Copyslut: Hooker Homecoming
Photo credit: Rachel Lena Esterline
1) We love "Hooker Homecoming". You released the track along with your album back in January. Why did you decide to make a video specifically for this track?
Thank you, we love it too! We were planning to shoot a video for Hooker Homecoming before COVID-19 changed so much about our daily reality. Our original vision for what the video would look like changed, but the spirit stayed true. In some ways the content evolved into something more powerful that we could have anticipated. With so much intense impact and uncertainty about the future, we wanted to do something special for our LGBTQ and sex working communities. This video is a soothing salve for the isolation and struggle we were experiencing with our people, to showcase our resilience and connection during these unprecedented times. We gave our friends living alone roommates and blurred the edges of between worlds.
2) Happy Pride! How did you choose to celebrate and observe Pride month in June?
We decided to postpone the release of Hooker Homecoming, originally set for June 2nd (International Whore’s Day) in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. IWD is a day to end police violence against sex workers and has always felt like the perfect way to kick of Pride month! We released it as a bolstering little pride present for our Edgewalkers. It felt so in line with the reclamation of Pride’s roots as a radically, queer trans, sex worker, and BIPOC led riot. We love that more and more people are talking about Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans sexworking woman, as a leader of the Stonewall riots.
Additionally, we were delighted to participate in Capital City’s Virtual Pride event in Washington. We submitted our quarantine special music video, Bubbles, and an acoustic live performance of “The Show Must Go On” by Queen, with Reiko Que Fuego as our dancing video vixen. We’ve also been putting out intentional effort to further educate ourselves on black, queer, indigenous, and gender liberatory movements. A favorite and classic of ours is “Pleasure Activism” by Adrienne Marie Brown and “Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde.
3) "Hooker Homecoming" is a queer sex worker anthem. Tell us more about how you hope the track affects fans and listeners. Why reach out to queer sex workers specifically?
Our deepest intention is that we imbue people’s efforts for change. Whether they are marching in the streets, adapting and transitioning their work in the time of Covid, or moving through grief. We hope that our Edgwalkers will feel more connected and feel our love for them.
We crafted this song and video to cast a money making protection spell for our resilient queer sex working community.
We reach out to sex workers in Hooker Homecoming for a few reasons. First, because Chatz Of Love, our singer, is an out and proud gay ass sex worker. Second, we wrote this song after the passing of internet laws SESTA/FOSTA making work more dangerous increasing our already high mortality rates. SESTA is the “Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking act” and FOSTA “Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” are internet laws passed in March 2018. These laws ultimately made it harder for online workers to advertise safely, vet clients, and maintain “bad date” sites. Third, not long after the passing of SESTA/FOSTA, all of the San Francisco strippers became employees, cutting the wages of those left employed by about 60% and pushing undocumented workers, and commuting workers from less populated areas further into the margins of our community.
In a lot of ways, queer sex workers are used to being pushed into the margins of society, and so we have always built robust informal systems of mutual support, person to person. We look out for each other, and this song is imbued with that power of interdependence and self reliance. Our strength, power, and ability to support ourselves in spite of the oppression we face is a true hero’s ballad… a story of conflict, passion, and overcoming even when the odds are stacked against us.
Not to mention, sex work is inherently queer in the ways that it constantly subverts heteronormative relationship structures.
4) Tell us about the music scene in the Bay! A lot of great artists come out of the SF area - how do you feel the scene has affected your musical style and who are some of your favorite artists in the Bay?
The Bay has a music scene unlike any other and we LOVE it. Copyslut was born out of the heart of the queer-core scene - we’ve had the privilege to share the stage with some beloved punks and rockers, such like The Homobiles, Middle-Aged Queers, and Mya Byrne. Of course, we also have to shout out to our members other bands- Eli has a solo project named Saxreligious and electronic jazz duo Rice Kings. Alexis also drums for Oakland queer deathrockers Mystic Priestess. One of our favorite live shows is La Misa Negra, an Oakland based punk cumbia band. We can’t wait to see them tear up the stage at the New Parish in Oakland one day again.
5) Your album "Sex, Death and Other People's Money" is still alive and well. Do you plan to highlight any other tracks with a music video?
Our penultimate track “Psychopomp” is a tribute to a dear friend we lost to overdose in 2018. He was deeply involved with harm reduction, needle exchange and narcan resuscitation work in SF, so we are planning to release a video for National Overdose Awareness Month in August. After that, it’s safe to say there will be more… we are total hams and love performing for the camera, and I’m sure there are many more quarantine style productions to come. Whether we choose to highlight more tracks from the album or release more music from our indie comic - music collaboration EDGEWALKERS, it’s going to be grand.
6) How did the making of the "Hooker Homecoming" video go? We love that you chose to highlight people via zoom calls/livestreams. Was that difficult to coordinate?
We received so many responses that it was overwhelming to say the least. We were blown back by hours and hours of tenderness, sexiness, and vulnerability from our community, friends, and allies. We also wanted to do each and every contributor justice. Characters were created, choreography was learned, threads of collective unconscious were found while noting the similarities between the free-style sections.
Chatz here! It was my first editing project dealing with this many hours of footage from many different sources. I am self taught and was definitely intimidated and also completely committed to making something that reflected the unique magic that each person offered the project and story line. Many of the frames are feathered to show that though we may be isolated, we stay connected and in each other's orbit. It felt like playing house as a child. I was able to put my friends from different cities in the same room. I was able to give people living alone and isolated, roommates.
7) How have you been doing during quarantine? What are some positives that came out of it?
The commitment to creative projects has helped us not fall too deeply into depression. Hooker Homecoming got us out of bed and focused on life affirming activities for over a month. It gave us an outlet to express and transform all the feelings of grief, isolation, uncertainty. Quarantine has been challenging, and we are doing our best to stay agile and adapt to all the changes. We carve out time to create, write music, make videos, have weekly zoom “band practices” as best we can, because we feel very called to document the moment and be part of the art coming out during this time. It’s truly unbelievable what has been happening. We have gotten in the habit of reminding each other “This is real life” as part of a practice of staying embodied and engaged. In some ways we’ve been training for this our whole lives. For example, Chatz has celiacs disease and is used to relying on her own cooking and being aware of possible invisible cross contamination. Also, many sex workers have already been living with the uncertainty of their financial futures.
It’s so easy to disassociate from all of the death and loss. With the music industry projected to be one of the last to return post-Covid, we are all trying to just keep in touch with each other as we surf the turbulence. Just trying to take everything one day at a time.
8) "Hooker Homecoming" is an incredible track. Tell us about the creative process! Who played what instruments? Was it put together organically or did it take some time? We like to know more about your 'in studio' process.
Hooker Homecoming was probably the third song we ever wrote, and it went through many iterations before we recorded it. Chatz initially wrote the melody in a Snapchat to boost a dear fellow queer SW on her way to work. When it came time to develop the song, we knew we wanted an intergalactic western vibe, gesturing toward Joss Whedon’s “Firefly”, where the sex workers are are powerful, rescourful, and respected heroes. We brought the guitar and vocals to our drummer at the time Kendal Blum. From there we played drafts at live shows in order to tighten it up. It really came alive when Sax Religious (Eli Maliwan) joined the band and wrote his honky tonk bass line.
We recorded our album at Airship Laboratories in Richmond, CA. Before we hit the recording studio Nahuel Bronzini helped us co-produce the song giving it some extra sparkle and pizzaz. We wanted to drive home the country vibe as much as possible once we hit the studio, so we invited our dear friend and mentor Mya Byrne to cameo on mandolin, and Erika Oba to lay down those sparkly saloon piano lines. Once all the pieces were there, it came together super organically. There's even a sweet melodic reference by the mandolin in the outro to Moon River, famous for its feature in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It was incredibly fun to play it live with all the guest performers present at our album release show at the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the country, The White Horse Inn in at Berkeley, California.
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