Catie Curtis Part III: Finding common ground with small potatoes

OK, so it took three parts! So now lets talk about the music. Catie Curtis is a gifted messenger and brought along a couple more just like her to her gig in La Grange. Her songs touched me, in spite of all I have said, and I would go see her again.

I kidded my buddy that he had brought me to a gay bar and we had a good laugh. This was just one night at The Bugle Boy, and a bit specialized I assume, a landmark event in an emerging legend in Texas music, and we were good natured and ready to listen. And Catie was a superb entertainer, no matter what her vignettes or goals for the evening were, and she still had some more surprises up her sleeve.

She introduced her protégé, Jenna Lindbo. She has a beautiful smile as well and sang ever so sugar-sweetly. One song about her music teacher was especially good, the kind of song you rarely hear, of one musician acknowledging another's influence.

At the end, Catie introduced famed Texas singer-songwriter Susan Gibson, sitting in the audience, who had been helping out in the sound booth. She graciously came up and sang with them, and did a number of her own. All great stuff. Catie led all of us in an almost churchy sounding song, about the fact that we are just passing through this world. She asked that we sing along the last verse acapella, and we did, and it was the very best of America at that moment. I was proud to be there and join in that song with so many with whom I may have little else in common.

We had a good time, got to see the Bugle Boy on a night with some unforgettable performers, and left smiling. But I had tons rolling through the minefield in my mind… We'll just call it the MINDFIELD.

Unbeknownst to us, Catie Curtis was advertised as a popular gay singer, along with Susan Gibson in Out Smart Magazine, having just done a sort of gay tour that played at Dosey Doe in the Woodlands. I guess my fearless leader and I are always the last to know. We weren’t just small potatoes, but the little ones left down in the potato bin that grow big eyes and get chunked.

Catie Curtis: Texas Branding Part II

So I'm afraid the lovely concert at The Bugle Boy in La Grange, with an attractive blond up front had suddenly become political. It was now an unannounced contest between what Catie Curtis reveres and finds essential, and what billions of us have held to be true in the Judeo-Christian world for four thousand years. But given the circumstances, it was a one sided contest. Catie and her cause are not new, in fact she represents an ancient and recurring argument; an argument that has been rejected and condemned by an overwhelming majority in the three major world religions since the days of Abraham.

It was a nice pleasant evening until she sweetly, seemingly innocently threw the Gay Rights grenade out in the audience, and exposed her brand so to speak. Perhaps this was not as much an intentional salvo as an inadvertent bomb, tossed to a mostly sympathetic audience. My friend and I were just collateral casualties; small potatoes.

It's amazing what one courageous, controversial statement did to change the perceived ingredients of this quaint and intimate listening room. I suddenly felt my "brand" burning through as well, and immediate tension...

Like Custer must have felt.

So where does this discomfort come from? No doubt there was a war within myself. But my lifetime of experience with many kinds of people testifies there is another battle, totally out of my reach, where once again I am just small potatoes.

While quite bold and, in her fan’s eyes heroic, her personal sharing served to drive me away. Not because she is a lesbian, or because she is married to a woman, or even that she sings about it. But because she makes sure to make an issue of it, a kind of test for the listener, a line in the sand that either bonds or repulses.

Catie Curtis made the context of her music clear, and showed total committment to her cause, and her willingness to sacrifice whatever popularity she might sacrifice in this process. I just wish she could lighten up and enjoy the show and let me enjoy her songs without the bloody nose. If there had been a sword in the room, I would have taken it and surrendered it to her in submission. And then asked her nicely, play another song.

Because Catie is not just another blonde singing nice songs.

She packs a whallop under that smile. She puts herself out there, takes risks, in a way any artist can respect. And she freely admits that her songs are about her lifestyle. Later she sang one of her oldies called “I’m not radical” declaring that kissing and loving her female lover was not a radical thing. Catie is obviously cleverly picking for a fight, or just determined to make her sexuality a major part of her public identity. It is the sword she would gladly fall on. And in that she has succeeded. And that made me wonder if she was not beginning to grind the axe down to the handle.

So I offer these pointers, for her next Texas tour, which I look forward to:

1) Here musicians constantly sing about all their admittedly controversial or even scandalous lifestyles with impunity, and that is because they do not demand our approval. They sing candidly about themselves and their challenges in life, but never make their act on stage a pitch for legitimacy.

2) They can laugh at themselves. They allow you to take or leave it on your terms. If you want to buy a CD, or sing along, or hoot and holler, that’s fine with them. If you don't, you don't.

3) Bottom line, the entertainment is inclusive, and no hard feelings come from this.

Sometimes art seeks to find our commonalities, sometimes our differences. Every artist has to decide what they want their legacy to be.

4) The very best strategy for Catie Curtis or any person who wants acceptance is to be respectful of the differences in her audience, and accept them first. And that means not drawing lines in the sand that some may not be ready to cross. Of course, to be Catie, acceptance was a luxury she might have freed herself from long ago.

Catie or any lesbian entertainer must know this, whether they want to believe it or not; I have never seen an unfriendly crowd in Texas. Perhaps Curtis has been burned, or had a bad experience, but Texans will almost always make a toast to anybody that facilitates a good time. But a Yankee subculture woman with an attitude will be toast. "If you wanna play in Texas, you gotta’ have a fiddle in the band." You gotta be willing to adapt, just as much as you have already to restructure the American family.

5) In Texas, you walk up, shake people’s hands, and introduce yourself. You are no better than anyone else. In Texas millionaires sit with common folk. Old dance with young. Straights respectfully look gays in the eye, and treat them like anybody else. All that matters for acceptance is that you have modest social skills and avoid appearing haughty or superior. And you practice an age-old custom, going back to the day when everyone in Texas was running from something and had plenty to hide: You mind your business and I'll mind mine. That live and let live tradition has served us, and will serve you well.

Start doing that, and maybe more rednecks like me would jump when you say frog.

Catie Curtis: a Texas branding of sorts... Part I

The world we live in today has become a minefield of opposing doctrines, political correctness, and social awkwardness. So I write the following with some trepidation. But last night my friend and I stumbled into that minefield, and it was such a hurdle that now you get to read about much of what has whizzed through my redneck mind since.

A buddy of mine, ever in search of the latest and best information on our region’s tourist and entertainment scene, was headed to La Grange Saturday evening, and invited me to come along. It had been awhile since I had gone on one of his adventures, so I kissed my wife good bye without supper and jumped in his jeep.

I am going to skip a lot and blog separately about other sights we explored on the way, and want to cut to the chase, as I can predict this to be a two-parter.

Our destination was a music venue I have heard a great deal about for several years, all good, but because I have so much fun in Navasota, have never found myself there: The Bugle Boy.

You guys know I love music, and musicians, and writing about them. I wish that is what this blog was all about, but as you will read, the evening turned out to inspire a great deal more than art appreciation... Never the less, the evening started out with the usual introductions, a hefty cover charge, and me promising to be discreet with my camera.

Catie Curtis’ name burned through the glow up on the Bugle Boy sign outside. And as the evening wore on, she burned through more than that. Catie is a very successful songwriter, having songs used on several television shows and such, and has a smile as big as Texas. Instantly you like her. She speaks and sings sweetly of her origins in New England, her father and his junk in the yard, growing up in Maine and swimming in the river wide, and her wife and children back home.

That's right. Catie’s heart speaks from a Massachusetts Liberal stronghold, where marriage is recognized between lovers of the same sex. She is proud to report the progress of her social order, and the adaptations she and others have made to reconstruct the American family paradigm. She is not only a talented, successful singer-songwriter, but an emboldened lesbian iconoclast, and it is evident that she considers herself a representative for the Gay Rights movement. In the unfolding history of the Gay Rights movement, which has really only just begun in Texas, she diplomatically speaks for her kind, given the high visibility she has.

As she explained her homosexuality, her marriage and adoption of two children, even the challenge of defining what it is to be gay, she basked in this modest yet comfortable place in La Grange, Texas that she called an oasis. Whatever my theories or convictions are about her lifestyle, she is right about the Bugle Boy. And I especially love my country because she could stand and make such testimonies, safely, even in a small Texas town like La Grange, and I would fight anybody for her to have that right. A part of me admires anybody who gets up in front a group of strangers and takes a stand for something they believe in. Even more so for a belief that is not popular, that could bring on rejection and persecution. I do not have to agree with someone to have empathy for their cause and sympathy for their struggle.

Catie is a very admirable person, but read on, for I believe that she might choose a more worthy sword to fall on.

Next time… on the Navasota Current.