second album, the ingeniously named Live at the Ryman, which references Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium and home of the Grand Ole Opry. Her debut CD, cleverly titled Greatest Hits, took home an Outmusic Award in 2005. Chase, who is “proud to be hitting the big 5-0 this year,” has been a performer, as she puts it, for “25ish years.” AfterEllen.com talked with her earlier this year about the inspiration for her music, visiting the Grand Ole Opry, her ranch and being out in Nashville.

AfterEllen.com: In 2005, you received the Outmusic Award in the “Outstanding Debut Recording, Female” category. What did that kind of recognition mean to you?

Kitty Rose: I hadn’t had a lot of experience with Outmusic until I contacted a [radio] programmer in Houston, J.D. Doyle. I had no background with the organization before that, so when I found out I was being considered for the award, I really had no idea what it was going to mean at that time. I went to the awards show, and when I won it, I was kind of in shock [laughs] for the entire day, at least.

It wasn’t until … a week later that I realized that what it did for me was put me on the map for [the] GLBT community. Even though I’d been performing for years, it gave me a kind of street cred … and exposed me to so many people that probably would have had no idea. What it did was took me out of the local scene and gave me national exposure.

AE: The album for which you received the award is your Greatest Hits disc, which bring us to the subject of the tongue-in-cheek themes and titles of your albums, including your latest, Live at the Ryman.

KR: What happens when you’re in the music business for as long as I’ve been [is] you keep looking at ways to make it fun, to make it new and exciting for the people you work with. When we started Kitty Rose, I was impersonating a country-western star from the late ’60—’70s. To release a [debut] CD [called Greatest Hits]. … it automatically puts your audience in on the in-joke.

When we were putting together the second CD … I kept struggling with what kind of theme [are we going to use]? We were totally going with the Greatest Hits, Volume 2 [laughs] for the longest time. Then I realized, once I put the songs together and we had started recording, I really had a Grand Ole Opry-style show, almost exactly like the ’70s.

I have the George Jones/Tammy Wynette duet. “Pretty Little Thing” was added to be a Minnie Pearl number. We had 13 songs, and I wound up with a great April Fools’ Day Ryman Auditorium show. We had a blast doing it, and I think the fans are going to be smiling all the way through.

AE: What would it mean to you to play at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville?

KR: It would be incredible. I’ve gone to the Ryman several times since the Greatest Hits CD was released. It would be a dream come true. In fact, when you tour the Ryman – it’s open during the day – they have a mic stand set up right in front of the stage. You’re not even allowed to walk on the Ryman stage unless you’re invited as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. The mic stand is set up so that you can take one of those tourist pictures. I thought about it – I thought, “That would be really fun.” And then I thought, “I have so much respect for it, I think I’ll hold out for it until I actually can do it myself.” [Laughs.]

AE: You don’t want to jinx it by posing for the tourist picture.

KR: Exactly! You’ll notice the artwork on the CD has a picture of me in front of a mic stand, but of course … the real Ryman stand says “Grand Ole Opry,” and that’s a trademarked name. That’s how we came up with the Ryman Auditorium name, so everything says “Ryman.” The radio program for the Grand Ole Opry is WSM Nashville, so we thought we’d change it to WFM: W Femme. …There are several April Fools’ jokes included in the descriptions, the credits, all over it. And we’re going to be holding a contest throughout the year for the people who find the most of them.

AE: That sounds like a lot of fun. Was country music always your primary musical focus or were you a disco diva or a punk rocker in a previous incarnation?

KR: [Laughs.] I was never a hardcore punker, but I always thought I was. I was in San Francisco from ’80 to ’84, which was one of the peak times for punk rock. At the time I was in a lesbian band called Dogtown, and we played some of the events around [town].

Then I went to Hollywood and ended up on the outskirts of the whole Guns N’ Roses scene. I did the singer-songwriter thing and all that stuff. Also, at the time I was playing bass. You could probably find some really cheesy photos of me online with big hair [laughs] from that era.

I was born and raised just outside of Houston, Texas, so the country thing was always something that I played for myself. The Knitters [Exene Cervenka, John Doe, and others] – [I] admired the old-time country stuff, and I was lucky enough to count them as friends through the early ’90s. That was what gave me the go-ahead to go, “I could play this stuff live, and I think people would really like it.” It’s just gone from there.

AE: Live at the Ryman has a stellar lineup of musical guests, including Julie Wolf and Joy Lynn White. How did you come to work with them?

KR: Julie Wolf saw me perform [as] Kitty back in 2004. She came up to me immediately after the show and said, “I’d love to jam with you guys.” At the time, she was playing accordion. We had her … playing accordion on “Good Girl is Going to Go Bad” on the Greatest Hits CD, as well.

By a fluke, I ended up opening for Joy Lynn White in Nashville in 2005 at a small place called Douglas Corner. I was so impressed by her. … We ended up all hanging out together, and when I needed a female duet [partner] I contacted her right away, and she was more than happy to come out and perform. She’s done some great stuff with Dwight Yoakam and other well-known artists.

AE: The Nashville music scene is known for its writers who provide material for high-profile artists. Have any of your songs been covered by Dolly Parton or Shelby Lynne or anyone on that level?

KR: I haven’t really pursued that very much because of writing for Kitty. Barbara Cloyd of the singer-songwriter performance venue The Bluebird Café in Nashville called me and asked me to perform, so I have done that. But I’m thinking about keeping Kitty as the exclusive artist of these songs [laughs] until I’m ready to let Kitty go, and she can then pursue other people to perform her stuff.

AE: You are not just someone who sings about horses, in “Ira’s Song” and “Easy Keeper,” for instance; you actually have a ranch, right?

KR: In Hopland, for the last five and half years or something like that, I have a cattle ranch up on the hill. My neighbor is in charge of the cows, and I’m in charge of the horses. I have four horses that I visit twice a day, and she has about 50 head of cattle. I do actually live the life [laughs].

I’m riding quite a bit. I’ve met a lot of people up here, a lot of women who are just amazing people. Ira’s a real person that I did meet. He used to round up my neighbor’s cattle. He is a real cowboy, and he passed away two years ago and I wrote that song for him.

AE: Musically, you also draw on country’s tradition of drinking songs, as in “Little Dream” and “Trouble.”

KR: “Trouble” is based on Camp Trouble, a bunch of gals who used to drink Jagermeister [laughs]. I’ve had some hard-drinking days, and those days are behind me, knock on wood. So I really enjoy singing about drinking and what it’s done for me and a lot of people I know. If you get to the last verse of “Trouble,” you realize that drinking is a pretty crazy thing to do. I like singing about it, and Kitty likes to impersonate being drunk [laughs].

AE: As an out musician, that is not a subject that you shy away from in your songs, as you can hear in “(I Ain’t No) Pretty Little Thing.” What has your experience of being queer in country music been like?

KR: What’s really amazing to me, which I guess is the way it is for a lot of artists, is that a lot of my lyrics go right over people’s heads. I perform a lot of these songs exactly the way I record them. I have done Loretta Lynn’s song, “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” as “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Woman.” [Laughs.] People just kind of go, “Gee, that’s funny.” [Laughs.] In Nashville, it just goes over their heads.

I found out that I’m the one who was more nervous about it than anyone else. There’s a lot of out community there in Nashville, and they do support of a lot of the country artists.

AE: Janis Ian is there, for goodness sake.

KR: [Laughs.] Exactly! It really never came up as an issue. I think that because Nashville is a professional country place, if I was bad, that would be much worse of a sin. Although, a lot of artists there are pretty closeted. I actually enjoy saying, “We’re gay! We’re here! We’re proud! We’re country!”

For more on Kitty Rose, visit her official website.

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