If you think that the live music scene in Portland’s gay bars is dominated by karaoke, you’d be dead ... right!
From STYXX to Spring Street to Blackstones, all three of Portland’s gay enclaves have, in recent years, limited their entertainment options to the perennial activity that allows for some people to publicly make fools of themselves and for their friends to have valuable ammunition should blackmail be necessary in the future.
Still, there are those in the gay scene who, for lack of a back-up band, their own mic, or an acoustic guitar, fancy themselves local stars. Among them is Wil Whelan aka DJ Kid Billy who, for better or worse, has been wont to express himself (and, with more than just a modicum of talent, mind you) regularly at all the bars for nearly ten years. Whelan admits, though, that good karaoke does not a music scene make.
“Being a DJ here, I’d love to pat myself on the back and say I’m the epicenter of the music scene in gay Portland, but the fact is, there isn’t one. Karaoke is still going strong, but I don’t really consider it part of the music scene. Still, I love to go sing karaoke, and I think it’s amazing the amount of talent you can find at a karaoke night at Spring Street,” Whelan marvels.
It wasn’t always that way. Sisters, the lesbian locale of choice that closed last year, was much more in touch with live music — it could be argued that lesbians are much more amenable to sitting still or cuddling up to hear torture rock a la Melissa Etheridge than their male counterparts.
The guys want entertainment, and there was a time when they wanted spectacle. In Portland, that was most often achieved through nearly regular drag shows, a scene that has also gone the way of the Mary Kay powder puff.
“Yes, the drag scene is dead in Portland, too. I miss the days of ‘Marlena’ and ‘Ashley’ (God rest their souls),” waxes Whelan.
“Drag has been dead in Portland for a while now. Every now and then ‘Danielle’ will put together a show at Blackstones, but big full-blown, outrageously fun, campy and twisted drag shows are a thing of the past here.”
One observer attributes the glut of entertainment in the gay bars to a greater assimilation within the community — gay men and women feel just at home at many of the straight bars that provide live entertainment (Geno’s or The Big Easy) as they do at their own haunts. And, aside from the occasional drag show, that’s how it’s been in Portland for a long time. Today’s Sly Chi, a favorite among the gay set and the headliner at 2004’s Southern Maine Pride has replaced such mid- to late ’90s bands as Chuckle Head, another gay fave that drew a sizeable crowd at places like Granny Killams or Stonecoast Brewery.
