AE: Do you ever play gay venues or gay and lesbian festivals, and do you notice a significant lesbian presence in your fan base?
MG: They are finding me, and I'm excited about that. But I've tried to play the gay festivals and they don't want me. Because I'm “country†they don't like me. I don't know what it is! I've applied to [the] Michigan [Womyn's Music Festival] and to those cruises. And I have all the rejection letters. The answer is “no.â€
AE: And yet you just told me that you consider your music to be “folk.†Jeez, if that's not lesbian, what is?
MG: Maybe it's not. I don't sing “gay†songs, I'm way past that. I'm a songwriter that's gay. I want the emphasis on the right syllable here. I don't make an issue of it. I don't care if people are gay or straight. Most of my friends, I pick ‘em because of who they are, not who they sleep with. My friends are my friends because I just like ‘em. Their sexuality is just completely incidental. As a kid, I had to have all gay friends because I was so afraid. I've grown older and less and less do I do that. I'm picking people for a different reason. Out of the ghetto and into the real world! And we're worthy. We have the right to be out there and so many people have led the way. Look at Ellen. She's not a gay comedian. She's a comedian that's gay.
AE: It's odd to me that you would have to write songs specifically about being a lesbian in order to play a festival. You're a lesbian, you're singing about your life. Doesn't that qualify as lesbian music?
MG: Pigeonholing keeps you in the ghetto. I like the ghetto, I have lots of friends there. But I don't want to live there. I want to play everywhere. And if were just to play in that one particular place, it would limit my ability to connect to everybody.
AE: Your influences must be pretty varied.
MG: Yeah, it has to do with the heart and soul of the work. Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Ferron all in the same breath, and it makes sense to me.
AE: Regarding your new album, what was on your mind when you were composing the songs, and what tone did you bring to the experience of recording this album?
MG: Here's my process. There's an inspiration, a spark of something that comes across my mind and my heart, and I feel like there's something I need to say. And maybe it's wrapped around a word or a phrase or a title, and then I start to try to open it up bigger and see what's in there. And then I chase down words, to get to the right words to express it. Then I have my guitar in my hand and I'm trying to find the notes to emphasize the words and compliment the feeling. And eventually I end up with a song, and then over a couple of years I end up with enough songs to make a record. So it captures moments of my life and moments in American history really. It captures our time, hopefully.
Then you put it together and put a record out and it's a body of work. And eventually, looking back, I'll be able to see what it all means. But I'm still in the microscopic part of making sure it was all put together right. It's a lot of little decisions, hundreds of thousands of little decisions, to make it come together. Usually, I get the big picture after all the press comes out. The journalists are able to put into words what this means. I don't know that. The cumulative effect, I don't know that. I think a lot of my perspective comes from the overall impressions of journalists and fans. Isn't that backwards? It should be the other way, but I don't have an intentionality. I'm trying to find the truth and I'm trying to find a way to express my inspiration, but I don't have the ability to know what all of that means. You can't write in the big picture, you write one word at a time.
