By Olivia Turner | Arts & Life Editor
When dealing with trauma, some people throw on tennis shoes and go for a run. Some try meditation. Drag queen Flamy Grant goes on tour and sings her Christian country songs for crowds across America.
To kick off a Thursday night of singing and entertainment at Cultivate 7Twelve, Flamy Grant made a grand entrance in a lime green vinyl dress, tights and boots glittering with rhinestones and an extravagant teal eye makeup look. Grant’s walk on song, “Good for Me” by Amy Grant blasted as she danced around the room and gathered attendees around to begin the set list.
The name of the tour, “No More Trauma,” is more of an “aspirational title” than an achievement, Grant said between songs.
“I currently have not yet figured out how to exist without trauma, but I have learned a whole lot about healing it, managing it, looking it in the face,” she said.
If drag queens weren’t already unique, Flamy Grant stands out from the rest for the subject of most of her music — Christianity. As a queer kid who grew up in the Bible belt, faith played a large part in her life, even though she has since left the church, she said.
Throughout the night, Grant sang of religious trauma, her love for female biblical heroines and the hate she receives for being a drag queen who puts out Christian content — all songs she told the audience were out on her EP “Bible Belt Baby.” As Grant stood in front of the mic with her acoustic guitar, she told the audience a personal anecdote — when she felt God calling her to be a disciple unto others, leading her to where she was tonight.
“I just felt like there was something else for me, something else I was supposed to be doing — washing feet.”
Grant said she does so by performing in support of the next queer generation.
Her next songs “Hate To See Me Happy” and “Leslie” sang of Flamy Grant’s heart wrenching coming-out story and those who were there to support her, as well as her love for actor Leslie Jordan who passed in 2022. As Grant softly and sorrowfully sang of her admiration for the star and the example he set for her in her childhood, sniffles could be heard from throughout the crowd.
Soon after Flamy Grant wrapped up her last song of the night, she turned over the stage to tour-mate and queer pop artist i.V KiNG who started her own set with an intense, energetic number called “Teenage Drama.”
“Obviously that was a break-up song,” KiNG said to the crowd with a chuckle. “But breakups are okay, right?”
KiNG described her escape from a seven-year relationship with a terrible ex, as well as her love and gratitude for her now wife and child, before transitioned into her next song, “Magic Castle” and then not long after, a cover of Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe.”
A Midwest princess herself, KiNG recounted her experience there with homophobia after coming out, and even admitted to participating in it herself before finally getting therapy and realizing she was gay and in love with her best friend when she was a “20-something.”
“It’s called ‘Teenage Drama,’” KiNG said of her EP coming out on October 4. “It’s very soothing because I’m just speaking to that teenager that I was.”
