Mirah, the guitar-slinging, sweetly singing folk pop princess of the west coast, hadn’t had a studio album in four years, but now she’s promoting her new album (a)spera with a tour with rumored new girlfriend — Thao Nguyen (of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down.)
After a collaborative set together at the Noise Pop festival in San Francisco, excitement has been mounting.
When asked if the two are romantically involved, Mirah was as evasive with her answer as she was with answering the question of why she recently moved to San Francisco from Portland. Leaving the Pacific Northwest clearly became easier when her long term relationship with Emily Kingan of The Haggard ended, so she’s due for a rebound. Seeing as they make beautiful music together, the maybe-straight-maybe-not Thao seems like a decent fling — or maybe more.
There are only a couple dates left this summer and Mirah won’t talk about future plans specifically, but the pair do have more projects in the works and Mirah promises it’ll be “something good.”
But perhaps most interesting is what she had to say regarding playing the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which has a controversial policy that turns away transwomen. Bitch recently came under fire and was even banned from a queer music festival called Out/Loud at the University of Oregon in Eugene due to allegations that she made transphobic remarks.
MichFest gets protesters every year setting up a spot just outside called Camp Trans, and queer musicians The Butchies have also gotten flack for playing to fest. But Mirah puts it this way:
I feel like people who are in the process of their own self-discovery of their own identity politics tend to be pretty reactive. And that’s fine because people have to go through that. But personally, I feel like the world is a really big place and I don’t want to get bogged down in smallness. I want to be open, receptive and respectful from my own self, and I want to do the good work where I can do it. But I don’t know, I just feel like that might not have a happened if it was not a show at a college.
So, hopefully, queer musicians can continue to come together for both entertainment and justice in the spirit of cooperation.
