(Originally Published on The Huffington Post on 6/15/2012)

Happy Pride Month, everybody! I am preparing to be neck-deep in an array of Portland’s gape ride festivities this coming weekend, then I’m flying east to New York City with my man to promote my new single, relax, and do Pride all over again. There is much to celebrate this year! For me, this time is about honoring our love, valuing who we are as people, and remembering the brave LGBT folks who have paved the way for us.

For this (third) round of “Queer Celebrities Need Love, Too” I chatted with pop legend Fred Schneider (The B-52s, The Superions), Bravo’s Chris March (Project Runway, Mad Fashion), transgender rapper Katastrophe, electrorock lovechild Seth Bogart (Gravy Train!!!!, Hunx and His Punx), queercore pioneer turned folk powerhouse Kaia Wilson (Team Dresch, The Butchies), Joan Jett‘s indie rock prodigies Girl in a Coma, self-proclaimed drag terrorist Christeene, artist/author Slava Mogutin, and English singer/songwriter Scott Matthews. They all answered the same five questions about what queer pride means to them:

1. If you could sum up in one word what it means for you to have queer pride, what would it be?

2. How will you celebrate pride this year?

3. Would you ever be in a relationship with someone who was still in the closet and planned on remaining that way?

4. In thinking about your own experience with relationships and just what exactly we are celebrating this Pride Month, please tell us about the first time in your life when you felt proud of who you are and of your queer love.

5. If that personal pride experience were adapted into a film, what song would be the soundtrack to that scene?

I love Marina & The Diamonds so much. Today we are featured on SugarBang.com together on their Humpday Playlist for the week! Check it out HERE or have a listen below. My new single “Turn Me Out” is featured!

Hump Day Mix – 6/6/12 – SugarBang.com from kennygenius on 8tracks.

🙂

(Originally Published on The Huffington Post on 4/26/2012)

This week I had the pleasure of meeting up with famed New York cabaret songstress Lady Rizo on the eve of the first of two Portland, Ore. shows along her in-progress West Coast tour. We chatted backstage, and I took some photos while she transformed herself into the glamorous creature she was clearly born to be, a sultry, seductive woman whose stage presence, voice, and quick wit rendered me (and the rest of the room) completely speechless for the duration of the evening.

Lady Rizo is stunningly herself onstage, in one of the most authentic ways I have ever experienced. It is a gift possessed by few in this world, so if you have the opportunity to share in it with her, take it! I feel transformed by the spectacle of love, passion, and pure, unbridled talent I witnessed onstage that evening. I mean, who needs drugs with Rizo around?!

Do yourself a favor and get to know her right now. Mark my words: This woman is about to take over the entire world.

Here is our chat.
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