Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Poignantly noted on Facebook on Friday by Earl Jackson, a just-released video of Orville Peck and Willie Nelson joined in a moving performance of “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other”, which you can view here.

Actually, you should view it before reading on with this posting, even if — maybe especially if — you’ve never heard of Ned Sublette’s wry 1981 song, which has been something of a Willie Nelson project for two decades now (he recorded a version of it in 2006) and even if you’ve never heard of the young gay country singer who performs, masked, under the name Orville Peck. Enjoy the song — which is more complex than might at first appear — and the performance, with Peck’s warm, strong country voice paired with Nelson’s raspy but equally strong country voice (a real marvel for a 90-year-old), and Orville’s deep seriousness paired with Willie’s sweet but earnest smiles. So you should listen to their performance, but you should also watch it.

(#1) From the YouTube video: Orville and Willie under a tree, out in the middle of a fenced field, singing and strumming in celebration of gay desire and coupling — urgently conveying a social and political message

Some press coverage. Two samplings. Starting with the story on the Rolling Stone site, “Willie Nelson Thinks Queer Message in Orville Peck Video Is ‘More Important Than Ever’” by Tomás Mier on 4/5/24, with the subhead:

“With all the rhetoric surrounding the LGBTQIA+ community these days, it is so encouraging to have real allies like Willie that aren’t afraid to stand proudly next to us,” Peck says

And then the story on the People magazine site, “Orville Peck and Willie Nelson Team Up for New Version of ‘Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other'” by Jack Irvin on 4/5/24, with the subhead:

“Willie kept talking about how the subject matter in this song was more important than ever,” said Peck in a new interview about the Ned Sublette cover

And the beginning of the story:

Orville Peck and Wille Nelson are pretty sure some cowboys might be gay.

On April 5, the country artists teamed up for a new cover of Ned Sublette’s 1981 song “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” for Peck’s upcoming Stampede project.

(#2) Peck on a pickup (photo: Ben Prince), playing with the high-masculinity stereotype of the cowboy (rough, dirty, sweaty, tough as nails — and, oh yes, also gay as fuck)

Nelson, 90, first recorded a version of the famous tongue-in-cheek queer country anthem in 2006, while Peck, 36, previously covered the classic at the Red Headed Stranger’s 90th birthday party in Los Angeles last April.

The song. A note on “Cowboys are Frequently” in my 2/20/20 posting “Love nest”, in a section (originally posted on AZBlogX on 8/26/10, in “Lounges and motels”) on three poems (the third, “Cheaters’ Motel”, by Ned Sublette) about getting sex in places devoted to this purpose — specifically, cocktail lounges, bars, and motels, with the comment:

(just to note Sublette’s wry 1981 song “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other” — written during the Urban Cowboy fad while he was living next to a gay country bar on Christopher St. in the West Village called Boots and Saddles, and covered by Willie Nelson in 2006 and by others)

Pretty much everybody describes the song as wry or tongue-in-cheek, because it takes the widespread sexual folklore of homosexual orientation as a form of gender dysphoria (an idea that had been thoroughly discredited by 1981, as Sublette knew well) and just runs with it:

I believe to my soul that inside every man, there’s the feminine
And inside every lady, there’s a deep manly voice loud and clear

… Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
Say, what do you think all them saddles and boots was about?
And there’s many a cowboy who don’t understand the way that he feels for his brother
And inside every cowboy, there’s a lady that’d love to slip out

[Sidenotes: gender dysphoria is a real thing, but I believe it should be viewed as just another variant, another way of being, in the world of gender and sexuality, requiring not therapy but accommodation. But then some of my best friends have been gender-dysphoric.

Meanwhile, the language of homosexual desire as gender dysphoria is available for metaphorical use. I am entirely happy with characterizing myself, in the appropriate social context, as a pussy-assed faggot; this is an excellent highly compacted metaphorical reference to significant aspects of  my sexual desires (not all of them, in all of their aspects — that would take pages of text — but some important parts). But the label pussy-assed is metaphorical, not literal — I don’t think I have a vagina, nor do I want one, nor do I think of myself as a woman; I’m a guy who, among other things, really enjoys getting pronged. And pussy-assed is a lot more fun to say than anally receptive.

There are, of course, men who do see themselves as women in (some of their) their sexual acts, though (not necessarily) in other parts of their lives; that’s a real thing, and once again some of my best friends etc. The House of G&S has many rooms.]

Meanwhile, for the sake of argument, so to speak, Sublette’s “Cowboys Frequently” buys  the folklore theory of queerness as gender dysphoria and celebrates queerness anyway. His point is that it doesn’t fuckin’ matter: even if queerfolk actually were all confused about their gender, their queerness should be a reason for dancing in the streets (well, in gay bars and pride parades, at least). And singing, lots of singing . They Deserve a Track Today.

Willie Nelson saw long ago that in fact this was serious business, that waves of backlash against gay rights would break again and again; in particular, he sees that a powerful wave of this sort is breaking right now, so that he once again would have to be singing, singing for our lives.

This entry was posted on April 7, 2024 at 9:11 am and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Masculinity, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.