Kenneth G.
2010-05-16 17:39:09 UTC
http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/music/2010/05/14/13945881.html
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Entertainment Music
Truth sets Chely Wright free
By DARRYL STERDAN, QMI AGENCY
Last Updated: May 16, 2010 2:09am
Chely Wright lived a lie. Until it nearly killed her.
For decades, the singer whos making history as the first openly gay
country artist concealed her true sexual identity from her family,
friends, fans, fellow artists and even famous lovers such as Brad
Paisley. But four years ago, her carefully maintained facade crumbled.
After a breakup with a longtime lover named Julia, Wright fell apart.
And wound up in her Nashville home, facing a mirror with a gun to her
head.
When you have a weapon in your mouth, you kinda realize youre at the
end of your rope, understates the 39-year-old Wright in her first
Canadian interview since coming out. I had that 9 mm gun in my mouth.
I felt as though I was outside of my body watching this unbelievably
horrific experience go down. I couldnt believe how detached from
myself Id become. How big this moat was between the different pieces
of myself and how completely unstitched I had become.
As she prepared to push the trigger with her thumb, she prayed for
forgiveness and thought about her life, her dogs, her music and her
lovers kiss. She heard her heart pound. She looked up. And realized
the woman in the mirror was weeping.
I said, Holy cow, thats me. There was something inside of me
fighting, saying, Dont do this. Youve got too many amazing things
in your life to fight for. And thats when that emotional dam broke.
I slipped back into myself and I began to cry. Thats when I took the
gun out of my mouth.
It was not the first time she had begged for Gods help.
Even as a child in rural Kansas, Richell Rene Wright knew she was
different. And she believed she was going to hell.
Its one of the things that shoved me into the closet early on that
shame, that fear of eternal condemnation, of being damned, she says.
Every day, Wright would pray for God to change her. Eventually, she
had an epiphany.
When I was 14 or 15 I realized, Im exactly how God meant me to be.
And once I really knew that I was all right with God, and I really
did, I knew that I had prayed enough. God surely would have changed
this if He really wanted me to be something else.
Being OK with God was one thing; the rest of the world was another
story.
I knew I had to hide this to survive culturally and socially and
certainly in the career that I wanted to have, says Wright, who
chronicles her story in a new memoir Like Me: Confessions of a
Heartland Country Singer, and draws upon it on her CD Lifted Off the
Ground. There had never been an openly gay country artist. I knew I
had to duck and cover.
She did. And it worked. By 1994, she had made her first album, Woman
on the Moon. In 1997, she cracked the Top 40 with Shut Up and Drive.
In 1999, she hit the big time with the chart-topping title cut to
Single White Female. She was set. More hits followed. Magazines called
her one of the hottest women in music. She wrote songs and toured with
the similarly straightlaced Paisley then became his lover.
I felt that if I was going to compromise and be with a man, hed be
an amazing choice, she wrote in Like Me. There were so many ways in
which I did love him, but I was not in love with him ... Being
physical with Brad did not come quickly or easily for me. After all, I
am gay. I often cried during those moments of physical intimacy.
When he started talking marriage shortly before her 30th birthday, she
pushed him away, leaving him crying and confused. She went back into
her closet.
Her own tears would come years later.
Ironically, the darkest night of Wrights soul also marked the start
of her trip toward the light.
Within weeks of her breakdown, she says, the songs arrived.
They were coming out of me every day, she says. In fact, they were
annoying me. They were like an infection, an infected splinter just
popping out of me. And for the first time as a songwriter, I wasnt
crafting them. I was purging them.
There was the pleading Broken. The angry Damn Liar. The grim Notes to
the Coroner. They were intimate, powerful and uncompromising miles
away from the slick hits of her old career. And once she began to
record them with producer Rodney Crowell in 2007, crafting what would
become Lifted Off the Ground, they were what forced her to come clean.
The reality began to sneak up on me when we were halfway through,
she explains. I began to think, How am I going to go out and talk
about this album? These were songs about a breakup and a broken
heart. And I knew people like you were going to ask me, What
relationship were you in? What was I going to do, make up a boyfriend
from Buenos Aires?
Instead, she took Crowell out onto her porch and dropped two
bombshells.
First I said, Rodney, I need to tell you that I am gay and Im going
to come out. Then I said, And theres one song Ive held back from
you because its quite telling its me with a woman. And I believe
it is the musical heart of these songs. So I mp3d Like Me to him
that day. And thats the day I started my book. He left my house and I
opened up my laptop and started the book Like Me.
Three years after that confession and just days after her public
disclosure, Wright says her burden has been lifted.
It feels incredible, she says, despite sounding weary from telling
her tale to dozens of reporters over several days. It feels
emotional. It feels liberating. And sad in a lot of ways, honestly.
When I hear myself saying my story, I hear how incredibly sad it is.
Its sad hearing about a little girl going to a horse pasture to pray
three times a day to not be something she naturally is. its sad to
look back at the incredible charade I felt I was forced to endure.
Wrights struggle may be far from over. It remains to be seen if the
conservative world of country music will be more tolerant of
homosexuality than it was of Dixie Chicks bashing Bush.
Shes prepared to end up a footnote in country music if it means
another artist doesnt have to suffer through what she did. Even if
she isnt snubbed, she knows people will be more interested in her
sexuality than her songs for some time.
Im really proud of my record. And it was with some degree of sadness
that I knew this was going to eclipse the music. That said, if I
didnt come out, there would be no more music from me there might be
no more me, she says. This was literally a do-or-die, life-or-death
situation.
It took me 36 years to be comfortable with the notion of standing up
and saying, Im a gay woman. I dont expect country fans to absorb
it in a week. If it takes them a month, a year, two years to get it,
thats cool. One of the reasons I did this was to put a face on gay
for the country music fans. There are a lot of fans who dont think
they know a gay person.
That list includes the person whose approval has meant the most: Her
father.
My dad said, I always thought gay meant sick and damaged and
second-class. But I dont know a better person than you. Youve
changed this old man. Now, hes so excited. I bet my dad is going to
march in a gay pride parade. And if he can change...
As for her future, Wright plans to advocate for the gay community in
addition to work she already does for children, education and
faith-based charities.
But shell always be a singer-songwriter first and foremost, and has
no desire to stop performing her old hits though she might change
the pronouns in a few now and then for a joke.
But from now on, she wont have to change her story.
When you keep a lie, it becomes part of your future. When you admit a
lie, it becomes part of your past. My lie, my secret, the admission of
my truth is now behind me. I like that it can be part of my history.
The future for me is truth.
***@sunmedia.ca
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Entertainment Music
Truth sets Chely Wright free
By DARRYL STERDAN, QMI AGENCY
Last Updated: May 16, 2010 2:09am
Chely Wright lived a lie. Until it nearly killed her.
For decades, the singer whos making history as the first openly gay
country artist concealed her true sexual identity from her family,
friends, fans, fellow artists and even famous lovers such as Brad
Paisley. But four years ago, her carefully maintained facade crumbled.
After a breakup with a longtime lover named Julia, Wright fell apart.
And wound up in her Nashville home, facing a mirror with a gun to her
head.
When you have a weapon in your mouth, you kinda realize youre at the
end of your rope, understates the 39-year-old Wright in her first
Canadian interview since coming out. I had that 9 mm gun in my mouth.
I felt as though I was outside of my body watching this unbelievably
horrific experience go down. I couldnt believe how detached from
myself Id become. How big this moat was between the different pieces
of myself and how completely unstitched I had become.
As she prepared to push the trigger with her thumb, she prayed for
forgiveness and thought about her life, her dogs, her music and her
lovers kiss. She heard her heart pound. She looked up. And realized
the woman in the mirror was weeping.
I said, Holy cow, thats me. There was something inside of me
fighting, saying, Dont do this. Youve got too many amazing things
in your life to fight for. And thats when that emotional dam broke.
I slipped back into myself and I began to cry. Thats when I took the
gun out of my mouth.
It was not the first time she had begged for Gods help.
Even as a child in rural Kansas, Richell Rene Wright knew she was
different. And she believed she was going to hell.
Its one of the things that shoved me into the closet early on that
shame, that fear of eternal condemnation, of being damned, she says.
Every day, Wright would pray for God to change her. Eventually, she
had an epiphany.
When I was 14 or 15 I realized, Im exactly how God meant me to be.
And once I really knew that I was all right with God, and I really
did, I knew that I had prayed enough. God surely would have changed
this if He really wanted me to be something else.
Being OK with God was one thing; the rest of the world was another
story.
I knew I had to hide this to survive culturally and socially and
certainly in the career that I wanted to have, says Wright, who
chronicles her story in a new memoir Like Me: Confessions of a
Heartland Country Singer, and draws upon it on her CD Lifted Off the
Ground. There had never been an openly gay country artist. I knew I
had to duck and cover.
She did. And it worked. By 1994, she had made her first album, Woman
on the Moon. In 1997, she cracked the Top 40 with Shut Up and Drive.
In 1999, she hit the big time with the chart-topping title cut to
Single White Female. She was set. More hits followed. Magazines called
her one of the hottest women in music. She wrote songs and toured with
the similarly straightlaced Paisley then became his lover.
I felt that if I was going to compromise and be with a man, hed be
an amazing choice, she wrote in Like Me. There were so many ways in
which I did love him, but I was not in love with him ... Being
physical with Brad did not come quickly or easily for me. After all, I
am gay. I often cried during those moments of physical intimacy.
When he started talking marriage shortly before her 30th birthday, she
pushed him away, leaving him crying and confused. She went back into
her closet.
Her own tears would come years later.
Ironically, the darkest night of Wrights soul also marked the start
of her trip toward the light.
Within weeks of her breakdown, she says, the songs arrived.
They were coming out of me every day, she says. In fact, they were
annoying me. They were like an infection, an infected splinter just
popping out of me. And for the first time as a songwriter, I wasnt
crafting them. I was purging them.
There was the pleading Broken. The angry Damn Liar. The grim Notes to
the Coroner. They were intimate, powerful and uncompromising miles
away from the slick hits of her old career. And once she began to
record them with producer Rodney Crowell in 2007, crafting what would
become Lifted Off the Ground, they were what forced her to come clean.
The reality began to sneak up on me when we were halfway through,
she explains. I began to think, How am I going to go out and talk
about this album? These were songs about a breakup and a broken
heart. And I knew people like you were going to ask me, What
relationship were you in? What was I going to do, make up a boyfriend
from Buenos Aires?
Instead, she took Crowell out onto her porch and dropped two
bombshells.
First I said, Rodney, I need to tell you that I am gay and Im going
to come out. Then I said, And theres one song Ive held back from
you because its quite telling its me with a woman. And I believe
it is the musical heart of these songs. So I mp3d Like Me to him
that day. And thats the day I started my book. He left my house and I
opened up my laptop and started the book Like Me.
Three years after that confession and just days after her public
disclosure, Wright says her burden has been lifted.
It feels incredible, she says, despite sounding weary from telling
her tale to dozens of reporters over several days. It feels
emotional. It feels liberating. And sad in a lot of ways, honestly.
When I hear myself saying my story, I hear how incredibly sad it is.
Its sad hearing about a little girl going to a horse pasture to pray
three times a day to not be something she naturally is. its sad to
look back at the incredible charade I felt I was forced to endure.
Wrights struggle may be far from over. It remains to be seen if the
conservative world of country music will be more tolerant of
homosexuality than it was of Dixie Chicks bashing Bush.
Shes prepared to end up a footnote in country music if it means
another artist doesnt have to suffer through what she did. Even if
she isnt snubbed, she knows people will be more interested in her
sexuality than her songs for some time.
Im really proud of my record. And it was with some degree of sadness
that I knew this was going to eclipse the music. That said, if I
didnt come out, there would be no more music from me there might be
no more me, she says. This was literally a do-or-die, life-or-death
situation.
It took me 36 years to be comfortable with the notion of standing up
and saying, Im a gay woman. I dont expect country fans to absorb
it in a week. If it takes them a month, a year, two years to get it,
thats cool. One of the reasons I did this was to put a face on gay
for the country music fans. There are a lot of fans who dont think
they know a gay person.
That list includes the person whose approval has meant the most: Her
father.
My dad said, I always thought gay meant sick and damaged and
second-class. But I dont know a better person than you. Youve
changed this old man. Now, hes so excited. I bet my dad is going to
march in a gay pride parade. And if he can change...
As for her future, Wright plans to advocate for the gay community in
addition to work she already does for children, education and
faith-based charities.
But shell always be a singer-songwriter first and foremost, and has
no desire to stop performing her old hits though she might change
the pronouns in a few now and then for a joke.
But from now on, she wont have to change her story.
When you keep a lie, it becomes part of your future. When you admit a
lie, it becomes part of your past. My lie, my secret, the admission of
my truth is now behind me. I like that it can be part of my history.
The future for me is truth.
***@sunmedia.ca