I love you all over again.

Trixie Mattel's country folk album came out at the beginning of the month.

98% of the music I listen to these days is Kpop. Barely listen to American music anymore. But when I did previously, it was mostly heavy rock and a bit of hip-hop. I can enjoy just about any kind of music. The one exception I've always had was for country.

I have a really hard time listening to country. It's the twang. In the vocal. Sometimes in the instrumentation even. That twang has always been nails on a chalkboard to me. Like when you have to take cough syrup as a kid and you get the full body shudder from the taste.
I can't deal.

But not all country has a strong twang and I can typically tolerate the genre fine when it isn't present.

I wasn't initially aware that Trixie was so musically inclined from watching Drag Race and other media stuff. But she started incorporating singing and guitar relatively recently along with her standup. Stuff that she had been doing pre-drag.

Late last year I stumbled onto this video.



And I turned into a bit of a sobbing mess.

Brian has a lovely voice. It's not particularly unique or spectacular. There's something about a simple, clean, warm, vocal performance, cutting away any frills or crazy production, that's so damn nice.
And really no twang. Only the occasional tease of one, which I don't mind.

Also an incredibly sad song. Oh heavens. The travelling artist's woes of their personal life being abandoned or falling apart for the sake of their job and what they love to do. Not uncommon. But the lyrics cut straight to the heart of it. Forthright and accessible in such an effective and heartbreaking way.
It hurts.

But I need to go off on a semi-related tangent first after the jump.

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Because I'm such a loner and introvert, relationship-focused songs are usually unrelatable to me. Break-up songs especially. It's too far off my radar. But that's like... most songs in existence. So I tend to translate those kinds of lyrics into something I can relate to--when applicable.

With no effort, it captured a lot of what I'd been feeling in recent months. Instead of being directed at an ex-lover, it was directed at the person I was before the therapy/medication disaster that shattered me five years ago.

The person I was before that feels like a stranger. Another person entirely. And they were long gone.
Current me was a terribly sick, starving, panicking, haunted, shell of a person... that other, relatively healthy person, was someone I broke up with. Against my will and in a brutal way.

But when I first heard this song I had been better for some months. Getting glimpses of feeling like that person I used to know. And I could remember a bit of what that used to be like. Missing that person instead of holding onto pure bitterness at the health I had lost.

I know I'm adjusting, I know I should just think of going and not where I've been
And then I see you and I know you all over again.

I don't call you when I cry, I don't stay the day in bed
mostly I'm fine and most of the time I get by like I said

I haven't been drinking, I haven't been thinking of lonely if-onlys and then
And then I see you and I know you all over again
And then I see you and I love you all over again

Maybe I shouldn't look back. Just move forward to some new form of health. But for the first time I could look back at what I used to be with fondness and love for the kind of person I had been.

And maybe that's not bad to be reminded of.
Maybe that re-connection is a necessary part of my recovery.

BLAH.

Okay. Enough of the sad feels.

Because what's really cool is Brian had a whole album brewing while he was performing that one song. And dude... DUDE... it's actually really good.

Wildly different than the music most drag queens are putting out. Pretty much only Jinkx Monsoon has done something like that in a genre outside of the typical electro-dance-pop stuff.

And I think that's neat!

Fun video for the lead single! Love that Brian and Trixie are both there. The album artwork is like that too. Boy drag and lady drag side-by-side. Love love love.

Made me want to draw some kind of little tribute to the album. I had noticed in various performance videos that Trixie uses a few Gibsons with different nature motifs (I don't know shit about guitars). One with a dove, one with a hummingbird, and one (shown in the video) with a floral dandelion-ish pattern on it. When the album name was announced, 'Two Birds' I instantly thought of the dove and hummingbird... not knowing if that was the reason for it. But I wanted to do something with that.

Originally I played with painting realistic versions of the birds and flowers, but nothing I tried really worked. What I really wanted was to mash the Gibson motifs together, but keep them pretty true to the original designs. So I resigned to just ripping off the artwork with some minor adjustments and putting them all together. Lol.

Bad artist!

It's for me though. Sure as hell not selling it or anything.
But I like how it turned out! Kinda cute.
And as I was finishing it I came across an interview where he confirmed Two Birds was named for the Gibson motifs. So there ya go!

Brian has been breaking out the guitar and autoharp more recently on social media, which is always refreshing as I'm scrolling through.

I'll Wear Your Ring is another favorite from the album.
I feel I should mention at some point that I'm always happy to hear lyrics from gay artists that are openly about a same-sex relationship and not flipping pronouns to hide it. I'm glad that can be a thing now. Took a long time and there's still a long way to go, but my appreciation for the brave folks that made this possible and the complexity of this issue can not be overstated.

A post shared by Trixie Mattel (@trixiemattel) on May 16, 2017 at 3:16pm PDT

Sad lyrics again, but charming AF!
My thanks and all the best to the one and only Tallulah Mandolin...
Tragic Motel...
Tobey Maguire...
Tracy Martel.

:)