I have spent the past 3 decades navigating the music industry as an out, gay man who writes and releases songs and videos about life and love as a queer person. I first got signed in 1999 and suffice to say, they weren’t ready back then. When my major label debut came out 10 years later, they still weren’t ready.

Fast forward all these years later and, while the landscape of music has changed and a lot of things have gotten better for a lot of us — myself included — most of the same barriers that LGBTQ+ bands and artists face still persist (and some fun new ones have arrived!)

During this time when queer and trans people are being silenced, while our communities are under attack by the systems in place to protect us, as the robot overlords threaten to replace us and our government attempts to erase us, I am dialing my mission to platform LGBTQ+ voices ALL THE WAY UP.

Queer and trans art is the antidote. I am not going to shrink away because they want me to. I will not die because I am told my life is an inconvenience. And I refuse to let these motherfuckers take the culture.

Queer and Trans people belong in the music industry.

QUEER AND TRANS PEOPLE BELONG.

Happy 44th birthday to MTV!

I am so lucky to have been in artist development at the network right as Logo TV was launching. It meant that I got to host TV shows (plural) on cable! My music videos played around the clock on Viacom properties — Logo, obviously — but also on VH1, MTV proper, and Spike TV (RIP The Man Channel lol).

It was a completely bonkers time in my life and I will always be grateful to MTV executives like Perry Turcotte back then who championed me into a reality where my vision and my songs found their way into over 26 million homes each week. This lasted for years and it was hard to comprehend the scale or impact at the time but I get it now. It has been 20 years and I’m very clear that I am still here, largely because of that.

I’m an industry plant, baby!

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