Number 170 Summer 2017 $11.95 HELPING YOUTHIssue 171 / Fall 2017 BRING US TO YOUR HAPPY PLACE Submission Deadline: July 21, 2017 www.rfdmag.org/upload With all of the fracas going on post- election, the culture war seems to have upped the ante in terms of anxiety we’re all facing. With the daily grind of Trump tweets, alternative facts, erosion in our rights across the board not just as GLBT people but also people of color, women, differently- abled people and people with non- Christian beliefs we need to resist but we also need to ground ourselves. With that in mind where do you find your queer happy place? Is it simply a time spent sipping tea and reading, a favorite walk in the woods, a meeting of fellow travelers against Trump, a retreat or gathering, a great sex date? We’re all needing to recharge for this tough road ahead. What helps recharge your batteries for battling for justice or merely undoing the anxiety that these times have imposed upon us. Tell us how your routine is helping shape your path not the larger events surrounding you. Another aspect of this is what has become a sanctuary for you to regroup—physical places, groups of people, simple tasks in your day, practices and prayers, and especially how do you then reconnect back to your day, to working for yourself and engaging in community with meaning and power for yourself and others. In these days of retrenchment to assert our rights how do your personal happy places include others? Or is a bit of solitude what’s best for you in the short term? In essence how do you find inner strength before taking on all the shit going on? Tell us how you plan to take action to care for yourself and others Let’s all breathe, relax, and shape our journey—hopefully together. Sidney Justin Lambert at New Orleans Mardi Gras, 2007. Photograph by Matt Bucy RFD 170 Summer 2017 1 Ruddy Faced Dreamers Vol 43 No 4 #170 Summer 2017 As spring draws to a close and we enter glorious summer—we’re spending some time reflecting on the life of Charlie Murphy, a name familiar to most long time RFD readers but to many his work and legacy is new territory. With his pass- ing last year we felt we needed to show some of his terrain through shared words and pictures from those who knew him, worked with him or were graced by his love and friendship. Charlie came to our attention as an out gay folksinger, the person who linked our social, political ideas with spiritual concerns. But he also engaged in another form of activism driven by a desire to reach out to youth of all kinds to enrich their experience through art, creativity and sharing. We’re thankful to Covelo for suggesting this theme and most grateful to our readers for responding so positively to the theme. Also kudos to Stephen Silha and Eric Mulholland for sharing their stories about Charlie and urging others to do the same. The crew at RFD is a pretty laid back, casual but committed to seeing RFD thrive, so on a sunny afternoon we poured over our finances and came to some realizations about our future. Sadly, like most of the small press we run a tight margin but with some costs either constant or continuing to rise we have to con- sider ways of stemming the slow erosion of our bank account. We have a commit- ted readership which on average has 60% giving above a base subscription to help other readers afford RFD and help us cover fixed costs like internet, storage for back issues, and keeping up with printing and postage costs. All the while, we’ve not raised our base prices in more than a decade. So your donations help. Every bit counts but we may have to consider increasing our prices to cover the cost of production of the magazine and keeping our small overhead expenses from eating away at our limited reserves. We’ve reached out to you in the past about this and, to be honest, the best way forward is more subscribers. Consider who may be interested in RFD—consider a gift subscription, send us leads for bookshops that may be interested in carry- ing us, and above all else renew your subscription and as always thanks for your interest in RFD. —The RFD Collective Between the Lines2 RFD 170 Summer 2017 RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative life- styles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volun- teers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $9.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Hadley, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and as- sociated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001. On the Covers Front: Painting by Street Candy Production Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier Art Director: Matt Bucy Submission Deadlines Fall–July 21, 2017 Winter–October 21, 2017 See inside covers for themes and specifics. For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org Visual Contributors artboydancing. ..................................40 Devin Mohr. .................................49, 54 Stephen Mead. ..................................57 Brett Lindell ....................................62 Charlie Murphy painted by youth at a Culture Jam in Eugene the weekend Charlie died. RFD 170 Summer 2017 3 CONTENTS Announcements ................................................................4 Playing with Charlie ............................................................5 Interview with Jami Sieber .................Stephen Silha ..........................5 Gay Spirit ...............................Charlie Murphy ......................... Singer/Songwriter And Youth Mentor Charlie Murphy Has Died ..............Eric Mulholland .......................10 My Husband, My Teacher .................Eric Mulholland .......................12 Culture Jamming .........................Stephen Silha .........................15 Charlie and Partners for Youth Empowerment ...................Peggy Taylor ..........................18 You Rock, Charlie Murphy ................Kate Thompson ........................20 Weaver, Weaver ..........................Starhawk .............................21 Stranded ................................Charlie Murphy .......................22 Teaching Youth in Ways That Can Be Heard .........................Robert Croonquist aka Covelo ...........24 The Creation of Queer Youth Leadership Awards in Santa Cruz, California ........Hammer ..............................29 Queer Youth and the Santa Cruz Radical Faeries ........................Kwai Lam ............................32 Queer Youth In Massachusetts .............Jaybird / Jay Warren ...................33 Dear Anita ...............................Street Candy ..........................35 Working with Our Future Leaders ..........Wil Fisher ............................36 Feeding the Circle: Giving to Our Next Generations of Queers .................Sister Bhakti Shakti ....................38 Radical Faeries: Good to Great to Fabulous! .Equus a.k.a. Gregory T. Wilkins .........41 The Youth Hermes and I ...................Nathan Bailey Prince ..................43 Fence Walker ............................Devin Mohr ...........................48 Don’t Go Back to Sleep: An Interview with Franklin Abbott ...................Bambi ................................50 Mirror of Youth ...........................e.c. patrick ............................53 Priapus’ Lament ...........................Flaming Salamander. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 * ......................................Simon Perchik .........................56 Images ..................................Stephen Mead ........................57 A Resurrected Adam (Part 3) ..............Adam ................................58 Remembering Stuart Timmons .............Eugene Salandra / Peacockfaerie ........60 Walt Cessna ..............................Brett Lindell ..........................624 RFD 170 Summer 2017 STORES THAT CARRY RFD As you probably know, gay friendly bookshops and other places that carry gay friendly magazines like RFD are few and far between. Below is a list of shops and places that carry RFD. Please frequent them and buy RFD. Alley Cat Books – San Francisco CA (*) Antigone – Tuscon AZ Bound Together Books – San Francisco CA Crazy Wisdom – Ann Arbor MI Dog Eared Books – San Francisco CA (*) Easton Mountain – Greenwich NY Elliott Bay Books – Seattle WA FAB Faubourg Marginy – New Orleans LA Leslie-Lohman Museum – New York NY Powell’s – Portland OR Quimby’s – Chicago IL Rubber Library & Flower Bodega—New Orleans LA (*) (*) A new shop – please check them out and thank them for carrying RFD. If you know of a place that might be interested in carrying RFD, please be in touch with us via email – submissions@rfdmag.org with “Bookstore” in the subject line. If you can show off how cool RFD is and a shop decides to carry us we’ll send you a one year subscription as our thanks! You can always see who carries RFD by checking our website—rfdmag. org/bookstores.php. ANNOUNCEMENTS Zuni Mountain Zuni Mountain in Ramah NM is holding it’s Queer Spirit gathering in September this year. The dates are September 1 to 10, 2017. For more infor- mation contact ZMS at www.zunimountainsanctu- ary.org Queer Spirit Festive in UK The Second Queer Spririt Festival is happening July 20 - 30, 2017 in Thoulstone Park, Wiltshire, United Kingdom. For more info contact them at www.queerspirit.net/festival/tickets Summer gathering in Isreal Friends in the Middle East have sent word of a gathering happening from June 21 to 25, 2017 in Israel. For more information contact them via www. canaanfaes.org Twin Oaks Gathering While Twin Oaks is not specifically a queer community, we’re hosting our first Queer Gathering August 4-6, 2017 in Louisa, VA. More info available at twinoaksqueergathering.org GATHERING NEWS RFD 170 Summer 2017 5 C ellist Jami Sieber speaks with Stephen Silha about Charlie Murphy’s days as one of the first openly gay singer-songwriters in the U.S. Charlie and Jami collaborated musically for fifteen years, first as a folk duo, and then as co-leaders of the band Rumors of the Big Wave. Stephen: What was it like when you first met Charlie? Jami: I met Charlie Murphy at a coffee shop. I was in nursing school at the time and not even considering music as a profession. My friend Nina had told me about him, his songs about love of the earth, the witch burnings, men against violence and gay empowerment. I was young and couldn’t imagine being a lesbian then. He was sitting at a coffee shop in Seattle’s Uni- versity District with his lover, Firefly. When Nina introduced me to Charlie, he said, “I can’t talk right now. I’m having an argument with my lover.” I was stunned. He was so clear, direct, present. I had never met anyone like him. We went away, and later he came over to talk. He said, “I’d love to play with you. I hear you play cello. I’ve always wanted to play with a cellist.” I didn’t know what to think. He was so different. He had a little braid on the back of his head, a “fairy tail.” I was really attracted to his spirit and way of being. A few weeks later, I went to his place on Capitol Hill with my cello. We started improvising. I had only done that once before. It was magic. We played his songs—“Burning Times” especially hit me deeply. Our creative and musical differences seemed to melt together and became a creative pat- tern. Wow, you met Charlie a few years before I did. But I also had the sense that this guy was a world- Playing with Charlie Interview with Jami Sieber by Stephen Silha Charlie Murphy and Jami Sieber. Photo by Geoff Manasse.6 RFD 170 Summer 2017 changer. And I was one of your biggest fans. I think I heard you first at Bumbershoot 1980, but maybe before that. We met in ’79, and did our first concert on the full moon in March, 1980. John Mifsud was part of it. He did poetry. Dan Greenblatt played saxophone. I had never really been exposed to gay culture and had never hung out with a gay man. I was fresh out of the Midwest. I was engaged in nursing school and Charlie blew my world open, which he’s really good at doing. He’s still doing it. You got that right. He still inspires me every day. I hear Charlie saying, “What’s new?” and “What do you REALLY want to do?” At Charlie’s memorial, all these young people got up and gave testimony to what Charlie did for them, and I thought, “That was me at twenty two!” He gave me permission to think thoughts I may have had, but never expressed. He inspired new thoughts that I wove into existence. It was a chal- lenge to be around him, in the best of ways. Yeah. He could be scary in that he wasn’t afraid to throw plates against the wall. He could get mad, and get over it. Whereas, I would repress and smol- der. What was it like the first time you performed with Charlie in public? I was really nervous at that first concert. It was packed. But I felt it was where I needed to be. At that time, gay men and lesbians were not working together. Charlie and I experienced this as we traveled the country. We were bringing gay men and lesbians together for the first time. It was revolutionary. Some people felt really healed by it, some felt pushed by it. It was very high energy. There wasn’t a lot of public gay performance going on. I hadn’t even come out yet. I never really thought it was possible for me to be a lesbian. It was so far beyond my world, my upbringing and what was expected. I can relate. I had heard your concerts, but I first met Charlie at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1982, which included a theme on “Men’s Music.” That included men who were responding to women’s liberation with a men’s liberation from patriarchal patterns. Because the article I wrote for The Chris- tian Science Monitor mentioned men celebrating homosexuality, they refused to print it. It may have been a closeted editor, or just a social construct, but I don’t think most young queers can imagine what it was like then. Did you ever feel danger as out gay artists? Well, Charlie and I were in this bubble. As art- ists, you just play your heart, you just do it and don’t think about ramifications. We were bold. I think I was really naïve. Then there was the time Charlie got maced in Vancouver. Yes, I was there, but that wasn’t until 1990 at the Vancouver Gay Games and Culture Festival. It was bizarre. Charlie and I had witnessed the Interna- tional Fireworks Festival, and had met these gor- geous men from Montreal who gave us martinis on their blankets on the beach. We thought we were in heaven. Then, walking up to Davie Street, this teen- age kid said to us, “Are you San Francisco queers?” Charlie laughed and said, “No, I’m a Seattle queer,” and one of the kids sprayed him in the eyes with some toxic substance. We went to the hospital, and he had to wear eye-pads or sunglasses at your gig the next night. But I also remember the fears when AIDS started happening. That was a constant danger in the back- ground. We were never picketed. We were taken care of by local communities around the country. Yes, but you also provided them with Good Fairy Productions guidance on Producing a Cultural Event. I noticed that in 1982 you and Charlie charged “$400 plus 50 percent of profits if possible.” And you estimated travel expenses at $50-100. Yeah. (laughing) My dad sent me these letters I had written years ago when Charlie and I were first performing together, and I was ecstatic when I got $75 for our first gig. We did it because we had to. It became a cul- tural cause for Charlie and me. What did he mean when Charlie said he was a cultural worker? He was a cultural worker. He was part of chang- ing culture. That’s what his goal was – to engage culture in a shift. He tried to do that through his music and his speaking at our concerts. What was it like co-creating with Charlie? It was so much fun. Charlie and I laughed our way through every crisis that came our way. We would go away for weekends. We came to your house sometimes. We’d go into a work space of improvising together. A lot of the music we came up with would invoke lyrics from him. We collaborated a lot. That collaboration made him a stronger songwriter. And it helped me be a stronger musician. We fed off each other’s talent, created something better than either of us could have done alone. Charlie was one of those rare, reflective human beings. You could talk to him about anything. Even RFD 170 Summer 2017 7 if he was initially defensive, he would open up. He really encouraged honesty. He wanted relation- ships to be deep and honest. I learned a lot about the art of collaboration, and about staying true to what it is your artistic desires and goals are. Was there a sense of ritual in your concerts? Oh yeah. There was a lot of care and thought that went into how we crafted a show. To bring together spirituality and politics at that time was very new. The two didn’t mingle; you were spiri- tual, or you were political. We wove them together. “Burning Times” was always the apex of the show. The performance space turned into a tribal hall. Then there were the Spiral Dances we did with Starhawk and the Reclaiming Collective. It was a huge performance ritual. And, Thunder Cloud (the Ojibwa faerie/sha- man) was part of Good Fairy Productions. He and Riva and another two- spirited man did rituals to call the spirits into our concerts. This was right in line with the earth-cen- tered music. Oh, how did people respond? Audiences that came together were so ready to hear the message, and to hear their own passions re- flected in music that they could dance to. We played to people doing Central Amercian sanctuary work, fighting nuclear arms (like the “Give Peace a Dance” events), working to save the environment, and Anti-Inaugural Balls. People who were doing this political work need- ed an infusion of culture, dance, and spirit. Really, music is spirit. Audiences would get so high, from the music and from being in community. Charlie and I were a folk duo for five years… and even then people started dancing to our mu- sic. We decided to form a band together, and make less money. (Laughs.) That was Rumors of the Big Wave, Charlie’s name for the band. Rumors was huge in Seattle in the ‘90s. It seemed like you guys were always on the bill – especially for politically charged events. Yes, and we also traveled around the country, and to Russia, China, Nicaragua and Canada. We played the 1993 March on Washington for LGB Rights. The band played lots of music with gay content, but it was not a “gay band.” True. As Charlie matured, gay was just part of who he was, instead of always talking gay rights. But you did play that wonderful concert called “Across the Lines” with the Total Experience Gospel Choir, that was broadcast on KIRO-TV in Seattle. It was a bold, beautiful, powerful event. We sold out the Paramount Theatre. There’s so much to learn about race, still. We learned a lot, including how not to make assumptions about how things should be done. Co-creating isn’t always easy. And then there was the time you got booed at the Opera House for singing an anti-Gulf War song. Yes, “No Heroes” pushed some buttons: “Hang your head down America / you know not what you’ve done / you’re still looking for salvation / through the barrel of a gun.” During wartime, it’s a very tender time for many people. Their family members may be off in the service. You end up defending what may not be in your heart to defend. We got booed, but not by a lot of people. Why didn’t Charlie write any more songs? He just got consumed with his work with young people. When he went into something, he got so focused. He was always working. He knew how to play, too. But the work was always on his mind. I think it was driven by the fact that he deeply loved whatever he did. What advice would you give to queer artists based on your work with Charlie? Just speak your truth. Find comrades so you’re not alone. Find your network of friends and other cre- ative artists, and incite the best and most honest response in what you’re trying to say. ❂ Charlie was one of those rare, reflective human beings. You could talk to him about anything. Even if he was initially defensive, he would open up. He really encouraged honesty. He wanted relationships to be deep and honest.Next >