In its 11 seasons (not to mention specials and all-star spin-offs), RuPaul’s Drag Race has turned plenty of drag performers into true queens, and some into proper superstars. Many of the artists who have competed for the crown have gone on to see their careers blossom thanks to their newfound fame, and perhaps the most successful of them all is Trixie Mattel, who was named the champion of the third season of All-Stars.
The multi-talented figure acts, dresses up in her signature drag, does stand-up comedy and writes, produces, records and performs her own music. She’s working harder than anyone else from Drag Race fame, and she’s looking to take things to the next level with a new album and a tour that she is confident will be her best yet.
I spoke with Trixie Mattel about her new album Barbara and what makes her upcoming tour her biggest and best yet (hint: expect a lot of wig reveals).
Hugh McIntyre: Your new album is out! Why don’t you tell me a bit about the inspiration behind this one?
Trixie Mattel: My first one was ’50s radio country, my second one was ’60s folk revival kind of thing, and this one is a little more late ’60s, early ’70s sugary, hand clappy ’60s pop-rock. So, it’s meant to be a little more post-Beatles invasion, a little more plugged-in electric guitars, radio-friendly, harmonies and electric guitars and sweet melodies that are about the beach and being in love. I just wanted to write something really happy and fun.
After my first few records, my influences shifted. I started listening to more rock music. I love Fountains of Wayne. I love Weezer. I love the Go-Gos. I love Madonna. All of that started to bleed into my vision for Trixie in a good way. So, Barbara is an eight-track album, meaning the first four tracks on side A are supposed to be like a sunny day at the beach listening to the AM radio in your dune buggy, and the B side is the night at the beach around the campfire with an acoustic guitar. So, it’s the two energies there.
I moved to California four years ago, and the perpetual summer and this glamorous myth of it, that definitely influenced Trixie. The whole look of the new tour and the whole look of the new album is actually a lot like my old vision of Trixie. My original vision of Trixie was this Malibu Barbie beach bunny with this dark sense of humor. It was actually, looking back at my first sketches of Trixie, it’s redoing it with everything I know now.
McIntyre: Your music sounds very different from what we’ve gotten used to hearing from drag queens. What inspires you to go this route?
Mattel: Well, I have the advantage of being a musician, and you can take that as shade if you want. Being a musician helps with music, believe it or not. But, I’m not passionate about club music or anything, so that would have never been an avenue that makes sense for me.
We have a few club tracks up there. I did “Chapstick” with Todrick [Hall]. But my whole thing is I make music that I like. I make music that sounds like the music I listen to, so this music on Barbara, it’s organically what came out. When I listen to this album, I hear some of my favorite artists. On “Girl Next Door,” I hear Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. On “Jesse, Jesse,” I hear Fountains of Wayne. I hear the music I like in this music.
I write everything on my guitar, so that’s the other thing. My approach to writing music is very linear. I sit down with a guitar. I write the song from top to bottom, and I write pretty much alone. I think most drag queens, somebody writes some song and they add their opinion. I don’t really know how they do it because if I couldn’t play guitar, I don’t know how I’d write a song. I don’t know how you do that, really.
McIntyre: You touched a little bit on the look of this tour. What’s going to be different this time around?
Mattel: Oh my God, okay, my other tours I had a few costumes, a few different viewings. This tour’s fucking crazy. This tour has 12 costumes and three wigs. I’m traveling with a full band. I took them shopping at the mall here in L.A. And I bought them matching suits. They look incredible, three beautiful, very nice, very heterosexual but very not at all homophobic and very nice to me rock band members, and they like my music, thank God, because that always helps when somebody has to play music for a living. You hope that they like it. I’m overcoming my phobia of straight people. I wanted to hire straight musicians because representation matters. I think it’s about time we threw straight people a bone. They’ve never had anything.
McIntyre: Straight white men aren’t doing well enough in rock music.
Mattel: No. We need to get them a leg up.
McIntyre: Good for you.
Mattel: Treat them as we want to be treated. This show has bigger, crazier videos than my other one, bigger and more wigs, more costumes. I think it’s the best music I’ve ever written. It has more music and custom visuals and set pieces. I mean, I’m literally making a Buffalo nickel on this tour because I spent all the money on production. So, if you want to come to the best Trixie show you’ll ever see, come to this.
McIntyre: I love it. I love it.
Mattel: I really went all out with production. This is the tour that I would close my eyes and dream of doing. It’s stand-up and a decent rock band show with five reveals in one song, and a drag show. It’s everything I always wanted. I’m dying. I’m literally dying to do it. I was nervous, but I’ve been in boot camp. I’ve been getting in drag every night, showing up to open mics in L.A. and doing unannounced chunks of stand-up from the show, just because I need to test it.
So, it’s also been very humbling because I play big venues now. But, I’ve been getting in drag and going down to shows where no one knows me and doing chunks of the show just to try it out. It’s been very exciting to see some of the jokes tried out for the first time, and people actually laugh.
McIntyre: Amazing. I love that you’re trying it all out before you take it on the road.
Mattel: Well yeah, I mean that’s…you have to try your stand-up. I mean you have to do it in person.
McIntyre: I’ve not seen a Trixie Mattel concert, so I was curious whether it was just a regular concert or whether you mixed comedy in there. Is there a lip sync? What’s the mix here?
Mattel: I would say it’s about 60-40, 60% stand-up, probably 40% music. Maybe 50 to 50, but I’m really trying to make sure I have all the stand-up stuff. I love doing comedy. I mean, I love making records, but stand-up is really my heart. It’s when I feel like there’s the connection. I’m really doing something nobody else can do. Music, for me, is a way to add punctuation and shape to the show. So, songs open or close sessions of stand-up, or costume reveals open or close different sections of the show.
I make music. I make records and do drag, and do stand-up. This show is all of that.
McIntyre: Wow, there’s a lot.
Mattel: I’m literally dying to do this. This is the first show where I’m not nervous leading up to it. I’m like Bronco in that little cage, you know what I mean, ready to do this shit.
It’s a month and a half. It’s a month and a half tour. It’s very fast. It’s five cities a week. I mean, once we’re in it, it’ll be over in the blink of an eye.
McIntyre: And then it’s over
Mattel: And then I die.
McIntyre: There you go, great. So at a Trixie Mattel show, how many of those people know you from your music specifically, and how many of them know you from Drag Race? Is it really more one or the other?
Mattel: That’s so funny you ask. I would say most people there have watched Drag Race. I would say about 10% only know me from records. So, that’s part of why I needed a show with more music. The feedback I always got from my tours was there were always people at the show who went, “I thought there would be more music,” because they were only on Spotify, or I showed up on a folk music playlist or something. So I always had some who people didn’t even know I do stand-up. Isn’t that crazy? Some people didn’t even know me as a comedian.
McIntyre: Wow.
Mattel: There are some people who still only know me from the YouTube show, not even Drag Race. A lot of people like women and their husbands, a lot of them watch me on YouTube together, so they only know me and Katya from UNHhhh. Then, even the people who know me from Drag Race, I would say most people in the audience, so I would say at least half the people, usually own my records, and they know the music. Almost everyone knows me from comedy, but half the people know the music.
But, I’ve also never had a record come out the week of the tour starting, so it’s like the perfect storm. I spend a lot of my own money on the production for these tours. I’ve been saving up and using, I mean, basically taking a pay cut to make sure I can bring a really fabulous band. I want this show to be fabulous and fantastic because it’s my fourth major tour, and I just don’t want to be… I was afraid of going on tour and having the show be Trixie Mattel with one guitar just getting dressed again.
I want costumes flying off costumes. I want wigs revealed. I want videos. I want hot guys with guitars. You know what I mean? It’s over. The show is fucking over it’s so good.
McIntyre: I can’t wait.
Mattel: I mean, people are going to come to this, and they’re going to be like, “I’ve never seen a drag queen do anything like this.” There’s going to be people who go to concerts who are going to be like, “I’ve never seen a concert like this,” and there’s going to be people who come to stand-up who are going to be like, “I’ve never seen a stand-up show like this.” I mean, it’s really going to be this bold thing that no one’s ever done.
McIntyre: Do you ever perform either music or comedy out of drag?
Mattel: Never. I mean, I write the jokes for Trixie. I write it for that lens of… I don’t know, being dressed as this happy Barbie clown stripper, and then writing the jokes to be dark, cutting, not PC, and depressing, and that’s a really good combination. It really helps me drive a punchline home. I’ve never done stand-up out of drag. I’m not even interested in finding out. People are always asking about that, but I don’t perform professionally out of drag. So, to me, what’s the point? I need to know how the jokes work in drag.
I have a show Thursday. It’s one of those little pop-up shows, and the director is like, “You don’t have to come in drag.” I was like, “Well if I’m not going to find out how the joke works in a dress, what’s the point of even coming?”
McIntyre: I wonder how some of those jokes would land without the crazy makeup and huge wig and all that.
Mattel: Drag is the last frontier of not-PC comedy. We say the worst things, and I’m a six-foot-tall white guy with a shaved head, which isn’t really the look when you’re doing really off-color comedy,
McIntyre: Not these days.
Mattel: So, I’m excited to do it. I’m so excited for this tour. I’ve never felt this way about a tour before.
McIntyre: So, you’ve got the album and the tour, and that takes you through the spring. What else is coming up in 2020?
Mattel: Well, for my makeup company, we came up with 17 products last year, and we’re probably putting out another 20 this year. Katya and I are starting season five of UNHhhh. My Netflix/YouTube series I Like To Watch, is doing really good. We just filmed six more.
Barbara is coming out. Oh my God, I don’t even know if I can say this yet. You might have the exclusive, but the bad thing about being Trixie is I’m my own boss, so I give away information by accident all the time. I recorded a 22-minute comedy special called Trixie Mattel, One Night Only. I recorded it in my living room in my real house. So, that’s psycho, and that comes out within the next two weeks.
McIntyre: Where do we see that?
Mattel: It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever done. It’ll be on my personal YouTube. I spent my own money on it, and it’s the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever done in my whole fucking life. There are people who don’t even think I’m funny who I’ve shown it to. My boyfriend, who thinks I’m funny but not drop dead funny, he lost it. He was like, “This is the best thing you’ve ever done.” It’s so fucking funny. I don’t want to give away too much, but let’s just say it’s in my house, and it’s a different type of audience, very different.
McIntyre: Wow. I can’t wait to see that.
Mattel: I think you won’t believe who I’m performing for. It’s nuts. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever made.
McIntyre: I thought last year was huge for you, but it sounds like this is going to be your year.
Mattel: I just need to learn how to calm down. I need to be more like Katya because Katya comes and goes with the wind. She’ll show up to work, but she’s not trying to overdo it. You know what I mean? Meanwhile, I’m every waking moment on the verge of a nervous breakdown because I’m always trying to do more. But, I feel like I represent every independent gay artist, and how fucking dare I say no to opportunities. If you have an opportunity, you have to take it on behalf of everybody who also would want that. You know?
McIntyre: Yeah. I get that.
Mattel: How many drag queens would be like, “No thank you, I can’t do the special right now. Bye-bye.”
