Russ Harrington/Sunshine Sachs Kacey Musgraves recently hosted the album launch party for her project, Pageant Material, at the Nashville gay club Play, but she’s not the first country star to appear at a venue catering to Music City’s LGBT community. It turns out Trisha Yearwood made an appearance at a benefit concert at the now-closed Nashville gay bar, The Connection, back in the ’90s.
That concert was staged to raise money for a gay hairdresser friend of Trisha’s who was fighting cancer at the time. Trisha admits she got some “backlash” on the performance from people she knew. That resistance didn’t stop her, though. She tells the Nashville Scene, “I was like, “This is for my friend. This is what you do. I don’t give a crap what his personal life is about. This is somebody that I care about.’”
Trisha goes on to say she tends to focus on her relationships with individual people, rather than looking at any bigger political picture.
“I wish more people felt that way,” Trisha explains. “I think that’s the only way we’re going to get through all this is if we just let people be who they are and love one another. That’s my job not to judge anybody. Good God, I wouldn’t want anybody judging my life.”
On a lighter note, Trisha recalls going to another Nashville gay bar for a friend’s birthday and watching male performers in drag lip sync her signature hit. Says Trisha, “Somebody did ‘She’s in Love With the Boy’ in drag and I was like, ‘I’m a star! I’ve totally made it.’”
For more on Trisha’s colorful history, check out her new exhibit Trisha Yearwood: The Song Remembers When, now open at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.
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