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Q&A: Trixie Mattel On Her Debut Album 'Two Birds'

The year is 2017, and a country/folk musician in big hair and tons of make-up hit #2 on the US iTunes charts.

For Brian Firkus the mini album Two Birds is the follow-up to his 2009 EP Greener. For Brian's drag creation Trixie Mattel the record is her musical debut. With a traditional sound, intelligent lyrics, and irresistable hooks, Two Birds has become an instant success.

The Typewriter caught up with Brian/Trixie to talk about songwriting, being topped by Chris Pratt, and a possible follow-up to Two Birds.

An album everyone should listen to: The Complete Trio Collection by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Londa Ronstadt

A movie everyone should watch: Clueless

A place everyone should visit: Dollywood (Dolly Parton's theme park in Tennessee)

An artist everyone should see live: me, Trixie Mattel

A severely underrated song: "A Case Of You" by Joni Mitchell

A severely overrated song: oh my god, how much time do you have? — for example "Hey Ya!" by Outkast

Sing along, listen, turn off:

a) Dolly Parton, Kacey Musgraves, Miranda Lambert: sing along to Dolly Parton, definitely listen to Kacey Musgraves, and don't care about Miranda Lambert that much

b) Alaska, Miss Fame, Courtney Act: sing along to Alaska, listen to Courtney — you never turn off Courtney, and don't even turn on Miss Fame

What did you pursue first in your life, music or drag?

Music came way before drag. I only started drag when I was about nineteen, music I started when I was about thirteen. I grew up in the country where we played music at home a lot.

Most people know you from RuPaul's Drag Race. Why didn't you release your music when your season was airing, as other queens do? Why did yout wait until now?

It didn't really make sense to me to perform music in drag because I didn't think Trixie Mattel was a singer. I thought it was more a comedy thing. But then I found that the more I incorporated my real self into my drag the more people liked it. And so when I started my stand up show Ages 3 And Up I put an original song in the middle, and every night it was everyone's favourite part. It occured to me that I was sitting on something there. It didn't make sense to put the two together until I did. I don't know if I should have done it sooner.

Also, releasing music when your season ends, I feel like that's an action people take who are not musicians. The only reason they have something to sell is because they are opportunists. You shouldn't release music because you're cross-dressing on television. You should release it when it feels right.

Why did you choose a traditional folk/country sound for your debut?

I don't really like electropop. I don't really like club music or hip-hop. I only really feel country and folk music. So I thought if I incorporated it in a very sincere way that still had a sense of humour to it people could go along with it. And they did, luckily.

Usually people either release full length albums with at least nine tracks or EPs with a maximum of five. Your record, Two Birds, has six tracks. Why did you chose that format?

I wrote about twelve pieces of music for the album. But what I learned from doing my YouTube series [UNHhhh] is that people like short things. They don't know it, but they do. I like short things, too. If I see an album that has fifteen songs, I probably won't listen to all fifteen of them.

I wanted Two Birds to be a song cycle, meaning you listen to the songs in the right order and it chronologically makes sense. I wanted to pick the songs that made sense together and told a story in a very concise way.

It was all my own financial investment, too. So I thought let's do something small and short and see if people respond to it. You can always make more. I can always write more music. In fact, I still have tons of songs I didn't use on the album that I could record and release. You should always leave the listener interested in what you'll do next. If Two Birds does well my plan is to do another small batch of songs that's like a companion piece.

You released the record under the Trixie Mattel name. The visuals that accompany it feature you as both Trixie and Brian. Was it always going to be this way?

Originally I was gonna do it as Brian. And then I thought it was a poor business choice to not loop in the audience that I have in drag. So we shot the album art in drag, out of drag, and together. Then we decided from there.

I thought it's the audience of Trixie Mattel who's gonna be listening, and the album tells the story of the man behind the curtain, like in The Wizard Of OZ. It's the life experiences of someone who travels as Trixie Mattel. Someone who travels the world alone and navigates relationships while working a lot. Who the audience imagine singing when they listen is pretty irrelevant.

Also, I'm very inspired by people like Johnny Cash and June Carter. I love the imagery of a man and a woman together making a duet album and I wanted that with just me.

Is that where the title Two Birds comes from?

Yeah, it refers to several things. It's two birds because it's Trixie and Brian. Also, it has to do with people coming and going. If you imagine an electric wire and two birds sitting on it, they only stay for a certain amount of time before one leaves. The time that they're together, that's the story of this album.

I wrote the album on a Hummingbird guitar and a Dove guitar, so that's two birds. Also, my grandpa taught me to play guitar on a Hummingbird, and my grandma's spirit animal is an owl, so that's also a two-birds-thing. It has a few meanings to it.

Two Birds hit #2 on the US iTunes charts behind the Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 soundtrack. Did you expect it to be this successful?

Well, I was hoping Chris Pratt would top me, but I didn't know it would happen like this.

I mean, that's crazy. I was just hoping to make my financial investment back. I used all my own money. I wrote all the music; played it, sang it, shot the art, conceived it all myself. So for it to go above and beyond the influence of Drag Race fans was a pipe dream that I never thought would happen. It's gonna be on the Billboard charts next week, on the top 200 albums.

You can't think of Drag Race audiences as stupid. They like quality. People like drag queens because you get a taste of live performance, visual art, singing, dancing. For each journey you take them on, if you put your heart into it and give them something good, then they'll at least try it. And if they like it, they'll stick around.

What is your songwriting process?

The first line of the song is always the first thing I write. I write top to bottom, beginning to end, in the right order. And I usually do it in one sitting.

"Seen My Man" and "I Know You All Over Again" were both written in maybe fifteen minutes. I just sat down and did it, and it came out exactly as I wanted it. For "Mama Don't Make Me Put On The Dress Again" I was drunk in Provincetown on a bicycle with an empty bottle of Fireball in my bike basket when the line "bottle in my basket" came to my head. Then I kind of worked around that.

Often the songs that take the least amount of time to write turn out to be the best songs, don't they?

I agree. All my favourite songs I've done came out all at once and the way somebody would really say it. If you overthink it too much, if you micro-manage it, it's never gonna sound real. You have to trust your mouth and your brain. I never know what I'm saying until I've said it.

Is there anything popular songwriters tend to do that annoys you?

I personally try to be somewhat creative with my rhyming. Sometimes they're not even full rhymes, they're half rhymes. I'm very interested in alliteration and internal rhymes because that's a little more nuanced to me. When someone says "maybe" and "baby" I'm like… okay.

Also, the use of repetition in pop music sometimes makes it sound like it was conceived in a science lab. Like it was made to make money. That's very transparent to me.

Country and folk in general are storytelling genres, whereas pop is more about universal phrases, isn't it?

Yeah, folk music is the deepest, most real kind of music. It's about complex issues that will never be solved. But they're being explored by someone in musically quite a simple way. It's impressive because you're really trying to always reinvent the wheel. I guess what I'm saying is that I like folk music because it's not very complex but it's still very deep. There's a lot to ruminate on even thought it's easy to listen to.

The first single and video from Two Birds was "Mama Don't Make Me Put On The Dress Again". Do you have plans for more singles and more music videos?

I'm gonna do another single from the album. There was one song in particular that everyone loved and wanted to be the single. I love that song, too, but it's kind of sad, and I just thought it would be a sad first single. So I have the ambition to create another visual story for that song now.

I didn't even wanna do a music video at first [for "Mama Don't Make Me…"]. But another drag queen told me, "make a music video or no one's gonna buy your album." I'm glad I did because I enjoyed making it and I got to work with Leslie Jordan again. The video came out exactly as I wanted. A puppet show being put on for adult cowboys as a metaphor for a drag queen in a gay bar, it's very real and arduous and tiring.

The responses to "I Know You All Over Again", which may be the sad song you just mentioned, were amazing. What was the inspiration for that one in particular?

I was recently getting over a past relationship. And I was working in the town that the gentleman was from. You know, when you go some place that reminds you very much of a failed relationship you think you're over, you learn very quickly that you're not as over it as you think you are. The song is all about the little details of life that make the whole relationship come right back to you. I wrote it in a hotel room in Kentucky in fifteen minutes.

When and where can people hear the Two Birds songs live?

They can hear them sung live this month in New York City at the Laurie Beechman Theater. I'm doing an album release show there on 23rd and 25th May. Also, my show Ages 3 And Up is touring internationally right now and features some music from the album.

Finally, is there anything you'd like to add?

Well, the album is available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify etc. And at New York Drag Con and my New York album release shows physical copies will be available for the first time. I didn't want to do physical copies because I didn't think anyone would buy them. But now it seems they will.

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Source: https://medium.com/artmagazine/q-a-trixie-mattel-on-her-debut-album-two-birds-c1ae15b1f84c