On the new episode of Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly, Lafemmebear dives into her remix of Reba McEntire’s “I’m A Survivor” and tells how she got asked to do it after being played on Proud Radio. Man of the Minch also stops by to discuss his new album, ‘The Tide Is At the Turning,’ and The Judds call in to chat about their induction to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Tune in and listen to the episode in-full today at 2pm PT / 4pm CT / 5pm ET or anytime on-demand here.
Hunter Kelly on how he put forward Lafemmebear for the remix of Reba McEntire’s “I’m A Survivor”
I learned about you through Mya Byrne, who’s our mutual friend and I think it was a list of “trans artists that you needed to know,” probably on Country Queer that she had written. So, I was just looking through that and Lafemmebear, I was like, “Who? What?” Because there was no picture of you. It was like this cute little bear (laughs) DJ’ing, and I just listened through and really, the Proud episode, the Dance Party episode, “I Luv This Skin,” I was just so taken with that song. So, in that, I’ve been writing the liner notes to Reba’s box set that’s coming out, ‘Revived Remixed Revisited,’ and Reba’s right-hand guy is a guy named Justin McIntosh and we grew up really similar. Like, he’s a gay guy and Reba walked him and his husband down the aisle at their wedding. Like, it was something. It was something. But, Justin called me one day and he’s like, “We’re seeing something on social media with ‘I’m A Survivor,’” the theme song to the ‘Reba’ show. We’re seeing so many women of color, especially women of color, Black people in general, like singing the theme song, talking about the show.” And he was like, “I really want to say, ‘We see you. We see what you’re saying. We see this conversation happening.’” And so he was like, “Do you know any Black female producers who could take this on?” And so, I was like, “Okay, let me think about it.” And so then I said, “Hunter, you just put together four hours of dance programming (laughs) on Proud Radio.” Go through the work you’ve already done. And there you were. Lafemmebear with “I Luv This Skin.” I was like, “This is it. This is Lafemmebear.” So, I called Mya, and I was like, “Hey.” Because at this point, I did not know about your production background. I did not know that you were nominated for a Grammy. Let me just say, you were nominated for an engineering Grammy? Like, this is insane, I just learned this getting ready for the interview. Your creativity and what you bring is so apparent that I was just like… I didn’t know anything about you beyond just “I love this song,” and I was like, “I want to see what happens when Lafemmebear gets ahold of this song.” And it’s amazing where this has gone.
Lafemmebear on getting asked to remix Reba McEntire’s “I’m A Survivor”
Everything is connected. Everything is connected. Everything is connected. It’s funny. So, I get this message from Mya [Byrne] like, Mya goes, “I wanna connect you with Hunter Kelly. Hunter loves your music and played one of your songs.” I didn’t understand.
I was just like, “Okay. Well, let’s just see what happens here.” And the next thing I know, you hit me up, and you asked me, “Yo, can we do this?” And I’m wondering, “Like, is this an official, official remix?” Like, you know how your brain is like, “They really can’t just be asking me to take a crack at a Reba record right now, right?” Like no, that’s what it was. And then it was like, “Hey, can you finish it by the seventh?” And I was like, “Lord.” But then they’re like, “Oh, we’ll extend it.” And then I beat the deadline and then I was like, “Oh well, I don’t know, it’s like a Reba record, so I was going to nail that.” And, I didn’t know whether it was a real opportunity like, really real or not, or it was like a “Am I in the running?” All I knew was, I was going to nail that.
Lafemmebear on having a file of Reba McEntire’s recorded laughs
It was quite an amazing experience. Like, I mean, I had a lot of fun with it. Justin [McIntosh] was really great to work with, gave really great feedback. The funniest moment is – of making that record and I think everybody will appreciate this – the show [‘Reba’] had that laugh in, the “ha-ha,” and I guess because of copyright reasons we needed her to re-record it. So one day out of nowhere in my email, I get this UMG download from Universal Music Group, go to the link and start downloading all this stuff. And there is just about three minutes of Reba doing random laughs on a set in between filming at some random point. And I’m just like… I called Mya [Byrne], like, “Mya, can I play you something? And tell me if you know what this is.” And I played it and it took her a second. She was like, “Oh my God, did they send you fresh new laughs from Reba?” I was like, “Yes!” I have a file of Reba laughs now that forever will live on my machine. Amen.
Lafemmebear on being vulnerable in music
A lot of my stuff, I’ll talk about life and the past, and what brought me to where I am. A lot of my stuff, I’ll talk about queer experience and Black, queer experience, and Black power, and queer and trans power, and liberation for our people, and all that stuff, and that’s all very much a part of me. Sometimes, I feel like as Black artists we aren’t always allowed to just talk about our feels, and that is radical enough, me stepping out and saying, “I’m going to show this vulnerable, softer, less ‘I’m a strong Black woman’ side of myself.” But it’s strong because it’s me showing, “Hey, I’m human. I go through relationships, and I’m not perfect. The people I’ve been with ain’t perfect. We learn from each other. We’re learning from things.”
Lafemmebear on remixing Reba McEntire’s “I’m A Survivor”
I also want to say… So, you recorded this. It was confirmed. It’s on this project. “I’m A Survivor” is this huge moment on TikTok. It’s the biggest TikTok moment that Reba’s record label in Nashville, and MCA Nashville has ever had. That includes big artists like George Strait, Eric Church, Keith Urban… So when I say this is the biggest TikTok moment they’ve ever had, that means something. And it just kept happening. And there was a tweet that Justin [McIntosh] saw from a woman named Maya Cade, who works with Criterion in the film world. And she asked the question, “Has there ever been a study on the hold the TV show ‘Reba’ has on Black Americans?” And this got like 850 retweets. I’ve been following it for like two months now. And I’m just like, “What in the world?” I’ve got to be honest with you. I didn’t realize this. Right? We, because my mother, when I showed her the song, she was like, “That song means so much to me.” You know, I don’t even understand that. It’s so wild. I haven’t heard that song in 10 years. And, even then, I was like, “But I remember, Mom. I remember watching this show. And I remember you being a single mom with two kids and working jobs, and in school, night school, and all of that.” And like, all that these words meant something. And it rang in such a way. And to find out that we weren’t the only like Black fans, Black women, Black people having that experience, I was like, “Wait, so all of us were watching this show. Oh!”
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Man of the Minch on creating a place for queer folk in Scotland
I want to play music and be totally myself, and say the things I want to say and be around people like me. The same as what’s happening in America right now with country music. Folk music just really wasn’t a space for queer people, really. Or it didn’t feel like that. And I think it didn’t feel like that for a lot of traditional and folk musicians in Scotland. So I started this organization, it’s just a collective. It operates as a network and also it creates opportunity for performance and collaboration and stuff. But I think what I like about Bogha-Frois is that it challenges preconceptions about the folk audience. I think there’s a commercialized idea of what queer people can do, and I think while that’s valid and that’s very real, I think it’s an opportunity to show that people can have a reverence to tradition and to the past, as much as they can be about the future and progression and stuff. So for me, I didn’t really ever feel like I fit in with the mainstream queer crowd. I wasn’t going to gay bars, and I didn’t have a lot of queer friends because I felt like we didn’t have lot in common. And it was just wonderful to be part of something where while we’re all queer, we all have this other thing that we all loved in traditional music in playing music, and writing songs and singing songs.
Man of the Minch on “Mountains” and “Fallen Man”
“Mountains,” it was originally written during the first lockdown, kind of in spring last year. It was totally just written as a folk song as kind of just a broken heart song. I really felt this sort of urgency about it and I wanted to do something different with it. So when we got into the studio, I thought this could be really a great introduction to what the album is supposed to be and to take you by surprise, I suppose. And it takes a while before it comes into the sort of the big sort of orchestral kind of sense, throbbing outro. I wanted it to feel kind of cathartic, a lot of the album is about catharsis and about change and about being self-acceptance and stuff. And so that was really meant to symbolize that kind of real acceptance of this stuff that I talked about already in the song. And then moving into “Fallen Man,” which is more of a sort of still something of the Pat Benatar about it, I think. Those two songs released sort of announce the album and what it is and what you can expect to hear from the rest of it. Because I think, it’s not just country, it’s not just folk, it’s not just synth pop. It’s like a mixture between all those things. And I think a lot of people, a lot of acts in the past have maybe tried to mix those things together and not quite made it. It’s not quite jelled before, I suppose. And there are artists that have done that really well, but it’s quite a hard sell, I suppose. And I wanted those two songs to really be like, “Okay, I see what he’s talking about here.”
Man of the Minch on Alison Krauss
Total Alison Krauss fan. I think that’s really how I got into music, I think, or into performing. I remember watching her live album, it came on the TV one year just after Christmas. And I just remember watching her and being like, “Oh, that’s what I want to do.” Her voice is just incredible. And at the time, I mean, I still am, but I’m a fiddle player and her fiddle playing always just, was so magic and understated and she’s not a show off at all. And she’s not even a songwriter, but she’s such a good song selector. And you feel everything, every last word that she says and yeah, she’s been my musical hero for the best part of 15 years now.
Man of the Minch on the meaning of Man of the Minch
Hunter Kelly: This whole idea of merman, it really brings back to Madonna’s “Cherish” video, in black and white. She had mermen. And then of course, lately, so my boyfriend, Clint, is so into Disney movies. And so we watch ‘The Little Mermaid’ quite often. And let me tell you, as I’ve gotten older, King Triton is just a hot daddy.
Man of the Minch: Yeah. Totally, totally.
Hunter Kelly: Just melts my butter, this idea of the Man of the Minch.
Man of the Minch: Yeah. And I guess it’s also, I think my interpretation of that story is like a queered version of the mermaid story, kind of reflects the music that I’m doing, and it’s like a sort of queered version of old music. And yeah, I grew up obsessed with mermaids, and ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘Splash.’
