Well, she won RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3, her new album One Stone is at the top of the iTunes charts, Moving Parts is her 40-city tour that just started in Fort Lauderdale and The Trixie & Katya Show on Viceland is still going strong. Out magazine’s Hilton Dresden asked Trixie Mattel, what’s next…?
“Do you think you have a larger goal than that in your music career—in terms of collaborators, the styles you want to try out?
Longterm, I’d like to go live in the woods and go write music for other artists I like. I’m a singer and a guitar player, but I think I’m a really good songwriter, and I really like Miley Cyrus, and I’d love to write songs for her. I love her voice. She’s such a good storyteller.
This new album is called One Stone, it’s very… It’s like, late-60’s folk revival. My last album, Two Birds… I broke it into two halves, that go together like puzzle pieces. Volume one, volume two.
The first one was kind of like a late-50’s country radio sound. The music was all very South-y and it was breakup music. A lot more Western sounding. This one I sort of imagined as a part one and part two.
Two Birds was written in a time when I had been broken up with and I was very displaced by it. I felt like my relationship was this glue I had in my life, I didn’t really know what I was doing in Drag Race, I didn’t really know what I was going to do, this relationship was kinda like the glue, you know what I mean?
So when it didn’t work out, it was like this chasm that I fell into. It was very upsetting, probably irrationally upsetting. I mean, I’m crazy. When this guy broke up with me I spent the summer —I spent three months sending him a postcard a day. That’s 90 handwritten fucking letters. I’m a crazy person.
…my career was getting so heavy and so….much… that I broke up with this [other] guy. After the fact, I was like, “That was a huge mistake. I screwed up this relationship because I was overwhelmed with my work.” That’s some romantic comedy shit.
…we’re together now. But last summer I got the green light for The Trixie & Katya Show on Viceland, and that same week I got All Stars. And that was a lot for me. My knee jerk reaction was,
‘I’ve got to make room in my life for this career.’
In Moving Parts there’s this section where I talk about how white I am, and there are all these jokes about being white, and then I punctuate it with an acoustic, Dave Matthews Band cover of RuPaul’s Cover Girl. I’m always looking for new ways to tie a bow on things. Sarah Silverman sort of did that, too.
When you make people laugh, you really get their trust. And when people have been laughing at my jokes, they’re a lot more willing to go on that journey with me in a somber moment.
How’s Katya doing? Will there be another season with her?
Well, I’m not allowed to say. But I just saw her, and she has a beard. So obviously we’re not filming today. One of my favorite things about Katya is her mind is this dark hallway. With an unexplained parade of Death Stars. That’s not something I ever want to go away. My favorite drag queens are Katya and Tammie Brown. I like my drag queens with a little insanity. But people really like the Viceland show, and the viewership has been very strong. So hurray season 1.
My dream would be to kick off season 2 with Katya talking about mental illness. Let’s crack it open and get an insider perspective. We’ve always wanted to talk about suicide. We like to discuss topics that are maybe not OK to discuss. But I think that’s helpful. Mental health or anxiety or addiction or divorce. We like to get right in there in the nooks and crannies of life. We’re not like,
‘Which microwave popcorn can help you lose weight?’
That doesn’t interest us.
Do you have a favorite look from all of Drag Race?
Believe it or not, Phi Phi O’Hara. Future of drag. That blue thing with the giant gun. Come on. Raja’s Native American runway. Roxxxy Andrews’ candy on the runway, hippie look. Special mention: anything but Shangela’s Cornacia wig.“
You can read the entire interview here. Two Birds and One Stone are on iTunes and you can find out about Moving Parts tickets here.
(Photo, Youtube still; via Out)
