Shawna Virago, Trans Pioneer
Anger, rage, and plenty of heart pour from 'Blood in Her Dreams'
Shawna Virago quakes with fury. Stemming from constant attacks and legislation lobbied at the LGBTQ+ community, Virago’s rage is unruly, but not unfounded. Hundreds of anti-trans bills are working their way through various government bodies as we speak; it’s a time of unrest that seems to be coming to a head.
“It’s a very perplexing time. It's political anger and that of the conservative/religious,” shares Virago during our Good Country conversation. “They also seem to not care about the environment and lack compassion for other people. I don't think we are raised in this culture in our country to learn about compassion or empathy. It would even be looked down upon.”
What is most evident in our chat is that Virago possesses a tremendous heart, one that extends through the phone and attracts warmth and kindness. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Across her new record, Blood in Her Dreams, her anger bubbles up to the surface as she attempts to understand the prevalence of hatred flooding this country.
Her quest for truth begins with the harmonica-laden title track, in which she tells the tale of a woman who “doesn’t understand her anger,” Virago describes. “What the anger is about is… I have family members who voted for Trump and I don't understand why they identify with him. It’s almost like that phrase: the banality of evil.”
She continues dissecting the song, “She goes through life being angry. I don't think there's anything I would say catastrophic that she's endured. It’s maybe a lifetime narrative and feeling left out of something. A lot of people are jealous of the perceived civil rights gains of the BIPOC communities and queer communities. They feel no one's paying attention to them.”
Throughout Blood in Her Dreams, Virago unpacks such lyrical poignancy that you can’t help but discover yourself nestled in its ruffled layers. In “This Girl Felt Hounded,” she delivers the line “you can’t buy a ghost a drink” with a touching softness, but it hits like an anvil. There’s a particularly raw sensibility to the production and the instrumental friction, giving the song further emotional urgency.
In working with dear friend Grace Coleman (engineer and co-producer on the project), the team kept “it in the cowpunk vein,” notes Virago. “There's a melancholy with the character. She's never learned how to make good choices, especially with men. That's something that I'm interested in also. She's out of the bad relationship, but she's longing for it at the same time. There are these contradictions.”
Woven into the album is a Southern Gothic sensibility, too, with the words Virago so thoughtfully chooses. With “ghost” or “blood,” she leans into dark imagery to tell her stories. “I was drawn to the Southern Gothic approach of trying to capture these worlds. On the one hand, there's this ethereal quality because ‘ghost’ does show up… but what does that word even really mean? We have definitions, but then it gets into the idea of belief, and it can mean different things to different people.”
“Then, it’s all grounded in the corporeal, like blood or physical action,” she adds. “What's interesting is the characters don't have agency. They don't have much space to act in their lives.”
Virago, who’s been living authentically since the early ‘80s, wields her agency throughout Blood in Her Dreams – on which she also reconciles getting older and the younger generation’s widening, inclusionary space. “Time is an illusion. I always say if it's an illusion, it kicks pretty hard. I am very aware that I came out at a very different time,” she says. “A lot of the songs are centered in a time that is long past, long gone in San Francisco. The bars are gone. People are gone. The small generation of trans women who were older than me by 10 or 20 years is mostly gone, too. A way of relating to each other – the way they related to me or I related to them – is a thing of the past.”
“When I started out playing in clubs and bars, I was usually the only out trans person. And that's no longer true. Sometimes it's hard for me to reconcile that,” she concludes. “There are people who are supportive of trans musicians, and there are trans and gender non-conforming people in the audiences. That is something I'm grateful for, and I may never actually get used to it.”
Photo Credit: Shawna Virago by Lydia Daniller.
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great write up!