[CANCELED] Austin Lucas returns to Orlando in the time of Don’t Say Gay

Update: On Wednesday morning, July 19, Austin Lucas canceled the entirety of their July tour. Lucas posted a statement on social media explaining their actions (read in full on their Instagram): "To all you beautiful, caring folks out in the world. Things have coalesced with regards to my health in a most unexpected way over the past week, leading me to make the difficult choice to cancel the shows set to take place starting this coming Thursday with Have Gun Will Travel." Refunds can be had at point of purchase. HOWEVER, Have Gun Will Travel will still be playing the scheduled date at Will's Pub on Saturday, July 22.

When this writer last saw Austin Lucas onstage in Orlando, it was as part of The Round-Up tour featuring a cavalcade of queer and gay country artists headlined by the legendary Lavender Country in 2022. The tour was the brainchild of Lucas, and the performer took the stage proudly embracing their own queerness, long hair in pigtails, sporting a cute thrifted dress and smiling beatifically.

"This was my first tour where I was out with other openly queer and gay artists and trans people. And it was so celebratory and exalted because I wanted to create a space where a lot of people had a voice. I also wanted to be able to say, 'I'm fucking here and I'm queer. And if you don't like it, I don't care,'" remembers Lucas.

This Saturday night's show is in many ways the opposite side of that same representational coin. Whereas The Round Up was a celebratory assertion of identity, this new tour feels more urgent, like a dire alarm being sounded. And Lucas' setlist will be fortified with songs from none other than incendiary punks Against Me!

What began as a lighthearted Twitter exchange between Lucas and Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace in the pandemic year of 2020 about how Lucas was going to make Reinventing Reinventing Axl Rose (to which Grace replied, "I would love to hear that"), soon spiraled into a livestream, then a frantic two-day recording session, which yielded eight Against Me! covers (the fruits of which will be available on vinyl soonish as Reinventing Against Me!) and now a tour across the South this month.

Though at the time of our conversation, Lucas only had about three shows from this tour under their belt, they talked about how AM!'s "Black Me Out" is "hitting really fucking hard" onstage nightly. Besides the themes of music industry mistreatment, the song has also — for Lucas — become a parable about how "discourse in the United States has turned so dramatically against queer and trans people."

"It's got this message of 'go fuck yourself' towards the current climate that has so significantly vilified trans people," says Lucas. "And it slaps, and every night it feels right and the way that the crowd responds to it ... it's very cathartic."

For Lucas, the music of Grace and Against Me! has been a touchstone going back many years. "She's, in my opinion, one of the great American songwriters," reflects Lucas.

We ask Lucas how they feel about returning to familiar stages in Florida at the same time as Tallahassee is doing its hateful and dangerous performance art in the form of Don't Say Gay, anti-trans and anti-drag legislation.

"I thought about whether or not I wanted to go to Florida. And the fact is, I'm not an enormous artist, who is providing something for the economy of Florida by showing up and hosting an arena tour or something like that," considers Lucas. "I'm telling Florida's politics to go fuck itself and hopefully providing a safe space for the people who need it who still live there.

"I feel very strongly about being a person who is showing up as a radical queer person for the other radical queer people in Florida."

Location Details

Will's Pub

1042 N. Mills Ave., Orlando Mills 50

willspub.org