Creekbed Carter Hogan

Queerness is next to Godliness

by Ginny Barnes

The next time you cut your heart on a memory of abuse when visiting your problematic hometown and someone continually misgenders you, say a prayer to good st riddance. Troubador, Creekbed Carter Hogan, sings the tale of this patron saint of transgender, non-binary, and abused people in their concept album good st riddance released this past spring. Writer, educator, and musician, they bring this rich narrative to us out of a quarantine obsession project.

When I am reminded of my own Catholic upbringing, it feels triggering. My spirit splits into the binary pieces I hate and love and my mind mixes them up. When I listen to Creekbed Carter, he reclaims the language of holiness and purity in a way that feels like these qualities are absolutely possible for queer folks like me.

Our identities and pasts are full of contradictions, and the story of good st riddance reminds us that we can hold all of it without shame.

Ginny Barns (GB): good st riddance is your concept album about the patron saint of transgender and nonbinary people. Can you share some of st riddance’s story and your story in how this project started?

Creekbed Carter Hogan (CCH): So I like projects, a lot, and that’s true when we’re not undergoing a pandemic and a lot of grief and a lot of trauma. Those things are always present, but I think it’s nice to have a project. I like to think big, and I like things to be all-encompassing. I think in February of last year, the last thing I did before lockdown was go to Boston for a friend’s funeral. Which was so intense. My friend Leah Rafaela Ceriello was a performance artist. I was very good friends with her and with her partner Oliver who is an incredible poet and spoon carver. He was the last person I spent time with significantly beyond my pod before we went into lockdown.

We were by the ocean and talking about her. The way we interacted about art, she was really obsessive about things too. When I say obsessive I mean, you only think about this thing and it follows you everywhere all day and everything you take in is relevant to the thing you’re making. We had a similar sensibility about art-making, and Oliver is that way as well. I got back from Boston, and we went into lockdown in Austin. A lot of things happened at once which I think is true for a lot of people.

I started for the first time in my life having regular periods. Which is wild for me. I very reliably have had a body that is once every 12 months like, I don’t know, maybe we’ll think about it, bluh!, and then it’s over. This was like every month and was preceded by just absolutely literally, crippling back pain. I’d be out for a week, and then I would have this very painful, constant gender experience that I’ve never had that frequently. Many people go through that every month. For me in particular, I had never had to deal with that.

I was having to confront this thing that was very feminine that everyone was telling me was very feminine at this time where I was feeling less and less like woman was the correct word for the thing that I am. Also, processing grief over my friend and absolute fear in this strange confusing world where we thought maybe we were going to get COVID from the bottom of our shoes? Remember? Jesus. That was a bad time.

I couldn’t practice with my band [Milktoast Millie] either. None of us could be together. This is a lot of set up, but it was a lot happening all at once. I don’t have a good relationship with my parents. We don’t talk, and they were emailing me about suing me for money they thought I owed them. 

So, I did what I always do in times of extreme stress. I was like, I need a project. Playing guitar is a great way to cope. I was just fiddling around and remembering saints that I spent a lot of time praying to as a kid. I grew up very Catholic, so I find their stories really compelling. I’m not Catholic anymore, but I love saints. I think they’re fascinating, they’re erotic, they’re queer, and they’re cool. 

CCH: Saint Wilgefortis was a saint that I’d been circling for a while. They have a lot of names in a lot of different countries. They were debunked as a folk saint by the Catholic Church. They’re not officially recognized which I think is appropriate for the patron saint of trans people. Their name in French means riddance. They were a noble person, very young and engaged to marry. They didn’t want to get married, so they prayed to God or someone. They said help me out. I don’t want to get married. Get me out of this! And they woke up and had this beard. So their betrothed was like, no, I don’t want to marry you. I gotta go. Then their father had them crucified. He sounds like a really good parent. He had them crucified. 

They are dead on this cross in the middle of town wearing this dress with their long beard. This fiddler finds them and is moved by what they are seeing, so they play them a song. They think the body of saint riddance kicks off a shoe to thank them. The town thinks the fiddler is trying to rob them, so the fiddler is like give me one more chance. I’m going to prove this is a real miracle. They play another song and st riddance kicks off another shoe. The town is like great, you weren’t trying to rob this body. I guess it’s fine now. 

And that’s the end of this weird story! I revisited that story and was finding all these other versions, and felt really attached to both people in that. I just started writing music about it. As I wrote music about those people, I kind of realized they’re both also parts of myself that I was trying to put together as I was coming out as a trans, non-binary person. It was chronic pain and dealing with all these things that had been bad before but were really inflamed now. Having to deal with this computation of my gender constantly.

All of it just became the thing that I was doing. I would turn off my camera in Zoom meetings and write lines really quick, and then come back and be like I was definitely listening. I would go off into the woods and try to work things out. For a year it was mostly me in the dirt playing music to bugs. In September, I went to Arkansas. I was like, I gotta get out of this house. We really quarantined hard.

I stayed in a cabin in the mountains, which is also Osage and Quapaw land. I learned a lot about the history of the springs and how they are cave-fed. The Quapaw and Osage people would go down into the spring and these caves and bury their dead. Really beautiful, interesting stories about these people who have been forcibly removed from their land. So that also became a part of it, this reckoning with my settler past and my whiteness, especially after the summer we had and continue to have for Black Lives Matter. That's how it happened, that’s how [the album] got made.

GB: Your album is rich with these ties to Catholicism but it feels like a safe place, reclaiming sacred imagery for queerness. In “Miracle” there is a lyric that goes, “I got a holy face now.” Was there something you were trying to release in telling that story?

CCH: I think there is a way to grow up Catholic where you’re not traumatized. I don’t think I had that experience. It was an extremely traumatic experience circling other traumatic experiences that I grew up with which is part of living with complex PTSD. It’s all folded in, but saints were the way that I first understood my sexuality. They are really erotic people, they have erotic ideas. Being that devoted to someone is erotic, and bridal mysticism comes out of that. They’re like a portal to queerness. 

Honestly, the way that they’re treated in the Catholic Church, being debunked as folk saints or being the patron saint of lost things or the patron saint of abused people, those are interesting categories that don’t really fit with how we think of a church now. It’s a queer medieval side of the church that remains in this otherwise extremely puritanized version we have, at least the one that I grew up with.

Who is to say who is a mystic or who isn’t? Who is to say what counts as holy or what is worthy of our devotion? I like how normal everyone seemed, and their strangeness came up because people didn’t know how to encounter their queerness. But those are just people I know. When I was studying them and finally letting myself sing from their perspective and speak from a first-person point of view, it felt like I was in a room with my friends again. 

It was a very moving process. It was also moving to do backing vocals for myself. I know people do it all the time, but in this context, it felt like I was making a claim that everyone is worth attention. And I am worth my own attention. It felt like I was singing to my old self with my new self even though the recording was only seconds after. I’m already reaching backward. I don’t want to leave that person behind.

GB: You’re also a writer and art educator, and you taught a class about concept albums. Is this part of how your project obsessions manifest?

CCH: Yeah, sure. It’s really helpful for me to teach classes about the thing I’m obsessed with. It’s all I can think about, so it's a good pressure valve to let out some steam. I get a lot of joy out of watching people discover something they either absolutely love or absolutely hate. Both are important. Also, this process of learning how to listen is really interesting. I found concept albums to be really hated. But I love them. They are so weird. They also are a queer part of music. Literally, they don’t fit right. They’re not a bunch of singles to put on the radio, they are really project-driven.

You can look at things like Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid or Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and think about how concept albums are projects of community. They are acts of archive and intimacy. Thinking about what concept albums can do and have done for other artists was really helpful for me. It gave me a new framework to think about how this was going to exist somewhere. 

It doesn’t feel right to me to talk about this album and not talk about the fact that I made it on this land where people were forcibly removed. All the springs have these names of confederate soldiers. It’s super violative. That is also part of why a portion of all future proceeds will be donated to the Osage Nation. I’m trying to figure out how to pay reparations in a way that is sustainable and recurring. I’m still learning and will probably revise some of this as I go.

It was really helpful to teach this class. This album is an act of community. How is it an act of community when it is just me? It’s not just me. There are also the memories of these people here, there is my friend Leah, these people who are on this land and aren’t here anymore, and all of these insects and birds and non-human communities. What does that mean when I save it? What am I archiving? Who is the person that I am archiving even as I want that person to be something else? It’s really fucking helpful. If you’re an artist, try teaching a class about the thing you’re doing. It will help you find new doors to talk about your work.

GB: Your album has this beautiful presence with the live recordings in nature. You’ve played some shows recently—what has it been like sharing presence with people again?

CCH: Really interesting. I have been in a band for years and got very used to performing in that band. Being the only one on a stage in front of people is horrifying. My first show back, all my friends came. The room was cramped. I couldn’t do the fingerpicking, it was just frozen. It was so wild. The absolute fear. I’m learning that I love performing in the traditional sense, I’m on the stage and you’re all listening. Part of what I’m trying to do in the performance element is to share stories in between each thing. You can feel a bit more like Roger Miller or Todd Snider. I want it to feel like a whole experience.

But that’s actually not all I want to do with it. I’m going to Nashville soon, and along the way, I want to record small moments of myself outside again. I want to understand how to do more with performance than just having one person here and everyone here. How do you involve everyone? How does everyone become a part of something that is communal? The energy is there, but how do you do it in a weird way without doing it churchy? 

I don’t want to make people get up and shake hands and be like, introduce yourself to your neighbor. So I’ve been asking people what they got into during quarantine. It’s the question when I do my soundcheck. I asked someone to tell me an object they love a lot, and then I’ll improvise a song about that while I’m trying to do my soundcheck. I’m trying to find new ways to be there so it feels more like how it felt to make it. Doing it with people is horrifying. Bugs are honest, but I’m used to bugs at this point.

GB: You recorded a new song and video for the NPR Tiny Desk Contest. Can you tell us more about your Creekbed Carter Hogan moniker and what you want to do with that project?

CCH: I wasn’t sure if I was going to release good st riddance under what I like to call my phone bill name. But through the process of coming out as a non-binary person, I’m really enjoying having this alter ego performance person that feels a lot closer to what I feel like, a person who feels both butch and femme. I can speak more easily to queer people in history I’m trying to reach towards. good st riddance is a complete project; I’m not going to make a sequel. 

That project got me here. Now, what is it like for me to very honestly make the music I want to make as this person? I’m trying to follow movements in classical music and jazz. I feel like those two really mirror each other in their overtures and interludes and ways to shift time signatures that I don’t hear in pop so much. I find I’m able to do a lot more stylistically and a lot less afraid. I was so anxious to be looked at before. Now I don’t have that. It’s a lot easier to make a video where I am burning a desk down with a shirt open than it is to hide it.

GB: Do you have anything coming up you want to plug or artists you want to shout out?

CCH: Yes! First, I’m doing a vinyl run. I’m doing preorders in July and will release them in September. So keep your peepers open!

And, influences right now? I’ve found so many rad people on Bandcamp. It’s great there! That is where I first released the album. Spotify is so boring, their autoplay is like the same fucking five people. But Bandcamp is really interesting. Right now, I’m really digging Amethyst Kiah. Anjimile. They’re incredible. They came out with a bunch of collabs with other people. I just found their first album, and I’m obsessed with it. 

Around town, there are so many dope bands that I’m getting to play with. Pelvis Wrestley is out here doing stuff again, so is Half Dream. So many rad people to be around right now. Everyone is peeking out. I’m feeling really excited about just running around Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas for a tiny tour starting Fourth of July.

Listen to more Creekbed Carter Hogan on Bandcamp, Spotify, and Instagram.

June 2021