James McMurtry performs in drag in Billings to protest Montana law
McMurtry returned for his encore dressed in full drag. He wore a red dress covered in patterned flowers, a black scarf with matching beret, a string of pearls, a pair of fishnets and a full face of makeup. He was joined by his opener BettySoo, a fellow Texas-based singer-songwriter, who played accordion while dressed in a suit with a mustache grease penciled onto her face.
“I hear ya’ll got a law on the books that says what we’re doing here is illegal,” McMurtry said from the stage, before launching into a rip-roaring version of “Lobo Town.”
McMurtry was referring to House Bill 359, which passed on May 2, the final day of Montana’s 2023 legislative session. The bill, which prohibits minors from attending “sexually oriented or obscene performances on public property,” was signed into law by Gov. Greg Gianforte on May 22.
HB 359 defines a drag queen as “a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic famine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup,” which certainly applies to what McMurtry was wearing. And, as he gleefully pointed out from the stage — as well as in a previous interview with the Billings Gazette — could theoretically apply to rodeo clowns, no strangers to outlandish clothing and caked on makeup.
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The law is currently blocked, stuck in a sort of judicial limbo after a federal judge issued a temporary block on July 28, in advance of Helena’s Montana Pride Festival.
McMurtry has dressed in drag before, first in Tennessee and his home state of Texas. Both states have similar anti-drag laws as Montana. The Tennessee law was also blocked by the courts, and drag artists in Texas are suing to block the law there.
The singer wrote about his "civil disobedience" in Rolling Stone, contending that "Every man should wear a dress once or twice, just to learn a thing or two."
The first time he did it in Tennessee, an audience member left the venue and tried to flag down a police officer to have McMurtry and his band arrested.
Folks at the Billings show didn’t seem to mind. If anything, the crowd, a hodgepodge of Billings hipsters and cowboys in wide hats and pearl snapped shirts, got even louder after McMurtry appeared in drag. Great art can act as a bridge, a common ground for disparate groups to meet, as people.
He also performed his encore in drag at a show at Bozeman’s Rialto Theatre on Friday night, cheekily performing his 2002 song “Red Dress.”
But “Lobo Town” felt like an even better fit. He introduced the song as being about the “real rural America,” and it’s a narrative about the anger and frustration that befalls people abandoned to the margins of society. McMurtry’s job, it seems, is to lift them up, and give them a voice, and more than anything, remind them they’re never alone in this, even on the wide, windy prairies.
“When they only know you by your car,” he sang. “It’s who you come from, not who you are.”
“Pass judgement if you dare,” he snarled, as cheers filled up the Pub Station. “See if any of us care.”