Aug 9, 2012 Comments Off on Logan Lynn Interviewed by Huffington Post Gay Voices This Week!
Logan Lynn Interviewed by Huffington Post Gay Voices This Week!
(Originally Published on The Huffington Post, 8/7/2012)
Logan Lynn Discusses His Return To Music, His New Single ‘Turn Me Out’ And More
By: Noah Michelson, HuffPost Gay Voices Editor
Gay singer-songwriter Logan Lynn began professionally making music nearly 15 years ago. Since then he has released a slew of albums, has seen his videos featured on LOGO and MTV, and performed around the world.
In 2010 Lynn announced that he would be taking an extended break from the music industry to work full time for LGBTQ equal rights at Portland’s Q Center. He even released an album, “I Killed Tomorrow Yesterday,” with Producer Bryan Cecil and gave the proceeds to Portland’s Q Center, the only LGBT community center in the Pacific Northwest.
Now he’s back with a new single, “Turn Me Out”, and an upcoming album. We caught up with Lynn to find out what he’s been up to since he left the music industry, why he’s coming back, what to expect from the new album and more.
The Huffington Post: You’re just coming off a two-year hiatus from the music industry. Why did you take the break and what have you been up to?
Logan Lynn: In 2010, after five straight years of nonstop working and touring, I just needed some time to step back and not feel so consumed by the industry. At the time I was really lonely and tired and felt overexposed in ways that I wasn’t really able to deal with, so I canceled the second leg of my tour, severed ties with The Dandy Warhols and my label, fired my publicist, fired my manager, freaked out publicly in the press and gave the record I had been working on for over a year away as a fundraiser for Q Center, Portland’s queer community center. I pissed a lot of people off during the process of breaking free and in retrospect I would probably be a little less public about the whole thing… but back then it felt like the only way to take some time off and get rid of the toxic people I had surrounding me was to completely blow everything up, so that’s what I did. Once the career suicide dust settled I started giving all of my time to the queer community and have been helping to build the infrastructure of Q Center ever since. I needed real people in my life again and that’s ultimately what I found in my work with the community. Working with people in need really puts your own need in perspective.
You’ ve landed in a bit of hot water and controversy around some of the activism work you have been doing. What exactly went down between Portland’s queer community and the Mars Hill evangelical church?
At the end of 2011 the Mars Hill church bought a building in Portland and announced they were opening their doors in our community. Its founder has publicly equated homosexuality to cancer on society, amongst other very charming hate speech about the gay community. Part of my mission as an activist and an out queer man is to encourage a dialogue with those who oppose us or would do us harm, so I reached out to their pastor and we began meeting together. From there, we decided to assemble nine people from Portland’s LGBT community and nine members of the traditional Evangelical community and we have been meeting once a month with a conflict resolution expert ever since. Read the rest of this entry »