From the closet to club skirts: OFC interviews ‘out’ country music artist Chely Wright

What happens when a country western superstar comes out of the closet? She loses some fans, finds herself and headlines at Club Skirts presents The Dinah.

Chely Wright, who came out in May of last year, is the first commercial country music artist ever to do so, and although her decision has not been without its downside for her career, for Wright personally, it’s all uphill from here.

“I lost a considerable amount of my fan base,” she says. “And I was pretty sure that would happen, which is why I stayed hidden for so long, and why, I would imagine, if there are any other gay country artists, it would be why they still hide, hypothetically speaking. And the other downside is that I just cannot believe the complete disdain that some people have for gays. When you go ahead and declare yourself to be a gay person, especially a public person, you really then do allow the public to take a shot at you, irrespective of their thoughts. They get to shower you with praise or they get to throw daggers of hatred toward you. And I’ve had some really nasty things said and written to me and about me.”

Even Wright’s fellow country artists have been, for the most part, silent.

“I heard privately from a few of my friends,” she says. “But I will say this – only two of them made public statements about ‘Good for Chely. That’s great. It’s to be commended.’ – Mary Chapin Carpenter and a band called SHeDAISY. Everyone else just kind of did the ‘no comment’ – didn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole publicly.”

But although losing fans and facing the contempt of many in the country music world was painful, the benefits of finally being out far outweighed any negativity that Wright has experienced.

“The upside has been so much more powerful to me than the downside,” she says. “And that is, on a personal level obviously, I’m free. So that’s good. But as far as a career level, I feel like a person does their best work when they’re personally free. … And I also get to do the advocacy work that I dreamed of doing and that I set out to do when I decided in 2007 that I was going to come out.”

In 2007? But Wright didn’t come out until 2010. And what happened in those three years set the stage for the most important announcement of her life – and one that she hopes will have a positive and far-reaching impact on her community.

“I didn’t just want to Twitter ‘Hey, y’all, I’m gay,’” she says. “I wanted to come out in a very thoughtful, proactive way so I could effect change in the community.”

That very thoughtful, proactive way included the release of Lifted Off the Ground, her first album in five years, and her memoir, Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer, in the same week that she made the announcement. While Wright hadn’t planned this choreographed coming-out from the beginning, as she worked on the album, which started with a breakup and a breakdown, the strategy came together.

“I was nearly completed with the record the day I decided to come out,” she says. “I finished with my producer, Rodney Crowell, and we essentially sat on it – because toward the end of the record is when I came out to my producer. And we ended up putting one more song on it that is called “Like Me.” The song’s a narrative and it clearly dictates that I’m in a relationship with another woman. Number one, we couldn’t put that record out and out me before I came out. But number two, we felt that … the record really chronicles the pain of my breakdown. And where the record ends, it really hands off to the book. And I really did feel like they really were in tandem. And yes, I did plan it. I did absolutely plan and there was a strategy to it. What I wanted to do was get to the top of the mountain and make the declaration and not have the story lost.”

The story wasn’t lost – it made headlines all over the country. And not all of Wright’s fans were lost, either.

“You know what we say in the LGBT movement, when we talk about the movement going forward, we talk about the moveable middle,” she says. “And in country music, we were pretty well aware that we had country music fans that were like, ‘LGBT rights? Of course.’ … And I felt like all I needed to do was say, ‘Hey, you guys. Forget the word gay. It’s me. It’s me. It’s the person you’ve gone to see in concert 22 times. Read this book. This is my story. This is what I went through.’ And it left a lot of them scratching their heads going, ‘Huh. It’s hard to hate Chely. She’s been really nice to us. And I like her records and she seems like a good gal.’ Those are the ones that I feel like we moved at the middle.”

In addition to changing the minds of some country fans about LGBT people and issues, she may have changed the minds of some LGBT people about country music and garnered a whole new fan base that will more than make up for the conservative fans who deserted. And she’ll meet plenty of these new supporters at The Dinah.

“I continually marvel when there’s a large collection of gay people,” she says. “I just am always in awe of how there are this many people like me. Oh, my god, I love it. Because in the way that I hid, I was not in touch with the gay culture at all. But I hear [The Dinah] is a festive time, I hear everybody has fun out there. … I like people and I like music fans and I think it’s going to be a great time.”

Unfortunately, while she may be performing one of her most popular standards, “Single White Female,” she won’t be looking for a partner. She’s currently in “a great relationship” with a native New Yorker, and “all is well” – and just getting better.