Laura Jane Grace Is Just Asking Questions

It’s tough to imagine a better rock star for this moment in America than Laura Jane Grace. The founder of the seminal Florida punk band Against Me! has long been known for songwriting that blends the personal and political, as well as visceral, cathartic live shows. Now 44, she’s been releasing records and touring in bands for nearly 30 years. And while her cast of supporting players sometimes changes from album to album, Grace’s ethos is consistent, raising a melodic middle finger to inequality, injustice and authoritarianism. Last year, Rolling Stone called her “the fiercest punk singer of our time.”

Since coming out in 2012 (and releasing the critically acclaimed record Transgender Dysphoria Blues), Grace has also become a hero to a generation of LGBTQ+ punks, and used her platform to speak out for transgender rights. Her outspokenness does not usually go massively viral, however — until last month. That’s when Grace, performing at a Bernie Sanders rally in Kenosha, Washington, sang a catchy new sing-along called “Your God (God’s Dick),” with lyrics that pose detailed questions about the Judeo-Christian deity’s theoretical anatomy.

Conservative commentators promptly lost their minds: Fox News called it “pure evil”; the far-right social media account Libs of TikTok described it as a “degenerate, disgusting, anti-Christian song.” Comedians Dana Carvey and David Spade, who apparently have a podcast, mocked it on said podcast. (Actor-turned-Bible-thumper Russell Brand, for his part, called the performance “blasphemy” in a March 12 social media post. He was charged on April 4 with the rape and sexual assault of four different women.)

Despite a few death threats, Grace has taken it in stride — and taken it on the road. The track is a single off Adventure Club, a new full-length that she’ll release in July. At the time of this interview, she was a week into a U.S. tour with backing band the Mississippi Medicals. They play Friday, April 18 at Cornerstone in Berkeley and Saturday, April 19 at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I understand you made this new album in Greece last summer, as part of a dreamy-sounding fellowship from the Onassis AiR Foundation. But many of the songs on Adventure Club are about the state of affairs in the U.S. How did it affect the songs to be writing about America from afar?

I actually went in with three or four songs in my back pocket, and some of them just caught up with the zeitgeist. For instance, I’ve been working on the song “Mine Me Mine” since probably 2018, and it never really clicked [until now]. Same with a song like “World War III.” I wish it wasn’t lining up well politically, right? I wish the songs were completely irrelevant.

The song “God’s Dick,” I wrote while I was in Greece, actually at the Onassis AiR offices. They have these amazing work spaces where you’re like an exhibit: anybody walking by on the street can look and see whatever you’re working on. I had weekly check-ins where I would play what I was working on for the Onassis people and we’d talk about it. So it was interesting, when there was all the stink caused by right-wing people after the rally … I know, at face value, this may seem like knuckle-dragging toilet humor. But this is actually a really thought-out piece of work. I had to sit in front of a committee and be like, “This is the song I wrote. This is why I wrote it. This is what the lyrics are about,” and explain it to them with a straight face, you know?

It’s felt cool having that legitimacy added to it. There was more thought put into all these songs than any other previous record that I’ve put out, because I’ve already had to justify it to people who aren’t punk.

Were you surprised by the reaction to that performance at the rally?

It’s just people choosing to be offended, and then not actually looking deeply into it or recognizing that it is completely relevant to the conversation that’s happening right now. Right-wing Christians want to know what is going on in everybody’s pants. But then, if you flip it around and ask, OK, well, you’re referring to your God with male pronouns, and my understanding is that you imagine God to be, like, a guy in the sky wearing robes, with a beard? What does that mean? I have questions.

It’s also undeniably catchy. It’s just a very joyful, well-constructed anthem.

That song would not exist if I did not have to endure however many years of fucking being sent to church youth group as a teenager, and singing songs like [sings] “Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from heaven above with wisdom, power and love.”

So church was good for something after all.

All my first drug experiences, all my first sexual experiences, and all my first bands were at church.

I wanted to ask how you think about your safety on tour right now, given the onslaught of anti-trans bills and vitriol from this Trump administration. But I can also imagine it’s not like you felt 100% safe as a trans person touring the heartland for the last decade before this. Does it feel different now?

I’m trying to really gauge it, actually. Definitely traveling out west [over the past week], we stopped at a lot of places that, you go into the gas station, and they’re selling Trump bobbleheads or MAGA hats or whatever. And to me, it always seems like there’s a strange disconnect: the person behind the counter could be wearing a MAGA hat, and watching Fox News, and they could be enraged about trans issues. But if I walk up to the counter and have an interaction with them, they’re still friendly for the most part. It’s almost like the connection between what they’re seeing in the media hasn’t totally clicked into everyday life yet. But I don’t know when that’s gonna flip. Or if it’ll flip.

Also, right, the Trump billboards and things like that across the country have never gone away, since his first presidency. For a while, I was driving back and forth between Chicago and St. Louis pretty often, and there’s tons of Trump stuff in between Chicago and St. Louis — all across Illinois, which is a primarily blue state, right? But I think it’s cool to be able to travel and get a read on the country in that way. It’s something that I wish more people could do. I feel like you get a better understanding of the country if you’re traveling through it all the time, as opposed to just existing in your own little world.

You hear pretty frequently from young trans punks who tell you what your journey meant to them. What are queer young folks telling you right now at shows? Do kids ask you for advice?

I mean, I have all the same fears and uncertainties everyone else does. If anyone ever comes up to me and says that my story was a part of their story, that’s incredible. And I know exactly what that feels like, because I can look at the people who did that for me. But the big things that everyone’s concerned about right now are basic things, like access to hormones, or passports, name changes, gender marker change issues. And I don’t have any of the fucking answers for that stuff. It feels just as uncertain and scary for me too. We’re all very much in this together and figuring it out as we go.

You’ve been making protest music since your teens and early 20s, when the resistance was about fighting back against George W. Bush and the Iraq War. How does this moment feel similar or different to you?

What feels different to me is the way the DIY punk scene, or the activist scene, organized then. The underground network — whether that was people with zines, or punk houses doing shows — offered a real alternative to mainstream media, and how information was being disseminated. The protest movement that was happening around George Bush benefited from that. And very unfortunately, at this point, that structure and that whole network just feels like it’s gone. I don’t know if that’s everything shifting over to social media … but I do think, any kind of resistance or protest network organizing completely on social media, I feel like that’s a real mistake.

All the Colorado shows we just played, we had [trans-led social justice legal center] Bread and Roses come out and table at the shows, and it feels like that really resonated. There were a couple of [bills to protect gender-affirming healthcare] going through the Colorado political system while we were there, and there’s genuine excitement — excitement about trying to get organized, trying to put your frustrations or fears in a positive direction. So that’s a positive sign.

What’s your relationship like with social media these days? You’re so funny and sharp online, but I also wonder how someone like you could possibly navigate a media diet and not just spiral into despair looking at your phone when you have a seven-hour drive.

Oh, I definitely spiral into despair. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately because I feel like there’s been a tonality shift. I started being more active on Twitter and Instagram, back when those things started, at the push of record labels. But you can only post “Playing San Diego tonight!” so many times. So in between, you give your personal thoughts or shit takes, right?

But it seems like that worked better on Twitter when Twitter was still Twitter. It felt like a big group chat. And it was just an amazing resource — I remember being on tour in like 2015 in Portland, Oregon, and tweeting, “If anyone brings us donuts right now, we’ll give you guest list spots.” And 30 minutes later, somebody brought us a dozen donuts, and we hooked him up with guest list spots. Real communication in real time!

Also, I didn’t get into this [industry] to be a content creator. I want to play music. I want to write songs, and record songs, and play shows. All the other shit is being done to promote that, and to get the word out and to survive too, because some of those things [like Instagram reels paying musicians small royalties] have become revenue streams, even. In general it feels like we’re in a transitional period, everyone’s trying to figure out the new way forward.

You sound like you’re having so much fun on Adventure Club, despite the subject matter, and I’m curious how you think about the idea of joy as a form of protest. You’ll hear folks who were around during the AIDS crisis say “we buried our friends during the day, and then we went dancing at night” — this idea that fun is a necessary part of it.

I mean, you need that. You need to be restored, or else you’re just gonna burn out. With a song like “Mine Me Mine,” like I mentioned, I brought that song to Against Me! at one point, and it didn’t work out — and maybe that had a lot to do with it not being fun. I think they were the sessions we had right before the pandemic hit, and we were in a bad place, right? And you’re going in there and you’re singing songs about not-fun topics, and it’s not a fun time recording them, and it just burns you the fuck out. Whereas, with this, it was the balance of — again, I wish that the topics weren’t relevant. They are. But then, the experience behind recording them was fucking joyful. We went out swimming and snorkeling every day. You’re in the sun, you’re eating ice cream, and then you’re recording this music, and it restores you, and you need that, otherwise you’re going to grind yourself into the ground.

I think about that a lot, even in terms of parenting. Your child’s needs come first, but also you’re going to be a shitty parent if you don’t pay attention to your own needs. So there’s that balance of, you need to make sure you’re good in order to make sure they’re good.

As a product of Albany and Berkeley, California, I have to ask you about the great Operation Ivy cover sets you did a few months ago with Catbite. What did that mean to you, as someone who’s loved them since you were a kid?

They are one of my all-time favorite bands, and it was a surreal, full-circle moment in so many ways. I’ll tell you the best moral of the story, with being able to do those sets: When I was 14 or 15 years old, I got arrested by a bunch of cops, beat up, charged with a couple felonies — I was in some really deep fucking trouble. At the time, I was playing bass in this punk band, and my guitar player’s dad was a really high-powered attorney. So he bailed me out of jail that night. And he was like, “I will represent you in these court cases for free. But my stipulation is, you all have this show coming up in two weeks, and you can’t play ‘Officer’” — because he knew we liked to cover “Officer” by Operation Ivy. He was like, don’t play that song, and I’ll represent you for free.

And so first song of the set, I got up and fucking let out that “Ahhhh—” … we played “Officer.” And I lost my legal representation. My mom ended up having to pay for a lawyer out of pocket for me. Thank you, Mom. I lost the case, and it fucking sucked. I spent a whole summer on house arrest. It’s still on my record. But to be up on stage however many years later, covering all those Operation Ivy songs, and having it come full circle like that? That was really fucking affirming.

Laura Jane Grace and the Mississippi Medicals play with openers Alex Lahey and Rodeo Boys on Friday, April 18 at Cornerstone in Berkeley (details here) and Saturday, April 19 at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma (details here).