14 JUNE 19-25, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Fighting Fire With Ire LEGENDARY LESBIAN BAND THE DEAD SINATRAS PUTS ITS BEST BOOTS FORWARD TO KICK LGBTQ+ ARTISTS INTO MUSICAL ACTIVISM. BY KRISTEN FIORE At the end of March, the Mercury Cafe held one fi nal open mic for those who wanted a last chance to perform on the legendary stage before the fi fty-year-old cultural mainstay became The Pearl. A seemingly never-ending string of hopeful musicians took to the stage for a show that went late into the night. While there was plenty of talent in the room, one standout act drove a large crowd of people out of their seats and onto the dance fl oor. Members of the Dead Sinatras, an iconic Denver lesbian band, are no strangers to stir- ring up enthusiastic audiences at the Merc, which they considered a sacred space. But the open mic act was the group’s fi rst public performance in nearly twenty years. “It was like riding a bicycle; it just all came back,” says Brandy Herbert, lead guitarist. “All the muscle memory was still there.” The band made waves in ‘90s and early 2000s Denver by dressing in drag (which, for this group of lesbians, involved mini dresses, go-go boots, big hair and over-the- top makeup; Westword even awarded the Dead Sinatras “Best Band in Drag” in the 1993 Best of Denver list). Mem- bers took on Nancy Sinatra-like personas and performed songs from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, sometimes with the lyrics changed. “We would take what we perceived to be the most sexist songs,” explains Kay Conger, vocalist and alto saxophone player. “Like, if I hated it when I was a kid, it was perfect for us on stage.” “They were songs that objectify women, sung by women, to women,” rhythm guitarist Kathy Corbett adds. In 1992, U.S. voters elected Bill Clinton as the country’s president, while Colorado voters approved Amendment 2, a ballot measure that prevented municipalities from enacting anti-discrimination laws protecting gay, lesbian and bisexual people. “So, good news, bad news. It was like a punch in the gut,” Conger recalls. The band started play- ing mostly fundraising shows, with proceeds ben- efi ting organizations like The Center on Colfax and EPOC, a group founded to combat Amendment 2. “And we could raise a tidy sum back in the day,” adds Conger, who remem- bers the band bringing in $24,000 at one show. The queer community in Denver has a strong tra- dition of using music as a form of activism, Corbett says. This Pride Month, the Dead Sinatras want to remind the city’s LGBTQ+ community of its past and encourage musical activ- ism to continue in the pres- ent and future. “I believe in the sub- lime beauty of playing mu- sic with friends,” Conger says. “In our case, friends who embraced the absurdity of the day and were willing to put the work in to sound as good as possible. We weren’t the best musi- cians, but we had a message and weren’t afraid to broadcast it with an accordion!” Trumpet player Monica Márquez, who refused the sparkly dresses and took drag in the other direction by dressing up as Herb Alpert during performances, remem- bers coming out to her family on election night 1992. “I was in my twenties when Colorado was known as the ‘Hate State,’” Márquez says. “We’ve come such a long way, and when I’ve encoun- tered LGBTQ+ people these days who are distressed about at- titudes and shifts in where we’re at, I think it’s hopeful for them to see that we’ve been through this before and to draw strength from it.” In the early 2000s, Corbett recalls, same- sex marriage was being used as a wedge issue by the right; she sees parallels in today’s hostile discourse against trans people. “It’s not different at all,” she says. “We’ve been here before, and we’ll get through it. We’ve seen justice prevail many, many times, and I think we will still. It’s still going to take all kinds of activism. It’s going to take even more music.” And humor can be its own act of rebellion, Márquez points out. It certainly was for the Dead Sinatras, which formed for a then-annual lesbian tal- ent show event called the Leaping Lesbian Follies at the Houston Fine Arts Center (then part of the Lamont School of Music in Park Hill). “There was always the lesbian singer- songwriter, folk guitar thing,” Corbett says. “The idea for the Dead Sinatras’ fi rst show at the Leaping Lesbian Follies in ‘88 came out of the Leaping Lesbian Follies in ‘87, where I was one of those. You know, just a dyke and a guitar, playing tortured love songs,” she laughs. “Mine were a little less tortured. But the night was a long string of us doing that.” So Corbett, Conger, accordion player Sabrina Green and late acoustic guitar player Mara Pawlowski joined forces for a group act that performed at the ‘88 Follies under the name Nancy Goes to Hollywood. They caught the attention of drummer Barb Greb- wich, who asked to audition. “They just said, ‘Okay, you’re in,’ because they didn’t have a drummer,” Grebwich says. Until she was able to afford a set of used drums, Grebwich’s makeshift kit included a hi-hat, snare and the top of a suitcase she came with to the city. The band decorated the suitcase, and it became the group’s unoffi cial mascot: “The Green Suitcase Full of Dreams.” For the Follies in ‘89, with Grebwich and the Green Suitcase in tow, the group performed as the Dead Sinatras. “I think the original plan was to change our name every year if we were in the talent show every year, but then we got asked to play Denver Pride and we didn’t have time to change our name,” Corbett says. “That would’ve been in ‘89 or ‘90. It was a very sparsely attended year.” “The AIDs epidemic was raging then,” Conger recalls. “I remember the sound was so diffi cult, I couldn’t get near my mic. If I did, the feedback would be enough to send us into the air,” Corbett says. “It was a rough gig,” Conger says. But rough gigs were soon polished into smooth shows where audiences took on a life of their own and the band was dressed by Lisa Leafgreen, sort of a den mother to the pack of musicians, who made the costumes, did hair and makeup, scheduled appoint- ments at salons and helped the band however they needed on show days. “She knew how to sew, which made her a unicorn in our circles,” Corbett says. People moved, went to school and took different jobs, so the band’s members came in and out of the picture. The addition of Herbert, a professional musician with a lot of experience, had really elevated the act’s sound; Márquez and her trumpet joined later. She was in a bowling league with Con- ger, and after rolling the ball one day, she walked right up to Conger and asked, “What do I need to do to be a Dead Sinatra?” “We just said, ‘No, you’re in,’” Conger laughs. Kevin Gilmore (the token straight man in the band whose shtick was that he didn’t know he was playing with a bunch of les- bians) brought his upright bass to the mix, saying he was only there as the “practice bassist,” which the rest of the band denies. Gilmore soon became a permanent band member, donning a CULTURE continued on page 16 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS This Pride Month, the Dead Sinatras want to remind the city’s LGBTQ+ community of its past and encourage musical activism to continue in the present and future. HEATHER M. SMITH
