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This week on The Guestlist, we've got two charismatic musicians from south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! discusses her early years in punk and feeling out of place on stage before she came out as transgender. Bradford Cox of Deerhunter talks about growing up in a small town and how he discovered the outside world thanks to his local library. That's not a PSA, by the way. It's just a fact!
Laura Jane Grace on feeling lost on stage before coming out as transgender: "I hit a wall where I didn't really know who I was supposed to be up there. I'm up there, and I'm like, 'I don't know what they f***ing want me to say. I don't know who I'm supposed to be up here.' And then looking out in the audience and being like, 'If these people knew who I really was, would they be here singing along?'"
Bradford Cox on how art influenced him as a child: "If I wanted to be a doctor, it was because I saw a movie about doctors. Like 'Flatliners.' I said to my dad, 'I want to be a doctor now.' My dad's like, 'Well, you probably ought to be an actor or a director, because you don't want to be a doctor. You just want to play one.' I said, 'I guess...I guess that's right.' Then I decided when I was 9 years old that I wanted to grow up to be David Lynch."
