When Orville Peck premiered his cinematic, openly queer take on country with 2019’s Pony, he donned a black, face-covering fringe mask – and played around noon at that year’s ACL Festival. This year, the returning artist moves to a later start time with two more albums under his belt – including August duets record Stampede, featuring greats like Willie Nelson, Elton John, and Kylie Minogue – and bookends his festival with two additional Austin shows, Oct. 9 at Party for the Parks and Oct. 12 at Stubb’s. His mask, in line with his newfound confidence, hangs a lot shorter now.
Austin Chronicle: What made you want to go the duet route for LP No. 3?
Orville Peck: I’ve always wanted to do a duet album. I thought it would be later in my career, but Willie Nelson asked me if I wanted to sing a duet of “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” with him, and so then that kicked off the potential idea for what would become Stampede.
AC: What was it like doing that cover with him?
OP: Pretty much the final boss of validation [laughs]. It was very affirming as an artist, as a fan of Willie Nelson, as a queer person as well, that this iconic great of country music wanted to not only do a song with me, but this song in particular. It was really special.
AC: Country is an especially rife genre when it comes to duets. What were you trying to bring to that canon?
OP: I love all of the iconic duets throughout country music, like Dolly [Parton] and Porter [Wagoner] and Tammy [Wynette] and George [Jones] … there’s so many. And so I wanted to bring my version of that, of course. One of the important tracks that I wanted to bring into that canon was doing “Rhinestone Cowboy” with Fancy Hagood, Waylon Payne, and TJ Osborne, because they are the other three out, proud gay men in country music. So I wanted to bring all of us together and do something not just cool and beautiful and fun, but also, hopefully, sort of important.
AC: At the same time that anti-LGBTQ legislation has skyrocketed, we’ve also been blessed with a slew of out and proud artists. From your perspective, what has changed, for better or for worse?
OP: I think things have changed a lot. I think sometimes it’s hard to see, because some people want to take it back so far. You talk about things like the anti-LGBTQ legislation, or bigotry, or stigmas around drag queens and trans people. Those things make us feel like we haven’t made any progress. But I remember when I was a kid, I was always out and openly gay, and other than Elton John and Freddie Mercury, I didn’t really have any kind of queer artists to look up to as role models, or anything that I could aspire to. There was basically no representation of queer people in media. We weren’t really represented in films unless it was part of tragedy or extreme comedy. And so [compared] to now, I think … There are people out there doing a pretty decent job of including way more queer representation in film and TV and media. There’s a lot more people who are encouraged to be themselves and be out in music, in all kinds of professions.
AC: You first played ACL in 2019. What do you remember about that show, and what are you looking forward to about coming back?
OP: ACL is genuinely, actually my favorite festival. It always stands out to me. When we played it in 2019 it was so much fun. It was right in the middle of this whirlwind. [There were] steep shifts in where my career was at, success-wise. Every day seemed to be this new, crazy thing that was happening for me, and so playing ACL that year was so much fun. I’ve always loved that they curate the lineups so well. This year especially, I think the lineup is so good. I’m so excited to see so many people on the lineup. And I love Texas. Everyone knows that Texas is one of my favorite states. I almost moved to Austin at one point, so that’s how much I actually love it.
Sunday 6 & 13, 4:25pm, Honda Stage
This article appears in October 4 • 2024.
