Kacey Musgraves has never made a secret of the fact that the jumbo neon cacti in her stage setup and the over-the-top, kitschy, western glam of her wardrobe, to one degree or another, echo the winking, theatrical excesses of drag show camp. Monday night she put her record release party where her mouth is, celebrating her second Mercury Nashville album, Pageant Material, with a combination drag show and listening party at Play, a popular gay dance club in downtown Nashville.
Musgraves isn’t the first to throw a shindig for a new country release at a gay bar. Wynonna Judd and Laura Bell Bundy, among others, did it years ago. But leave it to Musgraves — the twenty-something who’s coolly and cleverly articulating the diversity-embracing social sensibilities of many in her generation — to take the party into the mainstream media. She’s sly like that.
