Today we’d like to introduce you to Flamy Grant.
Hi Flamy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a 39-year-old nonbinary badass drag queen from the Bible Belt now making a name for herself in San Diego and online.
The pandemic gave me a lot of extra time, so 2020 was the year Flamy was really born. Since the world was essentially shut down, my drag evolution happened online. Every Thursday night from March 2020 and deep in 2021, my housemates (who are also musicians) and I put on a live YouTube/Facebook show we call Heathen Happy Hour: a cover concert over cocktails where we sing songs our listeners request based on that week’s theme. It gave me the time, space, and small audience where I could develop my makeup, costuming, and performance skills. Flamy also had some luck on TikTok with a few videos going viral, and having these creative outlets during the pandemic have helped me thrive during a hard year.
Now that the world has been reopening, I’ve taken Flamy to live stages here in San Diego and beyond. I’ve performed in several drag shows at bars in Hillcrest, concerts across San Diego and Orange counties, and even a festival in North Carolina. And currently on Fridays, I host a karaoke night at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I grew up singing in church and school musicals. In my family, faith was everything: we were deeply devout, conservative evangelicals. The only music that I was allowed to listen to was whatever was available at our local Christian bookstore, so while my high school friends were obsessing over Britney and Backstreet Boys, I was jamming to Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” (and whatever Lilith Fair compilations I could sneak into the house). I’ve since left that religion behind, but I’ll always love Amy Grant. While my drag doesn’t impersonate her, it’s a bit of an homage as well as a tip of the hat to the fires I’ve had to go through to get free of the oppressive religion that raised me.
I’ve been a singer since I could use my vocal cords, and I get my voice from my mom, who was always singing. My day job is in marketing, but I’ve always had a music project or two keeping me busy: performing as a solo singer/songwriter, in choral groups, in several bands (including my queer pop-hop duo Girlboy, where I’m the singing half to my lesbian bandmate’s fierce rapper), and even as a worship leader in a few different churches over the years. I taught myself to play guitar in high school and it’s a part of my drag performance today.
It’s taken a long time to work through my religious trauma, and because of that, I’ve always been a late bloomer: I didn’t fully come out until I was 24, didn’t have a romantic relationship until 28, and didn’t start drag until 2020 during the pandemic at the age of 37! I had gone out in drag a couple of times (I’m a Halloween queen), but it wasn’t untilquarantine with a bunch of extra time on my hands that I decided to stop dabbling and start doing.
Flamy is how I free myself and, it’s turned out, how I connect with other people who need a little liberation. If my sexuality and identity hadn’t been so repressed by toxic religion, I’m sure I would have found drag earlier—but I have no regrets. Even a little later in life, it’s a beautiful thing to discover that all of your favorite things—music and makeup and performing and even spirituality—can come together in an empowering, fabulous persona.
Although I’ve been performing my whole life, it was drag that helped me finally realize how my strange experiences with religious trauma, my queerness, my love for music, and my passion for helping people stuck in toxic environments all come together in Flamy Grant. She’s a fierce fighter for justice who has a powerful set of pipes, a great sense of humor, and lots of love to give. I want my drag to be about self-discovery and space-making: giving people room to simply be themselves and empowering them to throw off the things holding them back. Flamy is a shame-slaying, soothsaying, hip-swaying heathen. I do what I do because I know what it’s like to believe you don’t deserve happiness. For anyone oppressed by shame and fear, Flamy is here to shine floodlights on the way out and to remind them they are SO not alone.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Flamy is a multi-hyphenate for sure: drag queen, singer, songwriter, speaker, performing artist. I’ve done traditional drag performances involving lip syncs and costumes, music/concert performance both solo and as part of a band, and speaking in drag about the spiritual side of this art form. I’m also currently recording my first album as Flamy, a collection of original folk songs with a little bit of a fabulous spin on the genre. And I’m a sparkling host who’s emcee’d corporate events, viewings of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and karaoke nights.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
It’s never too late to start a second act, and we can heal our own past trauma by returning to the person we were as children—before the world started forcing us into the boxes that kept us captive for so long.
Contact Info:
- Email: flamygrant@gmail.com
- Website: www.flamygrant.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flamygrant/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flamygrant
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/flamygrant
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbgBGjEcEXcLa074iQsBNig
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@flamygrant
Image Credits
Haley Hill, Amber Cantorna, Lacey Weil
