Writer and filmmaker John Waters is a big fan of country music, and one of his favorite country stars is the gay, mask-wearing musician Orville Peck.
Waters got to enjoy both – and commune with his inner cowboy — when he traveled to Nashville recently to host Peck’s Sixth Annual Rodeo, a gathering of country singers and fans who came together for three days of performances at three different venues in the Music City.
Waters was the emcee for the biggest event at the Rodeo, a six-hour concert at Ascend Amphitheater featuring Peck and other musicians, including Tanya Tucker, Mickey Guyton and Noah Cyrus. The show was a reunion of sorts for Peck and Waters, who was the “special guest host” for Peck’s multi-artist “Rodeo at Red Rocks” concert in Colorado in 2021.
This year Waters picked up where he left off, again singing Peck’s praises. In a monologue crafted just for the Rodeo, he also shared some of his views about country music and other subjects he doesn’t ordinarily address in his popular spoken-word shows around the country. He wondered, for example, if today’s “new non-binary kids” know about all the old country songs he hears on Willie’s Place on SyriusXM, and he speculated about what they do for fun.
Waters, who’s based in Baltimore, started by offering to sing The National Anthem (he was joking) and then telling the country fans in Tennessee that he’s part Southerner like them. He admitted that he’s not much of a horseback rider, though:
“The first time I got on a horse was the last time I got on a horse,” he confided. “I never got on again.”
Still, Waters said, he’s a cowboy at heart.
“I’m a cockeyed cowboy, that’s what I am,” he told the audience. “And many of us here today are crackpot country in many ways. We’re hillbilly hipsters, we’re rock-and-roll radicals…we’re queer cowboys…bisexual brats…gender-bender yodelers. And guess what? We only have one pronoun: Y’all. I’m from Baltimore, which is half the south, so I can half say that right.”
‘Fractured fruitful future’
Waters, 78, is well known for films such as “Pink Flamingos” and “Hairspray,” books such as “Shock Value” and “Role Models,” his speaking tours, visual art creations, and occasional appearances on TV shows ranging from “Chucky” to “Real Time” with Bill Maher.
At Peck’s Rodeo, Waters wore a black and gold swirl-patterned sports jacket designed by the late Issey Miyake. His main job was to introduce the singers and set the stage for what he called the “fractured, fruitful future of country music we’re gonna hear today.”
In addition to Tucker, Guyton, Cyrus and Peck, the performers at Ascend Amphitheater included Goldie Boutilier; Medium Build (the stage name of Nicholas Carpenter); Waylon Payne and Fancy Hagood
Waters didn’t just introduce the singers. He talked about their music and what it meant to him, or took a gentle jab at them. He called Guyton a “Black trailblazer” who performed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention and noted that her song “Black Like Me” was “based on a book that was so important to me when I was in junior high.” He called Medium Build “hot-ish” and “cool as a cuckoo-cumber.” He described Tucker as “the heat index and the wind chill factor in one perform storm.” He lauded Boutilier, a singer, DJ and model now based in Paris, for clawing her way to “the best place here, the bottom of the bill.”
Waters saved his most effusive praise for Peck, who’s having a big year with the release of his Stampede album and related videos. Stampede contains 15 tracks, all recorded as duets between Peck and other artists of various genres, including Elton John, “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)”; Beck, “Death Valley High,” and Kylie Minogue and DJ and music producer Diplo, “Midnight Ride.” The first single off the album was Peck’s duet with country legend Willie Nelson, singing Ned Sublette’s “Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other,” written in 1981.
“He…startled the world by doing a gay country duet with Willie Nelson, which is so great,” Waters told the audience. “Can you imagine how confused some people were: ‘What? Willie Nelson’s gay?’ No, he’s straight and great and without hate like our other great hetero brothers and sisters here.”
Mutual admiration society
Waters and Peck have had a mutual admiration society ever since Waters talked about Peck during one of his spoken-word shows in 2019, and the singer called him to say thank you. Peck said in a 2020 interview that he admired Waters more than anyone when he was growing up.
“John Waters was my absolute No. 1 idol, inspiration, when I was a teenager,” he said on Sloppy Seconds with Big Dipper and Meatball, a podcast hosted by rapper Dan Stermer and drag artist Logan Jennings. “John Waters changed my entire perception of art and life, really.”
Peck was between shows during a tour in Australia when he made the call, not sure if he was going to wake Waters up or if he would even answer his phone. He said he got Waters’ private number from his agent because they both had the same booking agency, but he held onto it for weeks before working up the courage to call.
“Do I text him? Does he even have a cell phone? He’s like a weird guy,” Peck said on the podcast. “And so we’re sitting in this lobby and we were in Sydney or Melbourne, I think, and we were waiting for the transport to take us to the festival, and it was going to be like an hour in the lobby. I just thought, like, OK, f**k it, I’m just going to call him, just try it. I didn’t even know what time it was in Baltimore.”
Waters answered the phone and knew exactly who Peck was.
“I call him and I just hear, like, (deep voice) ‘Hello?’ and I was like, ‘Hi, is this John?’ And he goes, ‘Who is this?’ And I said, ‘Oh, hi John, this is, this is Orville Peck.’ And he said, ‘Orville Peck? Well, I’m a big, big fan.’ And then, I mean I obviously just like disintegrated and like left my body and then he basically just chatted with me for like 45 minutes and I was laughing so hard people were staring at me.”
Peck said Waters turned out to be exactly what a fan might expect.
“If you’re a fan of John Waters, if you’ve seen any of his films or read any of his books or anything, he is exactly the person you think he will be,” he said. “He’s so knowledgeable and he just wants to chat about history and references and the kind of funny oddity of mundane life. He was cracking me up so hard I was like crying-laughing.”
Waters said he has admired Peck since he first heard his music, and that’s why he talked about him in his Christmas show in 2019. He said he was turned on to Peck’s music by a friend, Scott Huffines, the original owner of Atomic Books in Baltimore.
“I love him. I’m such a huge fan of his,” Waters said of Peck. “He just has an amazing voice, that’s all. Plain and simple. The very first time I heard his voice, it was just amazing. And I think the fact that he’s gay and maybe has a little bit of a punk rock background and country altogether, it couldn’t be more up my alley…He could be singing with a bag over his head and he’d be a star, if you ask me.”
After their initial phone conversation, Peck asked Waters to be in one of his videos, “Legends Never Die” with Shania Twain. Then he asked Waters to host his concert at Red Rocks, an outdoor venue that Waters has described as “Hollywood Bowl meets Jurassic Park.” He told an interviewer this year that of all the people in the world, living or dead, Waters would be his ideal dinner guest.
Peck is a contributor to the lavish coffee table book that accompanied the filmmaker’s career retrospective exhibit at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, “John Waters: Pope of Trash.” His contribution was a set of questions for Waters to answer in the book, interspersed with questions from other celebrities, including Ricki Lake, Debbie Harry, Kathleen Turner, Johnny Knoxville and Iggy Pop.
“Did you ever think the late, great Divine would have the massive culture impact she has? Did you know how famous of an icon she would become?” Peck wanted to know. Also: “What is your favorite memory of the incredible Edith Massey?” and “Is there anything you know now that you wish you had known in the early days?”
‘Country music made me gay’
Rodeo at Red Rocks was the concert where Waters announced that “country music made me gay,” after watching Elvis Presley when he was growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
“When I first saw Elvis Presley gyrating and I heard him twitching and moaning and hiccupping through that song, “I Don’t Care If the Sun Don’t Shine,” oh when I heard him go, ‘We’re gonna kiss and kiss and kiss again,’ I tell you, I knew something was up down there, but I didn’t know what it was,” he told the Colorado crowd.
Waters wrote about his love for country music in his 2019 book of essays, Mr. Know It All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder. “If you can’t appreciate country music,” he said, “you have no soul.’
At Red Rocks, he told the crowd how much he appreciates Peck.
“Yippie-ki-yay can he sing, in that voice The New Yorker says the Yee-Haw Generation deserves, and I agree,” Waters said. “He goes walkin’ after midnight for all of us. Roy Orbison isn’t the only lonely here tonight. There’s no lovin’ feelin’ lost when he does the Righteous Brothers.”
As for Peck’s looks, “he’s Liberace and Versace, peeking out from under that mask with a little stubble like a Tom of Finland character without all the agony,” Waters said. “He’s a rural rebel, and that’s hard to say, but it’s even harder to be – showing a little of Chris Isaak’s swagger and a lot of Tammy Wynette’s honky-tonk.”
Dueling masks
Orville Peck is the stage name of Daniel Pitout, a South African singer-songwriter who’s based in the U. S. and Canada and known for wearing a mask and not showing his face publicly. Stampede is his third studio album, following Pony in 2019 and Bronco in 2022. He also released the EP Show Pony in 2020.
Peck, 36, has said he wears a mask so people will pay attention to his music, not his appearance. His deep baritone voice has been compared to Orbison’s and Roddy Jackson’s, and he’s gained a loyal following of LGBTQ “cowfolx” with songs such as his gender-bending cover of “Fancy” and his country road version of “Born This Way” with Lady Gaga.
In recent shows, Peck has performed without the long-fringed masks that he previously wore, but he still wears a Lone Ranger-type mask around his eyes. Even before the latest change, his fringed masks had been getting shorter and revealing more of his face. Some fans think he’ll eventually shed his masks altogether.
At the concert that Waters hosted, Peck sang most of his songs with a tan mask around his eyes only. When called back for an encore, he sang his final two songs wearing a fringed mask.
“We were slipping into something more comfortable,” he quipped.
Waters didn’t wear a mask when he talked about the other performers. But when he introduced Peck, he wore a mask, too — a red one that he sported over his forehead and then quickly took off. One of his assistants, Caitlin Billard, made it just for the occasion.
Waters said after the show that he wore a mask to pay homage to Peck, and that he asked Peck if it was alright before he did so.
“He approved,“ Waters told the audience. “I wouldn’t have done it otherwise,” he said after the show.
Waters reminded the audience that he had appeared onstage with Peck before.
“I hosted for our headliner three years ago in Denver, at Red Rocks, and so I’ve seen his face without a mask,” Waters said. “And this year I’ve seen the magazine with his bare ass [a reference to a cheeky photo spread in Paper magazine]. I wish he’d do the whole show nude tonight.”
Waters suggested that he and Peck sing a duet together someday, or maybe that Peck record new soundtracks for his movies.
“Orville has done so many great duets with so many great people – Elton, Trixie [Mattel], Beck, who I offered the title part of “Pecker” and he turned me down and we’re still friends,” Waters said. “And also, DJ Diplo. I loved in the press when he said, ‘Well, I’m not not gay.’ That’s my type: not not gay.”
Who else is Waters’ type?
“Let me see,” he said. “Lucinda Williams’ leftover male groupies. Or the new minority – strags. That’s straight guys who only [have sex with] fag hags. There’s nothing wrong with the term fag hags, either. They’re a part of our gay country. Let’s give them a salute.
“And also, I’m embarrassed to admit that I have the hots for the Brawny paper towel man,” Waters said. “That cardboard roll inside could make a pretty good glory hole, if you know how to work it. I’m also attracted to roofers, yeah, real roofers. The ones without their shirts on the roof. Not doing roofies, but working on your shingles after they got the shingle shots. I mean, maybe they could fall down on top of me. Is that a country song?”
What he likes most about Peck, Waters said, is that “he’s the real thing from top to bottom, so to speak…He’s country through and through. He’s a new young version of an old country singer. There’s no irony with him. None at all. He’s a crab-free cowboy. A punk pony. A stud on a stampede. A butch Broadway buckaroo.”
Happy and healthy
Peck’s setlist at Ascend Amphitheater included: “Big Sky,” “Turn to Hate,” “C’mon Baby, Cry;” “No Glory in the West;” “Hexie Mountains;” “How Far Will We Take It?” with Noah Cyrus; “Conquer the Heart;” “Drive Me, Crazy;” “Blush;” “The Curse of the Blackened Eye;” “Where Are We Now?” with Mickey Guyton in their live debut; “Any Turn;” “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other;” “Outta Time;” “Dead of Night;” “Rhinestone Cowboy” with Waylon Payne and Fancy Hagood, and “Bronco.”
Peck started by saying he has three rules for fans at his concerts.
“Rule number one is: You have to sing along even if you don’t know the words — because that’s funnier for us,” he said. “Second rule is, If you are able to and you feel like it, please dance along because we really, really, really like that, OK? And the third one is kind of serious: If at any point during the show you feel like crying, you have to cry. Can we follow those three simple rules? Fabulous!”
Between songs, Peck interacted with his fans — asking how they’re doing, dedicating “Drive Me, Crazy,” his song about truck drivers in love, to a mask-wearing trucker in the audience named Jerome. He recalled the time he was told that “this old guy from Texas” wanted to do a duet with him, and then found out it was Willie Nelson. “Not only did Willie Nelson want to do a song with me,” Peck said, “but he wanted to do a song about gay cowboys, which, it’s very comparable for me, because I’m…a…gay…cowboy.”
Peck told his fans that he felt a lot better after taking a break from performing in 2023.
“As a result of that, I’m now the happiest and the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life,” he said. “And honestly, I really have a lot of you to thank for that, for letting me go and take that time, and I’m sorry to anybody who missed out on a ticket last year because of it. Thank you for letting me do that.“
At the end of the night, Peck gave “a big shout-out” to all the “artists, friends, idols” who performed at his Rodeo – “and of course to John Waters for hosting, thank you very much.” There was an after-party at Tanya Tucker’s Tequila Cantina at Nudie’s Honky Tonk, and every ticket holder got free admission at Play Dance Bar on Drag Night and free entry the next night at the Lipstick Lounge.
Peck’s Rodeo received high marks from Nashville Scene critic Jason Shawhan, who called it a “dizzyingly queer event” and said Peck’s voice “has such power that it can’t even be fully registered on tape.” Like Waters, Shawhan noted Peck’s authenticity, calling him “a country artist, with no asterisk or subsequent elaboration needed,” and a performer who “doesn’t have to play the concealing game as to who his songs are about.” He wrote that Peck’s rendition of “Rhinestone Cowboy” with Payne and Hagood was “fun, a tad subversive and the kind of enjoyable cover that spans many eras and gets everyone on the same page.”
Shawhan raved about Waters, too.
“Host John Waters (!) was the perfect emcee for the five-act, six-hour show,” he said. “He was nimble on his feet and gave each of the artists all the respect and gentle ribbing they merited, and he let the crowd know where the aesthetic sensibility for the day was oriented. His welcome was comprehensive, proclaiming that we all had one pronoun, ‘y’all,’ and we better see that on a bumper sticker posthaste.”
“Give that man the key to the city,” he urged.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad trip for a certain cockeyed cowboy from the East Coast: a night of country music and a reunion with Orville Peck. Waters always says people ought to have a back-up plan in case all else fails. Hosting Rodeos for Orville Peck seems perfect for him.
