Travie Austin: Millennials, Masculinity and Musical Metamorphosis
This week, Dan welcomes Chicago-raised singer-songwriter and producer Travie Austin, whose catchy pop hooks blend with funk, rock, soul and "more than a touch of homo" coursing through his music.
Travie discusses millennial identity and how 90s/2000s divas like Destiny's Child and Whitney Houston shaped his confidence. The conversation explores toxic masculinity, with Travie arguing that masculinity and femininity should exist in harmony, and that toxic masculinity stems from the need to prove oneself to others.
The episode delves into Travie's upbringing on Chicago's South Side, where he discusses the harmful fetishisation of "the hood" in media and music. Travie shares his journey of discovering his Queer identity and how pornography initially shaped his understanding of Queer Black identity in harmful ways.
His gateway track recommendation is "The Juice," which combines blues, rock, funk and soul elements.
Find Travie at @iamtravieaustin on social platforms and streaming services.
Spotify playlist can be found HERE.
The podcast is on Instagram (@inthekeyofq) and Facebook (search: In the Key of Q).
Transcript
Dan
Hello and welcome to In the Key of Q, the podcast that celebrates Queer musicians and their stories. I'm Dan Hall, and by day I'm a documentary producer and director. But by night I fly the flag of the world's musical freaks and inverts. If you wish the guest on the show, please don't hesitate to drop me an email on inthekeyofq@gmail.com.
::Dan
Now this week's guest is a Chicago raised singer songwriter and producer. He's a multi-talented tour de force in the music scene with a background in acting and music. His catchy pop hooks blend seamlessly with his funk, rock and soul influences, and there is definitely more than a touch of the craic or homo coursing in there too. His music has been featured on hit shows like the CW's "All American: Homecoming", and he's constantly pushing boundaries as a genre bender inspired by everyone from Fallout Boy and Panic!
::Dan
At the Disco to Avril Lavigne and Boys Like Girls. My guests music is a reflection of his own experiences as a Queer millennial filled with passion, wit and a whole lot of attitude. Travie Austin, welcome to In the Key of Q.
::Travie Austin
Hello. Hello and thanks for having me.
::Travie Austin
I am a millennial, and that is the foundation of a lot of my personality and my sense of humour. I'm a 90s kid, and so I grew up listening to a lot of pop punk and a lot of, funk and a lot of disco. And I have a wild sense of humour that I like to infuse into everything I do, whether that be my acting, my stand up, or my music.
::Dan
So we'll just being a millennial mean to you.
::Travie Austin
I'm a little biased, but it seems like, millennials, we think that we we grew up in the best time. The best time of, like, music, the best time of TV film, like everything was just in its prime time. I talked to my therapist about this a lot, but some most millennials are huge advocates for therapy and mental health and we were also on the brink of like social media.
::Travie Austin
So Facebook and Twitter and everything kind of blew up because of us making a world out of all of that. And I think it's a really cool thing to do, I think, and I'm excited to see what the future generations are able to do now that we've paved the way for so many things and the generations before us paved the way for us to be able to do what we did.
::Travie Austin
So I think it's okay to be proud to be of my generation, as long as I'm feeding into the next one.
::Dan
Absolutely. It does. And you're right. The 90s were a fantastic decade. I mean, as we're recording this. My housemate Murray is upstairs mainlining, Angel and Buster. Hahaha.
::Travie Austin
s and also the early: ::Travie Austin
Like, I still blast stuff from The Cheetah Girls and I am shameless about it. I love the era of Destiny's Child and the R&B girl groups and stuff throughout W. They helped shaped who I am right now.
::Dan
So you talk there about it moulding you, how did it mould you?
::Travie Austin
I think it's the empowerment of it and like I took refuge in the Divas, the people who just said it's okay to be you, it's okay if people talk down on you as long as you are always, uplifting yourself. And so Destiny's Child, Whitney Houston, the 3LW The Cheetah Girls, Ravens and Mon, Avril Levine, Celine Dion, all of those divas I took, refuge in their diva ness, and they helped mould me into the confident person that I am now.
::Travie Austin
I try to navigate this world as unapologetic as possible.
::Dan
But why do you think divas do you speak to us? Because historically, they always have done. You know, when you look at any Queer generation, there's always been a diva at the front of it Bette, Judy Garland, Bette, Liza Minnelli, Streisand. There is this connection. Why do you think there is this connection? Why are we not seeking men for example, if we're Queer males, why is it, in fact, these fantastic divas we're finding our home, our refuge?
::Travie Austin
Well, I mean, at the root of all of that, because even at the root of most homophobia is misogyny.
::Dan
And I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that.
::Travie Austin
And, and a lot of Queer men grew up not feeling safe and not feeling masculine enough or male enough in their homes or in their environments, whether that be school, day-care or whatever, like that. We're force fed all of these things about what men should be and how men should present and what boys are, and boys do this and girls do this.
::Travie Austin
So if we grew up liking the things that girls liked, then we saw ourselves as not enough of a boy or not enough of a man, and we felt shame for it. But these divas, they were out there saying, it's okay to be you. It is okay to like what you like and be a diva. And if you want to wear a dress or wear makeup or like if you want to, you know, move your hips when you dance like that doesn't make you any less of a person.
::Travie Austin
And we got those messages all the time from those divas. But we didn't get those messages like that from the male figures.
::Dan
I think masculinity is a really interesting subject because I, I suppose I could argue that I'm attracted to masculinity, but at the same time I can at the same time see that it's it's problematic when people write they are masculine on the grinder profile. Like, what does that mean?
::Travie Austin
I think people tend, well, grinder is a whole different, the, the, the level of, the way that people can hide behind a keyboard and say things as even if they're problematic, baffles my mind. But, I think masculinity is something that is flexible masculinity and femininity. And I think the the perfection will be a blend of the two, like, men that can accept their feminine aspects as, as on top of their masculine aspects.
::Travie Austin
And same with women who can accept their masculine aspects on top of their feminine aspects. That's where we find the cohesive unity in all of it. And I myself, I'm also attracted to masculinity to an extent, but not to the point where I like the toxic version of it. And I think toxic masculinity stems from other people's perception.
::Travie Austin
Like, I know my masculine aspects. I don't have to prove my masculinity to anyone. And I think toxic masculinity forms when people feel like they need to prove how masculine they are for someone else's approval.
::Dan
And I think it can have, certainly looking from the outside, add a whole new level of insanity when it comes to Black men. Almost all of the Black Queer guests I've interviewed on here have spoken about the toxic masculinity they feel comes with the fetishisation of Black Man.
::Travie Austin
Oh yeah, oh, yeah. There there's there are certain words that trigger me and trigger, reactions out of me when they're coming from another Queer person, especially another non, especially a non-Black Queer person like BBC is, which has a completely different meaning over there in the UK, but trigger words like that or like the idea of race play, which is very new to me.
::Travie Austin
I did not know that that was a thing that people enjoy, but that is something that I'm learning.
::Dan
Can you explain what is race play?
::Travie Austin
Let's say there's a Black man and a white man, and this white man who really, really gets turned on by like this Black man pretending to be a slave and having that sort of dominance over that Black man, and then that Black man really gets off on being the slave to this white man and being told what to do, and that I am less than you.
::Travie Austin
And yes, please call me the N-word. And they that I I'm, I don't want to keep kink shame anyone because everyone's entitled to their own little kink. But that is there's so much history behind all of that that that blurs the line. And I've also seen it in reverse, where, there have been white men who approached me that want it reversed, where they're like, we owe you.
::Travie Austin
We are our lives to Black man. So please make me your slave. Please shame me. Please shame me so much that I come and you're just like, whoa.
::Dan
And you're like, I'd like. I prefer gin and tonic, actually, please.
::Travie Austin
Yeah, I just, I just, I just I'm, I'm pretty. I'm pretty vanilla. I guess if that's the world that people are living in, I'm, I'm, I'm. I just don't belong.
::Dan
You're right to say I think, you know, not wanting to kink same people and and more power and all the power to people that have great and interesting and theatrical and varied sex lives. But it's it's you're right. It's a, it's a it's a slightly disconcerting space. And I don't know how to square that circle of not wanting to kink shame, but at the same time finding a behaviour problematic.
::Dan
You know, I find the fetishisation of Nazi uniforms problematic. And, you know, some people might argue, well, what better way to say fuck you to the Nazis and the fact that they put us in concentration camps? What better way to do that than to reverse them and turn them into a fucking crisis?
::Travie Austin
And I can see.
::Dan
That argument, but it's like it's I don't know, it's it's a bit uncomfortably with me.
::Travie Austin
That is what I've never heard of that being a thing I did. That's the thing.
::Dan
I think everything is a thing if you look hard enough.
::Travie Austin
Oh my God, my brain's like, I need to do research. But I also don't want to do research.
::Dan
Look up to someone else is Chrome browser.
::Travie Austin
Yeah, I don't want the FBI to like, go through my computer and be like, well, he was looking up Nazi porn and, wow. Okay, let's get this guy checked out.
::Travie Austin
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, pretty much in the hood to a single mom. And luckily for me, my mom is a angel. So she has been very supportive of my love of of me and everything I want to do my entire life. She was a creative. She was a dancer. She danced with the African Dance Company for years and she was a singer.
::Travie Austin
So she pushed me to do music. She put me in piano lessons, and although we didn't have much and she didn't have much to give financially, she gave it in love and support and that was enough to drive me. I wanted to be creative. I wanted to do music, I wanted to dance. I wanted to be funny.
::Travie Austin
I wanted to be on TV. I had so many wants and so many dreams and passions, and I was told so many times by other people on the outside, by teachers, classmates, other family members that you should chill, you should just focus on, you know, become an accountant, become a teacher, become something that can contribute to society. And to me, that wasn't that wasn't enough.
::Travie Austin
I became a scene kid when I was in high school and was dressing real goth and email for a bit, which, when you are in a predominantly Black neighbourhood and a predominantly Black school, everyone is wondering, how the hell did you get here? Because that's not what you're surrounded by. So that was influenced by stuff I saw on TV and music and stuff that I didn't see people that looked like me doing.
::Travie Austin
I wanted to do more of it. I developed this sense of like, I don't, I will not accept someone telling me no, and I will not. I will not accept someone telling me I can't do something and I push myself through it. I went to college. I studied musical theatre in college because it was something that I was told that I shouldn't do.
::Travie Austin
So I did it. I was told in college that I'm not going to do well in musical theatre because I am a short, dark skinned Black man, and there's not a lot of I need to either be really fat and funny to get those jovial roles, or I need to get really, really, really fit and muscular and become like this sort of.
::Travie Austin
I call it Mandingo fantasy for people. So they pretty much gave me two options minstrel or Mandingo, which I said no. And then the pandemic kind of ruined a lot of stuff for us, especially the creatives. The show I was in was through Universal Pictures. They were doing a stage adaptation of a, a movie musical.
::Travie Austin
I was in that that was like going to change my career. The pandemic shut that down. The pandemic took theatre away from me. It took TV away from me. It took live performance away from all of us. We couldn't do anything. And so I had to sit and really just focus on being creative at home. And that's when I started taking my music a little bit more seriously.
::Travie Austin
I love disco, I love funk, I love pop, I love rock, I love gospel, I love folk, I love everything, and so I have lyrics and melodies and all of these worlds always going through my brain. And so I just channelled that into creating.
::Dan
So where does that come from? I mean, first of all, I gotta say, I totally love the fact that you are genre agnostic because so am I. You know, my favourite songs on a playlist when I listen to Spotify, coming up with a track with a suggested track listing for me of my top played songs from last year, it'll just be all over the place like there is no there's there's no pattern to it.
::Dan
the tradition of the English: ::Travie Austin
It's like.
::Dan
In fact, I tell you what I've got. Yeah, you have to listen to a soundtrack album for a movie called The Wicker Man, not the remake, but the original British film. It's not.
::Travie Austin
It's not like a whisky.
::Dan
Yeah, it's a great film. It's a great film as well. I mean, it's a horrific film and it's a brilliant film, but the soundtrack is really. It's one of those amazing films where you're not sure where the film ends and the soundtrack begins. In that way. The Blade Runner does that as well. Whether they feel so interchangeable.
::Travie Austin
Yeah. Okay.
::Dan
And.
::Travie Austin
It's on my.
::Dan
List. It's just nuts. So I'd love to hear basically, I, me commissioning you to do a Wicker Man inspired EP, and if I could have that, please, in three weeks.
::Travie Austin
Okay. Yeah. I'll, I'll get in contact with my producers and we'll get on that.
::Dan
But you were talking, there about growing up, as you called it, in the hood. Now, this is an expression that is massively fetishised in terms of all dramas, in terms of movies, in terms of music. And we hear it all the time here. As someone who's genuinely been in that space for foreigners like me, can you just talk a bit about what that is like?
::Dan
You know, strip away the kind of fascist eyes Hollywood version of it? What is the reality of that?
::Travie Austin
Absolutely. And I think I think that's something that demographics and communities all over the world struggle with. I had family members who grew up in the suburbs of Indiana in a nice house. Their parents gave them everything that they wanted, and all they ever wanted to do was come into the city and like gang bang and try to be a part of the the hood antics.
::Travie Austin
And like me, a person I grew up in Inglewood, in Chicago on the South Side, and Inglewood is one of those neighbourhoods that you if you turn on the news in Chicago, they're talking about a shooting that happened in Inglewood. They're talking about the gang violence in Inglewood. They're talking about all of the shit that goes down in the neighbourhood I grew up in.
::Travie Austin
And so to be a person who lived in that space and then to see family members of mine who had everything handed to them, that I wish I had, the resources and the opportunities that they had. All they did was fetishise the the neighbourhood in which I lived, in the areas in which I lived, because and they were force fed that like by, you know, TV, media, rap music.
::Travie Austin
rstand. And especially in the: ::Travie Austin
They're not saying this is the best time. They're saying, no, my life wasn't shit, and I'm glad I escaped. And so that message gets lost, especially now they they make the hood seem like it's this. They associate that with like a level of coolness, a level of swagger, a level of like, oh, only the cool people survive the struggle, and people don't think that their experience is valid if they didn't have some sort of struggle.
::Travie Austin
So people will man, you factor that struggle or glorify a struggle. I had this I was talking to a co-worker the other day about about, current rappers like Jack Harlow. I always approach a white rapper with scepticism because I want to know, why are you doing it? What what your actual experience is and a lot of Jack Harlow's lyrics.
::Travie Austin
I talking about how he struggled and how he had this come up and how he had to work hard for everything he got. And then, you know, after a little bit of research, you find out, oh, Jack Harlow, I have rich parents. That's his struggle that he glorifies in his music. You can make up your persona from your computer.
::Travie Austin
You can be whoever you want to be by the keyboard. And people choose to be hood or ghetto or whatever they want to label that ass, because that's the cool thing.
::Dan
How does that make you feel? Somebody who is actually lived in that space and wanted to leave it and has left it?
::Travie Austin
There's a phrase a lot of Black Americans use, and it's like everybody wants to be Black until it's time to be Black. Our culture is rooted in our actual experience and the actual experience is not all sunshine and rainbows. And I think somewhere down the line that catches up to people.
::Dan
So when did you become aware of your Queer identity, and how did that fit in? In those early weeks with the world that you're living in?
::Travie Austin
I remember I was like, in third or fourth grade, and the girls next to me, there was like a Ta or someone that came in the room and all the girls next to me were like, oh my God, he's so cute. And I just repeated the same thing. I said, oh my God, he's so cute, right? And the amount of people that looked at me and just said, oh my God, you're gay, faggot.
::Travie Austin
I had no idea what that meant. And I had to go home and unsupervised, started looking up, what is gay? What is faggot? And the internet. It was a dangerous time in the 90s for a small child. Oh yeah, it's probably a dangerous time now, but it was a dangerous time for me. And unfortunately, I learned a lot about my early Queer identity from the internet because I didn't have people around me who I could connect with that were also going through the same struggles, or at least were vocal about it.
::Travie Austin
And I fell into a lot of traps, like gay porn. I learned a lot about my Black, my Queer Black identity from gay porn, which if anyone watches gay porn and you search Black men, it is the most stereotypical Mandingo, muscular, big dick. Whatever sort of energy that we get fantasise about now, that's how I learned to be Queer, and it was a very dangerous place.
::Dan
But what made you realise that that was not the norm? I think we all go through that slide journey generally with pornography, where we start to think, oh, actually the gulf between what I think is, is the norm in pornography is so far from what I am, and then we almost have to sort of reboot our sexuality with something.
::Dan
Did something like that happen with you?
::Travie Austin
Well, unfortunately for me, it was actually very recently in the past year. And it like I, I've lived my life very career driven, but there's always been this toxic underneath layer of, like, self-hatred. Hatred of my skin colour, hatred of my stature, hatred of, like, the way I am built on my sexual identity. Because I don't I've never measured up to the caricature of Black men that's been in porn.
::Travie Austin
And I've always felt I needed to. And, you know, online dating and Grindr in the absence of like that, also kind of reinforce that when people speak to a Black man on these in these spaces, they they already have an idea of what a Black man is because of what they've seen. It's in the past year or so that I've spent unlearning re reprogramming my brain, having a lot of therapy, having a lot of hard conversations, and just getting back to the root of what I, how I see myself and feeding my inner child.
::Travie Austin
Why did little Travis want to grow up to be before I knew what gay was, before I knew any of the things I know now, what drove little Travis? He wanted to be on TV. He wanted to be. You wanted to make music. He wanted to make people laugh and so everything I do now is to make a little Travis happy.
::Dan
Listening to your music. Which hands on heart. I genuinely, really love it. Like. Thank you. Really, really love it. I thought tear it all down. On your Black punk album. Really felt like an anthem that I had been missing in my youth because it's such, you know, as you, you know, as you might get it, I'm quite a mouthy political person, and, and that's sort of my whole attitude towards my Queer politics since I was 18 or 19.
::Dan
And what: ::Travie Austin
I If I'm making an album, it needs to be for a reason. And so with Black Punk, which is my alternate persona as a rock artist, I wanted to know. I want to go. What is, my thesis statement is Black porn. And I wanted it to be that amalgamation of Queerness. Blackness and rock and roll and rock and roll is rebellious.
::Travie Austin
It's about tearing down oppressive forces and, like, going against the grain. And so when I was writing some of these songs and pride Season was coming up, every pride season, we get another electronic EDM dance track from Queer artists, and that's great because, you know, sometimes we just want to dance all of our problems away and forget that the world hates us sometimes.
::Travie Austin
But I wanted to if I was going to drop a song for pride last year, I wanted it to be something that's saying, hey, remember that pride was a protest. Pride is a riot. Pride was where Marsha P Johnson and the other Queer, Black and brown trans folk threw the brick at Stonewall and like, started this entire, riot and protest so that we can get the equality that we deserve, that we, get to experience and enjoy today.
::Travie Austin
And I think the as the generations go on and on, we forget what pride is about. Like we see it, we see the march. We see the parades. We see everyone with their six packs walking around in Speedos and being sexually free. And that is something that we get to do and be proud of. But that's not what pride is about, and that's not what this started to ask.
::Travie Austin
So I wanted to write Tear It All Down as a reminder of like, hey, this is what it is. And also keep in mind politically, we aren't necessarily free of oppression. There's still people who are, especially here in the US. It is a it is a circus and our rights are still very much in jeopardy.
::Dan
I had a similar conversation with Kelly Fleming, who's the guest in the previous episode, The Drops, before this one, about how, you know, she's around the same age as me. And for me, pride is something that's protesting, is protesting for rights. It's protesting, fighting HIV stigma. It's all these things. And that's not to say I have a problem with pride.
::Dan
Also being spandex and Kylie remixes. My problem comes is when there's so much of that, that it pushes the space out for the bits that I want to do. And at the moment, for me, certainly in London and in other prides, I've been to, frankly, like the one in Paris, I don't feel there is oxygen in the room enough for my political pride.
::Travie Austin
ave a talk show, in the early: ::Travie Austin
Queer people got the rights to be free without judgement. They don't have to hide anymore. They don't have to sneak into the bathhouses to have their sexual encounters. They get to get married now. And so now these there, these layers of oppression within the community where it's like the, the cisgendered gays oppress the trans gays, the the white or white passing gays get to oppress the Black and brown gays and the there are all these layers in there.
::Travie Austin
And at the end of the day, a Queer white man, a Queer, cisgendered white man. If you take away the Queerness, there are white man there at the top of the totem pole.
::Travie Austin
People like to write off their Queerness as just. The they they use their way. They use their Queerness as a way of saying, hey, I'm oppressed. Never forget that I'm Queer, blah blah, blah, blah blah. But they will still take on all those, those characteristics of the oppressor by saying, well, no fat, no fems, no trans, no this.
::Travie Austin
We only want to do poppers and dance in the club, take that political agenda elsewhere. We just want to be gay. And in our Speedo.
::Travie Austin
As some of my people say, we're losing recipes. We're. We're forgetting what it's all about. We're forgetting how we got here. And if we forget how we got here, we're, We're damned to repeat the mistakes of the past. Yeah.
::Dan
What was your 15 year old self think of you now? Would he recognise himself?
::Travie Austin
I think the person I am now and the person I'm becoming now 15 year old me, would be actually very, very proud because he is doing the things that he said he would do. Had he gone to me last year, he would be so lost. He would be so confused. I feel like he would be disappointed. There are and there are points where I had to unpack that as well, where I'm like, okay, I lost track of who I was.
::Travie Austin
I look in the mirror and I don't recognise the person I am now, but it's not too late to change that. It is never too late to wake up one day and say, I'm going to be someone different. And I think the 15 year old me would look at how I'm going about life now, how much joy I have, how much fun I have, all the great things I'm creating, all the great things I'm experiencing, the people I get to talk to.
::Travie Austin
Like I'm having a conversation right now with someone across the pond about my life and like, music and everything, and that's really cool. These are things 15 year old me only dreamed about.
::Dan
What do you think? The tragedy of 12 months ago? I would think of the travelling now.
::Travie Austin
That Travie felt very lost and he felt like life was happening to him, and Travie now feels like life is happening for him. My music now has a very, very strong POV, which is it's okay not to be okay as long as you do something about it, like acknowledge that you aren't okay and then work toward joy.
::Dan
Now that it's been absolutely fantastic having you on the show. Travis, you've really been a wonderful guest, and I do hope that I can have you back again soon, because I kind of get the feeling that we are rounding up this episode only halfway through our conversation.
::Travie Austin
I am more than happy to come back. I love talking, I could talk about a lot of things for a long time.
::Dan
Wonderful stuff. Now that before we do go, where can people find you? Online? Travelling?
::Travie Austin
Yes. So on our social media platforms, my username is at I am Travis Austin. Travis about Travis, Austin, Justin. You can find me on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, all of that at I am Travis Austin. You can look me up on Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora and just search Travis Austin. You'll find all of my music there.
::Dan
You talked about the importance in your show notes that you gave me before we did this interview of finding one's own Queer identity. One's a unique in their own Queer identity. In a nutshell, how can we do that?
::Travie Austin
I say journal, write down every day ten things you like about yourself ten things you enjoy. And over time, go to that list of things you enjoy and make sure that you're doing them every day. And those ten things that you like about yourself. Make sure you're complimenting yourself and acknowledging those every day. Give yourself affirmations. You got to be your biggest hype man.
::Travie Austin
You can't. As RuPaul says, if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to love someone else? It sounds corny, but it's true. So whatever you like about yourself, remind yourself every day.
::Dan
Now that one of the main points of this podcast is to help amplify and raise Queer voices and their music now then, so people that don't know your material at all. Trevor, what would your gateway song be? That is a song that, for people that haven't heard your material, would act as a perfect introduction to the rest of your catalogue and make those listeners fall in love with everything you do.
::Travie Austin
I think I had a different answer prior to this interview, but speaking right now, I would say my gateway song would be "The Juice." There's blues in it, there's rock in it, there's funk and there's soul in it, and it's all of those worlds colliding.
::Dan
Many thanks for listening. And if you enjoy the show, please do give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And financial assistance is always gratefully received. Details on how you can support production can be found in the show notes, as can the link to our Spotify playlist. The In the Key of Q theme music is by Paul Leonidou, and thanks go to Moray Laing for his continued support.
::Dan
And of course, a massive thanks to my wonderful and insanely talented guest, Travis Austin. Travis. Thank you.
::Travie Austin
Thank you so much for having me. I had a blast. You are a joy.
::Dan
I can't wait to have you back.
::Travie Austin
I can't wait to be back.
::Dan
Now then, everybody keep peddling your gay agenda. And I'll see you next Tuesday. Take care everyone.
