Speaker 1: The moon is something that you always accept as being
Speaker 1: what it is. It doesn't change much. It goes through phases,
Speaker 1: but it is always there. It's a constant in the sky.
Speaker 1: I remember looking at the moon and thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: what if I just noticed that the moon was deep red?
Speaker 1: And the moon had always been deep red? But I
Speaker 1: knew in my heart that the moon was not supposed
Speaker 1: to be deep red, that the moon was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a big white looking rock in the sky, in
Speaker 1: the sky, in the sky, in the sky. Hello beauty
Speaker 1: translated listeners. I hope you've been enjoying the conversations we've
Speaker 1: been having this season. This week, I'm back inside my
Speaker 1: closet with one of my close friends, singer songwriter Robin
Speaker 1: Danger Vincent. We have a lot to talk about this week,
Speaker 1: coming out writing music, country music, vocal training, Atlanta stuff,
Speaker 1: and of course trans stuff. Duh. Please enjoy my fun
Speaker 1: conversation with Robin Danger.
Speaker 2: So I love it.
Speaker 1: It is downright muggy today. Oh wait, it is downright
Speaker 1: muggy boots today it is. And what is our our
Speaker 1: little groundhog? What is our Georgia groundhog? We have a
Speaker 1: Georgia one? We do? I thought there was only one. No,
Speaker 1: we have a Georgia groundhog who tells the groundhog culture
Speaker 1: here is deep and vicious.
Speaker 2: Never heard of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so no, there is a Georgia groundhog. He's at
Speaker 1: like one of the parks or something. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: totally Wait, what's the thing with Groundhog Day? The groundhog
Speaker 1: comes out of the ground, and if it sees its
Speaker 1: shadow and it gets scared by its shadow, it means
Speaker 1: that we're going to have is it six weeks of winter?
Speaker 1: Six more weeks of winter? Six more weeks of winter?
Speaker 1: If it comes out of the ground and I don't know, like,
Speaker 1: does it not notice its shadow or does it just
Speaker 1: like see its shadow and it's not afraid of it,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a cloudy day and so it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a shadow. I don't fucking know how this all works. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think the groundhog just comes out and it says
Speaker 1: it's too fucking cold. Still, I'm going back under, I'm
Speaker 1: going back into hibernation. Yeah, but what our groundhog said was, well, bitch,
Speaker 1: it's already spring. So I'm here. That groundhog ran out
Speaker 1: and gathered some strawberries exactly, it's blueberry. Wait, it's berry seasoned. Mama.
Speaker 1: Probably yeah, Berry. Wait, no, Berry, that's late. That's late
Speaker 1: summer apples all year long, that's fall, Mama. We're gonna
Speaker 1: start eating with the seasons, Mama. Is that a responsible
Speaker 1: thing to do? No, it's not. I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It's like the sustainable thing. I know, I know. But
Speaker 1: who's gonna eat all those fucking apples in the winter? Girl?
Speaker 1: We are not talking about what we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: talking about. That's fair. I'm so sorry. Well, let me
Speaker 1: give you an introduction. Cheers, thank you. Let we give
Speaker 1: you a proper introduction. I am here today with family friend,
Speaker 1: friend of the pod, and musician, songwriter. Musician, singer, songwriter.
Speaker 1: I guess they call that guitarist, guitarists, all around great person,
Speaker 1: all around great person. She does solo music. She has
Speaker 1: a band. Her name is Robin Danger Vincent. Please welcome
Speaker 1: to the pod. Wait, I said, what a name? Oh okay,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, do you want to say Shakedown?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, Robin Danger Vincent, Welcome you pod. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me, Carmen. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Thank you for being here. I've been a
Speaker 1: big fan of the podcast for as long as I
Speaker 1: can remember, since the inception, since I met you. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, we met well, I guess we should talk
Speaker 1: about how we met. Sure, you and I met each
Speaker 1: other this past year. It was it was in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, Latober. Was it late? I was going to
Speaker 1: say late summer October twenty two. It was a beautiful day.
Speaker 1: We were in inmand Park. Yeah. It was at the
Speaker 1: first Atlanta trans Lady's picnic. Yeah, it was fantastic. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed being there and of course meeting you and
Speaker 1: was a great day. It was, well, Robin, since I've
Speaker 1: met you, we have become close friends. You come over
Speaker 1: weekly for dinner and movies and whatnot. Well technically not
Speaker 1: movie but no night. Yes, and so we've been watching
Speaker 1: Veno together, which we need to finish. We do and
Speaker 1: by the way, and we do so sorry. That's a
Speaker 1: life changing show, by the way, it is, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot to take in. I'm watching it the third
Speaker 1: time with you all now, so yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: my first time watching it with a group of people,
Speaker 1: well a group of people. I watched it with my
Speaker 1: boyfriend previously, but watching it with fellow trans women just
Speaker 1: feels very special. It really does. It feels like a
Speaker 1: you know, a sisterhood that I always wanted. So that's
Speaker 1: really sweet. Yeah, and I totally agree with that. I
Speaker 1: appreciate I appreciate you for that. Thank you for having
Speaker 1: us over and doing that. Honestly, you've kind of facilitated
Speaker 1: the first group of trans people I've ever hung out with. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess during the winter, during our winter stay hiatus
Speaker 1: from the picnic. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, Robin, tell the
Speaker 1: folks about who you are. Sure my name is Robin Danger.
Speaker 1: Vincent as Cerman put it, I've lived in Atlanta my
Speaker 1: entire life, which at this point is rare. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is rare. Everybody moves away from here. A lot
Speaker 1: of transplants here, a lot of transplants. That's definitely true.
Speaker 1: I've never felt okay, so right now I'm feeling a
Speaker 1: pretty strong call to move away. I'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: put that out there. Yeah, but I've seen the city
Speaker 1: become something completely different. I remember a time before the
Speaker 1: Olympics were here. What was our mass? What was that
Speaker 1: little bit? It was busy? Izzy plush, I was iusied
Speaker 1: out girl. I love as well. Yeah, I isy was
Speaker 1: like it was a very It was really the first
Speaker 1: identifying thing of Atlanta. We had the braves. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had that tomahawk thing that I honestly never knew was
Speaker 1: a tomahawk. We had the bombing. We yeah, sorry, we
Speaker 1: don't have stuck about. We did have the bombing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll get right down into it. I grew
Speaker 1: up frequenting a pretty well known venue, an acoustic venue
Speaker 1: here called Eddie's Addic. Oh hell yeah, hell yeah. Eddie's
Speaker 1: Attic was where my mother would take me many, many,
Speaker 1: many times. I don't really know how often she would
Speaker 1: take me because I was I don't know, this was
Speaker 1: before I was five years old. We would go to
Speaker 1: Eddie's Attic, where she worked as a publicist for a
Speaker 1: lot of the bands that would come through. And since
Speaker 1: I was a little child, I did not have any
Speaker 1: daycare or anything like that, so I would just come
Speaker 1: and listen to musicians and get really really surrounded by
Speaker 1: that acoustic sound. And I just kind of thought that
Speaker 1: everybody did that, And as I grew older, I learned
Speaker 1: that not everybody does that, and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: unique space to grow up in. And consequently, I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of my childhood around a lot of lesbians,
Speaker 1: around a lot of acoustic guitar playing lesbian sisters. So
Speaker 1: that probably played a large role in my development, and
Speaker 1: I haven't explored it as much as I should. But
Speaker 1: I went to Georgia Tech and I was going to
Speaker 1: be a mechanical engineer, and I spent maybe a year
Speaker 1: and a half to two years in the industry working
Speaker 1: as a mechanical engineer, commuting back and forth to Coming Georgia, Baby,
Speaker 1: Coming Georgia. Have you seen that, Oprah Winfrey? I certainly,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I certainly havene and I got the
Speaker 1: exact same for those of you listening at home who
Speaker 1: have not heard of this coming. Georgia used to be,
Speaker 1: and to some extent still is a sundown town, which
Speaker 1: is not a good town to be and that culture,
Speaker 1: that sun downtown culture extends to a lot of minorities
Speaker 1: and persists to this day. To some extent, in my eyes,
Speaker 1: in that town, there's a lot of if you don't
Speaker 1: fit in exactly with the local culture, you're not seen well,
Speaker 1: you're not treated well there. So I on some level
Speaker 1: felt this alienation working there with the coworkers. I had
Speaker 1: who were all not all of them. Some of them
Speaker 1: are still very good friends of mine. Shout out to
Speaker 1: Francis and Eric. They to a certain extent, a lot
Speaker 1: of them were kind of good old boys, and that's
Speaker 1: not a good environment to be a pre out trans
Speaker 1: woman in. And this was before I even knew. This
Speaker 1: was when I still considered myself as this dude working
Speaker 1: in coming Georgia, trying to fit in. But nothing felt
Speaker 1: right the time, as we would say, exactly well a
Speaker 1: little egg. And I associated that feeling a lot with
Speaker 1: the industry, I think, which may have been a detriment
Speaker 1: to my development further in that industry, but it also
Speaker 1: exacerbated my coming out, which I guess. After working as
Speaker 1: a mechanical engineer for a little bit, I decided, you know,
Speaker 1: I've only got so much youth left in me, right,
Speaker 1: I might as well take the most advantage of it
Speaker 1: that I can. So I started a band. I had
Speaker 1: always really been trying to write songs since I was
Speaker 1: in college. I got a band together and started playing
Speaker 1: around Atlanta, started going to the open mics and really
Speaker 1: exploring who I was through music, listening to a lot
Speaker 1: of different musicians, a lot of local musicians, hanging out
Speaker 1: with a lot of musicians, and watching a lot of
Speaker 1: music documentaries. Being from Georgia, we are surrounded with a
Speaker 1: lot of country music, classic country music, not so much
Speaker 1: new country music, which I think of as a blessing,
Speaker 1: but a lot of classic country music. Country pop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you love that country pop so much. But
Speaker 1: country music has always been about, contrary to what it's
Speaker 1: represented as now, going against the grain, but actually going
Speaker 1: against the grain, being part of the working class and
Speaker 1: going against the status quo. It represents those who are oppressed,
Speaker 1: and it gives a voice to those who otherwise wouldn't
Speaker 1: have one. So I started seeing these oppressed minority groups
Speaker 1: in that light, which made me, gave me a little
Speaker 1: bit of empathy for people that I didn't have before.
Speaker 1: And I looked at who I was, and I said,
Speaker 1: am I stuck being a white sisk guy my entire life?
Speaker 1: Something about that feels wrong. I better explore this. So
Speaker 1: I explored it. And you know, this is a process
Speaker 1: that took place over the course of many, many, many months,
Speaker 1: many years even, but one day I finally said, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there is something to this whole trans thing. You know,
Speaker 1: growing up in a mostly Republican family in a mostly
Speaker 1: Republican area. It was frowned upon, to say the least,
Speaker 1: which we talked about earlier today. Yeah, and that made
Speaker 1: it really difficult to admit to myself and to my
Speaker 1: family and to my girlfriend. But I did what I
Speaker 1: felt an outlaw country musician would do because at the time,
Speaker 1: I considered myself an outlaw country artist, okay, and it
Speaker 1: led to this. It led to my coming out, and
Speaker 1: it led to me starting hormones, and it led to
Speaker 1: like this whole new like it really feels like you're,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better less cliche term, born again.
Speaker 1: Moment you say, okay, listeners, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Here. More from Robin on her outlaw country
Speaker 1: music outlook. After this, she does I know here and
Speaker 1: welcome back. Robin and I are just getting into her
Speaker 1: songwriting process. When you started music, you say you kind
Speaker 1: of felt like an outlock country musician. How do you
Speaker 1: feel like your music has evolved as you have evolved
Speaker 1: in your transition? So one thing that I've always abided
Speaker 1: by is write what you know when you're writing music,
Speaker 1: when you're writing prose, when you're really writing anything, if
Speaker 1: you're not writing what you know, it's going to come
Speaker 1: across as fake. So I started just writing about my feelings.
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift would write about she would use writing as
Speaker 1: a way to cope with her breakups and her drama
Speaker 1: that was going on in her life all throughout middle
Speaker 1: school and high school. And I read that in some
Speaker 1: interviews where and I thought, you know what, Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: has a good thing going for her. Maybe I should
Speaker 1: take a leaf out of that book. And so I
Speaker 1: started writing, just like I started No Holds Bar, just
Speaker 1: writing about how I was feeling and myself. And I
Speaker 1: have one anecdote which was I guess my whole coming out.
Speaker 1: It was in twenty seventeen. I think I was feeling
Speaker 1: this unease, this unrest, and I grabbed my laptop and
Speaker 1: I went over to the Majestic Diner. Everybody knows the
Speaker 1: Majestic Diner. I hate their French fries, absolutely horrible. What
Speaker 1: makes them horrible? They're just they're just bad. They're bad
Speaker 1: French fries. They just give you like potatoes, and it's
Speaker 1: just like they're not hard, they're not crunchy, they're not salty.
Speaker 1: I used to work at five guys. Oh really, the
Speaker 1: secret is the double frying. Yeah, you drop them one,
Speaker 1: you let them sit for five minutes or something like that,
Speaker 1: you drop them again. I always order my fries extra crispy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's like maybe three drops total. I'm
Speaker 1: an extra crispy bitch, extra crispy bitch. Right there, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, we're sitting with an extra crispy bitch. They
Speaker 1: know when I walk in to get that fucking prior,
Speaker 1: get going, go it, fire it up. Yeah. But I
Speaker 1: went to the Majestic Diner one night and I grabbed
Speaker 1: my laptop and I decided I was just gonna write.
Speaker 1: I was just going to write something about that night.
Speaker 1: Just felt very open and like I could be myself.
Speaker 1: I was completely alone that night, and I wrote and
Speaker 1: I wrote and I wrote, and I think at the
Speaker 1: end of it, I had written like six pages on
Speaker 1: some Google doc and at the end of it, I
Speaker 1: had come to the conclusion the Internet says I might
Speaker 1: be trans but the Internet also says Paul is dead,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. So that kind of like that
Speaker 1: little essay thing that I wrote, I didn't show anybody,
Speaker 1: but it stayed on my mind for the next couple
Speaker 1: of years, and then one night, I remember I was
Speaker 1: feeling kind of a similar way, and I went outside
Speaker 1: of my apartment. I looked up at the moon and
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, Man, it really feels like did
Speaker 1: you ever play Major's Mask? Yes, the legend of Alto
Speaker 1: Majors Mask. You know when you look up at the
Speaker 1: moon and it's fucking terrifying. Yeah, like the third day, God, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, nightmares about that. I remember looking up
Speaker 1: at the moon and I was thinking to myself, it
Speaker 1: kind of feels like the the moon is something that
Speaker 1: you always accept as being what it is. It's it
Speaker 1: doesn't change much. It goes through phases, but it is
Speaker 1: always there. It's a constant in the sky, except in
Speaker 1: the daytime when it's harder to see, or when it's
Speaker 1: under the horizon when you can't see it. But other
Speaker 1: than that, astrology one O one, Robin here, thank you, Robin,
Speaker 1: You're very welcome the moon. I remember think, not astronomy,
Speaker 1: I a fucking moron. Anyway, we can cut that, we
Speaker 1: can cut that astrology. Astronomy. Astrology is just much more
Speaker 1: fun of a word, I think it is. It's harder
Speaker 1: to say astronomy, astronomy. It's like saying cnemone, Yeah, you're right, Okay,
Speaker 1: sorry continue. I remember looking at the moon and thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, what if.
Speaker 2: The moon?
Speaker 1: What if I just noticed that the moon was deep
Speaker 1: red and the moon had always been deep red. But
Speaker 1: I knew in my heart that the moon was not
Speaker 1: supposed to be deep red, that the moon was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a big white looking rock in the sky.
Speaker 1: And that, I remember, was like the thing that kickstarted,
Speaker 1: like this thought process in my mind that was like
Speaker 1: maybe I should transition. It took a long time for
Speaker 1: the for the logical leap to get there by it,
Speaker 1: but I got there, and uh, I remember. I walked
Speaker 1: from my sidewalk back into the house, and I was
Speaker 1: shaken because I've never i'd never like gone through some
Speaker 1: kind of you know, called it an awakening or whatever
Speaker 1: like this before in my life. But I went back
Speaker 1: into my apartment and my girlfriend greeted me at the door,
Speaker 1: and I said to her, I love you. I think
Speaker 1: I wish that I had been born a girl. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do with that information, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about it right now. And
Speaker 1: she looked at me and she said, Okay, we can
Speaker 1: talk about that later, and that like little tiny bit
Speaker 1: of acceptance, just that little tiny smidgeon of acceptance right
Speaker 1: at the beginning, kept me going. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what would have happened if it had gone differently,
Speaker 1: but I'm so so glad that it went the way
Speaker 1: that it did because you're still together today. We are
Speaker 1: still together today. Yeah, Yeah, that's amazing. I love the
Speaker 1: crap out of her. Yeah. But we A couple months passed,
Speaker 1: and event vitually, I remember she was off somewhere and
Speaker 1: I was having just another one of those nights, you know,
Speaker 1: those nights, And this was after COVID had started, and
Speaker 1: everybody did their self reflection during COVID, and my self
Speaker 1: reflection included a night where I grabbed this large roll
Speaker 1: of butcher paper that we had her parchment paper off
Speaker 1: of a shelf, and I remember taking a big permanent
Speaker 1: marker and I wrote I'm trans on it with no punctuation.
Speaker 1: I might have put a period at the end or something,
Speaker 1: but then I rolled it up and I put it
Speaker 1: on the shelf and I just I just thought about
Speaker 1: it for the next couple hours, and I knew that
Speaker 1: it was there, and I knew that it was out
Speaker 1: in the open, and I had said it. And then
Speaker 1: my girlfriend came home and I told her to go
Speaker 1: look at that thing on the shelf, and she did,
Speaker 1: and that kicked everything off. That was my first time
Speaker 1: I came out to anybody other than myself. Wow. Now
Speaker 1: that didn't answer the question what is your music now?
Speaker 1: What is your sound? Now? If I had to commare
Speaker 1: it to an artist, I'm always going to say Tom Petty, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's your that's your like, he's my boy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's my boy. He's always been my boy. Okay. I
Speaker 1: love Tom Petty. I met him one time. Wow, I
Speaker 1: did you want to talk about that. It's not a
Speaker 1: great story. It's an okay story. It was his old band,
Speaker 1: mud Crutch. They were playing at the Tabernacle. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: yeah in twenty sixteen or something. Yeah, in fact, it
Speaker 1: was June second, twenty sixteen. Oh, she has it tattooed
Speaker 1: on her. Yeah. He came to the Tabernacle and I,
Speaker 1: you know, hung out out back until he came out
Speaker 1: and I shook his hand and I said thanks for
Speaker 1: the music.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: And then he died the next year. And you were
Speaker 1: responsible for it. I feel it. I feel like I was,
Speaker 1: and honestly like I feel like Tom Petty was. Also
Speaker 1: he might have been trans oh like a repressor. He
Speaker 1: might have been. Yeah, he might have been. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: could see that. But the music to answer the actual
Speaker 1: question has become much more faithful to what I actually believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's become a lot more rock oriented rather than like
Speaker 1: this shoehorned, fake country thing that I was trying to
Speaker 1: do for so long. Right, Okay, So I want to
Speaker 1: ask about your mother because she sounds like obviously another
Speaker 1: big musical influence, you know, musical influence for you. And
Speaker 1: I know you have a close relationship with your mother,
Speaker 1: I do. Is she your only family you're close to?
Speaker 1: What is that? I'm pretty close to my family. I
Speaker 1: am ridiculously lucky in that regard. That's awesome. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be the first to admit that there is some
Speaker 1: survivors guilt there sometimes because I know that that is
Speaker 1: somewhat unique in the in the world that we live in.
Speaker 1: But I've always tried to be open with my mother,
Speaker 1: my father less, So there's that whole masculinity thing, and
Speaker 1: that's always hard to get around. But my mother and
Speaker 1: I have always been pretty close. I've always been able
Speaker 1: to joke with her. I think what helps a lot
Speaker 1: is that she wouldn't like me to say this, but
Speaker 1: she would curse a lot. She says a lot of cusswords,
Speaker 1: and I thought that was really funny as a child,
Speaker 1: as yeah, no, like my entire life. Yeah, she would
Speaker 1: say a lot of curse words. But that always kind
Speaker 1: of led to me being more open with her for
Speaker 1: some reason. And I always well because like she would say,
Speaker 1: like she would drop f bombs, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I could tell this lady anything, like she is real,
Speaker 1: She's gonna she'll she'll tell me how she sees it.
Speaker 1: And so one day I was home at my parents'
Speaker 1: house and my mom noticed that there was something wrong
Speaker 1: and so she kind of confronted me outside and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on with you? And I said, Mom, I'm
Speaker 1: starting to question my gender identity. I think that was
Speaker 1: the phrasing I used exactly, and she she, she said
Speaker 1: she she kind of did this like, oh, God, don't
Speaker 1: don't tell your father that kind of thing, which is
Speaker 1: a little expected, and I said, I won't, but I
Speaker 1: am getting therapy for it, and she was very much
Speaker 1: in support of that, which really really helped me a lot.
Speaker 1: For her to be in support of like seeking help
Speaker 1: about it and getting therapy and talking to somebody about it.
Speaker 1: You know, whether or not she supported it immediately, in
Speaker 1: my mind, doesn't matter as much. She just did not
Speaker 1: disown me. She always, always, always made it clear that
Speaker 1: she loved me, and I love her for that and
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that in her. Yeah, and let's talk
Speaker 1: about that too, because acceptance and embracing somebody's transidentity isn't
Speaker 1: always immediate. No it's not, and we can't necessarily always
Speaker 1: expect it to be well, absolutely not. It's not always
Speaker 1: perfect either, you know. But I did not expect it
Speaker 1: at first. I had this Instagram account I remember that
Speaker 1: I started before coming out to her, and it was
Speaker 1: a private Instagram account where I would just post my thoughts.
Speaker 1: It was a journal, and I remember a lot of
Speaker 1: those posts were saying over and over again, my parents
Speaker 1: are gonna hate me for this. I am going to
Speaker 1: be disowned. I need to get right with not having
Speaker 1: parents anymore. And so I, much like a lot of
Speaker 1: us do, came to terms and made peace with the
Speaker 1: fact that I would not have a family after this,
Speaker 1: and I would not have a mother and I would
Speaker 1: not have a father. Well, I'm glad that that has
Speaker 1: been the opposite. Me too, what's true? Me too? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's fantastic. It sounds like your mom was, you know,
Speaker 1: just growing up in the environment of Eddie's Attic, which
Speaker 1: is an Atlanta a staple. Yeah, it's an Atlanta landmark
Speaker 1: and Atlanta's staple in the community. In terms of music.
Speaker 1: Growing up in that type of environment, it sounds like
Speaker 1: to me that your mom was somebody who loved music,
Speaker 1: and she loved music and she loved people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she instilled that into you. And a lot of your
Speaker 1: music is I think, not just about what you're recording
Speaker 1: and putting out on Instagram or I don't know, do
Speaker 1: you have music on like I do. I do like
Speaker 1: streaming anywhere. I do have music streaming. I don't push
Speaker 1: it as much, right, Yeah, I haven't seen honestly, it's
Speaker 1: because of it's before vocal training. I guess. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the vocal training. So you have a fantastic voice. Gosh, thanks, Carmen.
Speaker 1: You have a beautiful voice. So let's talk about vocal
Speaker 1: training and passing and all of that. You have a
Speaker 1: beautiful singing voice as well as a beautiful speaking voice.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Let's talk about it well. You know, the
Speaker 1: drive to feminize the voice has been one of the
Speaker 1: biggest endeavors I think for me. I've always felt that
Speaker 1: before I knew I was trans, when I was just
Speaker 1: as dude, I thought that you can always tell a
Speaker 1: trans person by their voice. That was this preconceived notion
Speaker 1: that I had, and that scared the shit out of me.
Speaker 1: If I ever wanted to transition, I always some part
Speaker 1: of me always knew that this might be an option
Speaker 1: one day, that this might it might come to this.
Speaker 1: Oh god damn it. Yeah, But that was like always
Speaker 1: a thing that kept me from doing it. I always
Speaker 1: thought to myself, like, what's the point if as soon
Speaker 1: as I open my mouth, I'm going to get clocked
Speaker 1: no matter what. But one day I expressed this to Marissa,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend, and God bless her, she went on YouTube
Speaker 1: and she found the trans Voice Lessons YouTube channel. When
Speaker 1: Marissa sent me that video, I realized, oh shit, it's possible.
Speaker 1: I don't care how much work it takes, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do it. I'm going to fucking do it. And
Speaker 1: the hardest thing for me, it was all a psychological thing.
Speaker 1: It was ninety nine percent of it was psychological. Ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of it was I'm working at this job.
Speaker 1: At the time I started my transition, I was working
Speaker 1: in Norcross, which is slightly slightly more Capressos. We were
Speaker 1: in the same area. That's so funny we were. Where
Speaker 1: were you? I well, I worked in Norcross as an estheteian.
Speaker 1: I worked at the Alta and oh, no shit, I
Speaker 1: probably saw you once, I know, maybe maybe, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I was like, that is a hot bitch. No. Actually,
Speaker 1: I remember like I would go to get lunch working
Speaker 1: there because I would wear all black because I was
Speaker 1: an esthetician, that the salon attire was all black. Sure,
Speaker 1: and I would wear a lab coat, but obviously if
Speaker 1: I was going to lunch, I took the lab coat
Speaker 1: all sure, so I would just be like in a
Speaker 1: black pencil skirt, a black patent leather wedge and like
Speaker 1: a black button shirt or whatever, just all black, all
Speaker 1: black black, and just like, for some reason, the darkest
Speaker 1: red lipstick I could find. And I remember I was
Speaker 1: an esthetician, so also very pale. I'm going to walk
Speaker 1: with an umbrella one time. One time I heard a
Speaker 1: kid say to his mom, I think that's a vampire
Speaker 1: as I was walking by, and I lived for it.
Speaker 1: I mean it fits you because if I'm going to
Speaker 1: get colocked, I want to be called. You want to
Speaker 1: be colocked as a damn vampire. Yeah, in daytime of
Speaker 1: all things. Seriously, God, damn Carmen. That I mean that
Speaker 1: that does suit you very well. Yeah. I know I'm
Speaker 1: wearing like peach right now, not so much. But I
Speaker 1: haven't seen you out in the sun a lot, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not a sun person. When we were talking,
Speaker 1: I was at the picnic. I was hiding in the shape.
Speaker 1: I remember that you have a moon person. I'm a
Speaker 1: moon person. Astrology was astrolology.
Speaker 2: We just need to.
Speaker 1: All, right, listeners, we're going to take another break. Just
Speaker 1: want to come back. More from Robin on how she
Speaker 1: trained her voice, and we're back. Robin talks more about
Speaker 1: finding her female voice and overcoming her fear of using
Speaker 1: her new voice. Sorry, I was working in Norcross and
Speaker 1: my coworkers were, as luck would have it, all people
Speaker 1: I had been in bands with at at some point,
Speaker 1: and I had known them forever and ever and ever,
Speaker 1: and the hardest thing, the hardest thing is to change
Speaker 1: your voice on purpose in front of people who have
Speaker 1: known you for years, because like the second you do it,
Speaker 1: they're going to be They're going to think to themselves,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you doing? Like, are you delusional?
Speaker 1: Do you think that that sounds like a girl? That's disgusting?
Speaker 1: And that was just on my mind all the all
Speaker 1: the all the time. I also had to talk to
Speaker 1: customers on the phone, which was terrifying in its own right.
Speaker 1: So I like on Fridays, I was able to work
Speaker 1: from home, and during these fridays sometimes I would practice
Speaker 1: my voice with customers and if they said they didn't
Speaker 1: recognize me, I would consider that a win. And if
Speaker 1: they if you know, they they did recognize me and
Speaker 1: they just thought I was being weird, I would consider
Speaker 1: that a major l and my entire self confidence for
Speaker 1: the week would just be shaken. And uh so I
Speaker 1: ended up quitting that job. I ended up quitting that
Speaker 1: job for a lot of reasons, but one of the
Speaker 1: major reasons was so that I could practice my goddamn
Speaker 1: voice right and not feel like not feel like I
Speaker 1: was constantly under scrutiny under the microscope. Another huge thing
Speaker 1: that helped, And there are two more huge things that helped.
Speaker 1: But the first huge thing that helped was listening to
Speaker 1: the radio in the car where you're alone. The car
Speaker 1: is such a godsend, goddamn it. I love my car
Speaker 1: and singing along with female vocals, singing well, singing along
Speaker 1: with Tom Petty radio Channel third one on Serious X
Speaker 1: because oh, okay, because I know, am I allowed to
Speaker 1: plug Serious XTM? No, that's fine, okay. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: just like, I was like, wait, there's like a no
Speaker 1: when I made that face because I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: there's a whole fucking Tom Petty. It's a whole fucking
Speaker 1: Tom Petty. But I'm okay, serious, serious, yeah, Because I
Speaker 1: know those songs backwards and forwards, inside and out, and
Speaker 1: I would sing along with them, you know, Being the
Speaker 1: natural born musician I am, I can harmonize very easily,
Speaker 1: and so I would add a female harmony to a
Speaker 1: lot of these songs. And that helped, like crazy, just
Speaker 1: being able to do that hours and hours at a time,
Speaker 1: and that helped me train my singing voice as well
Speaker 1: as my speaking voice. I also started working with the
Speaker 1: Voice Lab in Chicago, which is a I don't know
Speaker 1: if their focus is trans voice, oh okay, but they
Speaker 1: are a voice related training ground for whoever needs it,
Speaker 1: for whoever wants is singing, speaking, whatever. And my vocal
Speaker 1: coach was a trans woman named Kira, and she was
Speaker 1: fucking lovely. She was instrumental in helping me. You know.
Speaker 1: I would talk to her weekly. I would read Rain
Speaker 1: Wilson's autobiography over zoom to her and it was just
Speaker 1: the feedback, like there was no expectation that I would
Speaker 1: be doing it perfectly, and the feedback that I would
Speaker 1: get from her was great. And then finally, the best
Speaker 1: way to feminize your voice is get a customer service
Speaker 1: facing job. Oh yeah, the more you turn it into
Speaker 1: a game of how much can I get mammed instead
Speaker 1: absurd is motivating. Did you also have that experience? You know,
Speaker 1: I started working when I So, I got my first
Speaker 1: job when I was eighteen, and I worked at a
Speaker 1: halloween store. Oh no, I'm sorry. I was sixteen when
Speaker 1: I got my first job, but I was younger than that.
Speaker 1: I was like fifteen, but I was just wow. No,
Speaker 1: it was a weird situation with like a friend of
Speaker 1: my dad that he knew from this fucking mega church
Speaker 1: and she turned out to be like a total like
Speaker 1: I wanted to send me to like conversion therapy based
Speaker 1: like So, yeah, that was a traumatizing experience. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: So I didn't have another job until after when I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, when I worked at the Halloween store. And
Speaker 1: by that point I was by this point, you'd been
Speaker 1: on hormones. For me, I had been on hormones, and
Speaker 1: I'd also been training my voice, so everyone assumed I
Speaker 1: was a girl. That's fucking great. I mean I would
Speaker 1: have moms come in, you know, buying Halloween costumes for
Speaker 1: their kids and be like, don't ever get pregnant. It'll
Speaker 1: ruin your beautiful figure. And I'm like, thanks, I won't,
Speaker 1: you know, that's very sweet of you. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: never I mean I was, I guess in that role
Speaker 1: as my in my all of my jobs, I was
Speaker 1: always like stealth, I guess you should say. But I
Speaker 1: guess people if they stared at me for long enough
Speaker 1: could probably figure it out.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Also, that's you know, constantly on your mind. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if someone is staring at you, that's always, always always
Speaker 1: going to be on your mind. Did you just peg
Speaker 1: me for a training? Did you just call me? Exactly? So?
Speaker 1: Moving on from finding your your female voice, my true voice, yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely so yeah, talk about your You just made a TikTok.
Speaker 1: I did, and you're being more authentic on law I am,
Speaker 1: and who knows how far this will go. But I've
Speaker 1: started to devote my Instagram to more of a music focus,
Speaker 1: to more of a songwriting focus. I haven't said this yet,
Speaker 1: but I wrote fifty songs in fifty six songs in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Yeah, that's fantastic, thank you. I'm extremely
Speaker 1: extremely proud of it and should be and I am.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm gonna write fifty more songs in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and I think I'm going to focus
Speaker 1: on live music in the band. But I've started to
Speaker 1: kind of make the Instagram into a music focus thing.
Speaker 1: But I still have this build up of trans energy
Speaker 1: in me that I need to vent somehow or else
Speaker 1: I'm going to explode. So I started a TikTok, and
Speaker 1: I started kind of in that country started. I started
Speaker 1: a TikTok, and I started a TikTok from Georgia girl,
Speaker 1: a girl I know from the backwoods. Yeah, I started
Speaker 1: a TikTok and I started, I'll started and stopped and started.
Speaker 1: Well here Now, when I do a country accent, I
Speaker 1: saw like a man were here. That's another thing. It's
Speaker 1: so difficult to.
Speaker 3: Do accents in like yeah, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 3: know why. It always starts to thinking it's you know,
Speaker 3: It's like.
Speaker 1: At that point, no problem.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The I started a TikTok, and the TikTok is more
Speaker 1: focused on the guidance that I wish I had had,
Speaker 1: the encouragement that I wish I had had. You know,
Speaker 1: I have started meeting a lot of newer trans women
Speaker 1: on Instagram and they've got a lot of questions and
Speaker 1: they've got a lot of anxieties and a lot of worries,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is exacerbated by the fact
Speaker 1: that it's their first year on hormones. Yes, which will
Speaker 1: fuck with you crazy, absolutely, Oh my god. It fucks
Speaker 1: with you in ways that are indescribable until you are
Speaker 1: on them right, until you're kind of like balanced out.
Speaker 1: Do you start to balance out? And two years then
Speaker 1: I think you start to apologize to those around you.
Speaker 1: I am sorry for being such a fucking mess the
Speaker 1: last two years, but I feel like I'm coming into myself.
Speaker 1: But in order to celebrate that, I've begun to like well,
Speaker 1: I started out by stitching with people who would post
Speaker 1: these questions that they were having and like just giving
Speaker 1: a little bit of, you know, my own experience because
Speaker 1: it's all I can speak to. And then I started
Speaker 1: to like take some of my old journal entries on
Speaker 1: my phone and turn them and organize them into soliloquies, monologues.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the right word is for the internet.
Speaker 1: It's full of the internet for the talk, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I would. I have started to post them a little bit,
Speaker 1: and they're getting like a lot of positive response, and
Speaker 1: I feel like, maybe, shit, if I can help somebody,
Speaker 1: if I can give somebody a little bit of the
Speaker 1: guidance that I wish that I had had, maybe we
Speaker 1: can start to turn around the stigma, and maybe we
Speaker 1: can start to make it more acceptable to be trans,
Speaker 1: because that is the ingrained trans misogyny that so many
Speaker 1: of US millennials grew up with. That's not even to
Speaker 1: mention gen xers and boomers, those poor trans boomers who
Speaker 1: God damn, how do you survive that? Yeah? Well, and
Speaker 1: it's the thing that delays people so long it's transitioning
Speaker 1: because they see such the horrible representations. Exactly exactly am
Speaker 1: I going to be seen as a clown? Right? Exactly?
Speaker 1: And if so, how long am I going to be
Speaker 1: seen as a clown? Yeah? So I love that you're
Speaker 1: out there on TikTok Now, so what I mean? What
Speaker 1: would you say? Like some of your videos are about
Speaker 1: like what kind of thoughts are you trying to thought?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to turn these huge, huge, huge, overarching concepts
Speaker 1: into much more small, digestible, breaking things down into step
Speaker 1: by step processes. You know, why is it okay to
Speaker 1: want to pass what makes us strive for that? It's
Speaker 1: okay to want to do that. It's also okay to
Speaker 1: want to stand out. How do we influence society to
Speaker 1: see trans people as trans people and not as pathetic,
Speaker 1: weird caricatures or as creepy, stealthy traps. You know, those
Speaker 1: are the two big stereotypes. They're either clowns or their traps,
Speaker 1: And like, fuck, that's not what I am. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to be authentic about myself. I won't lie to somebody
Speaker 1: about being trans well, yeah, and it's I mean, we're
Speaker 1: all human at the end of the day, and we're
Speaker 1: not to assign our goals of transitioning. To say that
Speaker 1: we're trying to fool anyone or we're trying to make
Speaker 1: anyone uncomfortable is the opposite of why people transition. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's I had a dream a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: and in this dream, there was a you know the
Speaker 1: size of what used to be the Georgia Dome is
Speaker 1: now the Mercedes Benz. Yes, you know the size of that,
Speaker 1: like the interior of that. Yeah, I had a dream
Speaker 1: that there was a bathroom that was that size. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: and there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shower
Speaker 1: stalls in this bath It was like it was like
Speaker 1: a like a dressing room, like a changing room, and
Speaker 1: like there were there was like a everybody was there,
Speaker 1: every gender was there. Nobody gave a shit that you know,
Speaker 1: we were all everything was out on display. It's totally fine,
Speaker 1: you know. And to be honest, I can't remember or
Speaker 1: if everybody was naked. That was not the important part
Speaker 1: of it. The important part of the dream was that
Speaker 1: I was visibly transgender in this dream, and I did
Speaker 1: not feel the need to stealth around this bathroom. I
Speaker 1: did not feel the need to fool anybody or to
Speaker 1: make anybody believe I was anything that I was not.
Speaker 1: I could be trans, and the way that I was
Speaker 1: treated was, oh, that's a trans person. That's a CIS
Speaker 1: female person, that's a CIS male person, that's a transperson,
Speaker 1: Like it was just another thing. And I had never
Speaker 1: really had a yearning for that as strongly as I
Speaker 1: did after I woke up from that dream, and I
Speaker 1: kind of wish that we could move toward that. I
Speaker 1: kind of wish it was okay. And like every trans
Speaker 1: person will tell you this, I wish it was okay
Speaker 1: to be trans. Yeah. Well, and more importantly, to have
Speaker 1: a trans body, a visibly trans body, you know, where
Speaker 1: you don't feel like you have to perfectly hide every
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to curate everything, absolutely everything
Speaker 1: about your image when you're especially on that first year
Speaker 1: on hormones. If you're you know, if your goal is
Speaker 1: aligned with a certain type of person, you are curating
Speaker 1: everything you everything that you do and say and look
Speaker 1: like is under this internal microscope. Yeah, because you think
Speaker 1: it's always under a microscope from others, an external microscope,
Speaker 1: and that makes it so difficult to do anything in public.
Speaker 1: That makes it so difficult just to function because you're
Speaker 1: so worried about how you're being perceived. I can relate.
Speaker 3: I have that.
Speaker 1: We're going to take our final break here listeners. When
Speaker 1: we come back, Rob and I talk more about passing.
Speaker 1: And we're back as Robin and I wrap up this
Speaker 1: episode together, we're going to give our final thoughts on passing.
Speaker 1: Was there anything else we needed to say about passing?
Speaker 1: I went so far in one direction. The other direction
Speaker 1: I want to go in is it's okay to want
Speaker 1: to pass. It's okay too, you know. Sure, the need
Speaker 1: to pass. A lot of it sometimes has to do
Speaker 1: with safety, and that makes sense, but also there's another
Speaker 1: side of it. A lot of us just fucking we
Speaker 1: think it. We think it would be cooler, and we
Speaker 1: think it would be better if we could just have
Speaker 1: a fucking female experience, and like that's okay, right. That
Speaker 1: needs to be seen as okay. It doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be seen as like a privileged thing like if if
Speaker 1: you can do it. A lot of it is through
Speaker 1: your own effort. Absolutely, through a lot of conscious and
Speaker 1: focused effort. It's not a lot of it is genetics,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is luck, but a whole shitload
Speaker 1: of it is through a concerted effort to do so,
Speaker 1: a lot of hard work, a shitload of hard work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think when you discount a trans woman's desire,
Speaker 1: you know, of course we can talk about transmen, but
Speaker 1: you and I are both trans women, so we'll just
Speaker 1: talk about trans women. You know, we can talk about
Speaker 1: a trans woman's desire to pass as how it's treated
Speaker 1: as shallow or like almost as like you're a trader
Speaker 1: to the trans community in some way, which is not true.
Speaker 1: If you're not wrapping yourself up in a trans flag
Speaker 1: all the time, that doesn't make you a trader to
Speaker 1: the transfer We're still a part of the trans community.
Speaker 1: The stealth trans people are still part of the trans community.
Speaker 1: The trans people in the closet are still part of
Speaker 1: the trans comsolutely, you know. So, yeah, I've had it
Speaker 1: directed at me. I've had anger regarding passing directed at
Speaker 1: me in terms of I've had somebody tell me well,
Speaker 1: because you are cis passing, which, by the way, they're
Speaker 1: basing the judgment that I'm cis passing off of my Instagram,
Speaker 1: which is curated, curated, absolutely curated. Those are the best
Speaker 1: photos of me. Many of them are filtered and they
Speaker 1: look really good too, thank you. But you know that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily what I look like in real life and
Speaker 1: at all angles. You know what I mean, absolutely, And
Speaker 1: so it is a little bit invalidating to those of
Speaker 1: us who do desire to pass and those of us
Speaker 1: that do pass, because it's almost seen as us, well,
Speaker 1: you just have it very easy because you at you,
Speaker 1: you won. Congratulations, and it's yes, my life is easier
Speaker 1: for being able to pass as a woman and all
Speaker 1: such situations. But I still had to work very fucking hard,
Speaker 1: absolutely there, you know, and I had to not only
Speaker 1: work hard, but I had to constantly fight for my
Speaker 1: womanhood from people who wanted to take it away from me.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's just not it's not seen as okay to
Speaker 1: talk about that, And all I have to say is,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to pass, but there's levels
Speaker 1: of passing. Also, I think people see a pretty person
Speaker 1: and assume that because I'm pretty, I pass you a
Speaker 1: pretty thank you, But under this fucking overhead lightning. I
Speaker 1: have a chromag brow. You know, we should turn this
Speaker 1: light off. Yeah, we should do the rest. Candle light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: soft candle light. So you know, passing is not equal
Speaker 1: to pretty. It's not passing and pretty are not the
Speaker 1: same thing there, and being pretty does not equal passing
Speaker 1: because I think I'm very pretty. But I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of handsome features about me. Handsome features.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of I love the way you
Speaker 3: put that, there are a lot of handsome features about you.
Speaker 1: Which clock me as a pretty trans woman, because I
Speaker 1: still have some you know, clocky features. Well, okay, so
Speaker 1: when I was pre transition, when I was an egg boy,
Speaker 1: howdie was I a hairy ass, large ass man? Yeah?
Speaker 1: God see in the pictures, God damn. And through a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of work and a lot of estrogen.
Speaker 1: And yeah, a lot of estrogen. That helps a lot too,
Speaker 1: that too, But there's work. There is a shitload of work.
Speaker 1: It's not about just shooting up the astrogene. Just to
Speaker 1: put this into perspective, size has always been a thing
Speaker 1: for me. I was a big guy. Like you mean
Speaker 1: your dick Wait what are you talking? No, No, like
Speaker 1: your physical side. Oh I'm sorry. Okay, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: do have it. I'm very well hung cartmen. I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: what are we talking about your physical your physical side.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I'm sorry the volume that you take up,
Speaker 1: it's all it's always been tall. I'm tall and I
Speaker 1: was wide. And I decided, Fuck, I'm going to transition,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do it in the most effective
Speaker 1: goddamn way possible. I'm going to see how far I
Speaker 1: can go. Because I only have one life. I got
Speaker 1: on this weight loss train, exercise, run every fucking day
Speaker 1: of my life, limit my caloric intake like this, like
Speaker 1: almost fucking mind numbing. Like my mind was definitely in
Speaker 1: the shitter for like six months. I was I was
Speaker 1: having yourself. Yeah, very much, very very much. But like,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't the healthiest way to do it. There
Speaker 1: are definitely healthier ways to do it. But through those efforts,
Speaker 1: I got to a place where I felt honest to
Speaker 1: God good about myself. And yeah, a lot of that
Speaker 1: has to do with these, you know, beauty standards that
Speaker 1: are not our fault, but that's the way that society
Speaker 1: sees us. I can't help I want to be beautiful exactly.
Speaker 1: There are these structures that are built. There are these
Speaker 1: you know, there are these structures in place that society
Speaker 1: has put in place, and you can either try to
Speaker 1: dismantle those structures, but you can't do that alone, and
Speaker 1: they won't be dismantled for a very, very long time,
Speaker 1: as much as you wish they were. So you better
Speaker 1: just get used usual to the structures, play within them,
Speaker 1: You find your place in the structure, you exploit them
Speaker 1: as much as you can, because you're on your own
Speaker 1: in this. You got to find a place where you
Speaker 1: feel comfortable in the structure, and you don't have another choice,
Speaker 1: So why not exploit the fuck out of some pretty privilege. Well,
Speaker 1: exactly get to where you feel comfortable. So I did
Speaker 1: that to the best of my ability, and I'm a
Speaker 1: much much happier person because of it. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's important to know that these things just
Speaker 1: don't happen overnight, absolutely not. They don't just happen overnight.
Speaker 1: You have to research it, you have to learn about it,
Speaker 1: you have to you basically make it your whole life. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know it, really do. I just said this on
Speaker 1: Instagram a while back, but having a body is a
Speaker 1: lot of work. It is. Having a transsexual body is
Speaker 1: a twenty four hours, seven days a week job that
Speaker 1: does not pay any benefit. It does not have any vacation,
Speaker 1: and there's no time off now health insurance. You know,
Speaker 1: it's fucked up anyway. It's totally true, though it is
Speaker 1: being training is hard. It is people don't realize how
Speaker 1: much work actually goes into it. And the fact that
Speaker 1: we're talking about this, What you said that really resonated
Speaker 1: with me in that moment is that it's not all
Speaker 1: down to luck. And that is I think I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say that again because that is the amazing
Speaker 1: thing about what we get to do as transsexuals. We
Speaker 1: get to completely build ourselves from the ground up, and
Speaker 1: it really isn't down to luck and always, you know,
Speaker 1: the genetics and the cars that you're dealt are part
Speaker 1: of it, a little part of it. They're a good
Speaker 1: they're a good bit of it. Absolutely, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of it, yes, but a majorly significant portion of
Speaker 1: it is your own efforts and your own self transformation.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't realize that in order to
Speaker 1: build yourself again, you have to dismantle everything that there
Speaker 1: is about you. Pretty much I've always kind of modeled it, like,
Speaker 1: there's this at my core, and my identity is this
Speaker 1: little brown circle. And I think it's because I have
Speaker 1: brown hair and brown brown circle. Okay, it's the brown circle.
Speaker 1: This tiny little brown circle represents my soul, if you will, Okay,
Speaker 1: And I put up all these fences around it, and
Speaker 1: all of these masks and walls and all of these
Speaker 1: curtains and shows and presentation stuff. That's my gender. It's
Speaker 1: not just a boy wall or a girl wall. It's
Speaker 1: all this shit. And before I dismantled everything, people would
Speaker 1: look at my collection of walls and they would say,
Speaker 1: that's a dude. And I dismantled all of those things.
Speaker 1: And you did, too, tore them down, examined why they
Speaker 1: were there in the first place. We kept the things
Speaker 1: that served us, and we got rid of the things
Speaker 1: that didn't, and we built new things. Absolutely, and that
Speaker 1: is the beautiful part about being trans Yes, that's the work.
Speaker 1: That's the work that goes into social transition. I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking about authenticity earlier. That's another thing. I
Speaker 1: want it to be. Okay to be a young Trainey
Speaker 1: or an egg and hear these conversations and realize, like,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, it's not all just down to look.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of work. I can commit myself
Speaker 1: to this. I can relate to these people who are
Speaker 1: talking about this. One of my biggest can I plug
Speaker 1: another yeah person, absolutely one of my biggest inspirations and
Speaker 1: best friends on this journey. She's a comedian named al
Speaker 1: Val She's a CANUK. She's a Canadian, and she is
Speaker 1: one of the most She's one of the realest bitches
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. She does not hide any part of
Speaker 1: this journey really, and by seeing her content, I was
Speaker 1: really able personally to just like relate to a lot
Speaker 1: of it. And it helps that she is a comedian.
Speaker 1: It helps that, like her job is to try to
Speaker 1: relate to people in a funny way and she's really
Speaker 1: really damn good at it. But what she's doing is
Speaker 1: I think going to open the eyes of a lot
Speaker 1: of people and see, like, fuck, this is just a human.
Speaker 1: This isn't like, this isn't some unrelatable weird monster. Transgender
Speaker 1: people are humans, and it's this isn't like the biggest part.
Speaker 1: This is a huge part of their life, but this
Speaker 1: isn't the biggest thing that they're going through. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's awesome, She's fantastic. Al Val all comedy Yeah on
Speaker 1: Instagram al Val Comedy al Val al Vl. I did
Speaker 1: want to ask one more question, going back to the
Speaker 1: beginning of what we talked about. You said that recently
Speaker 1: you've been, for the first time in your life, considering
Speaker 1: moving away from Georgia. Indeed, indeed, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: first my question was what does it mean to you
Speaker 1: to be a trans woman in the South And why
Speaker 1: do you want to leave Georgia and where do you
Speaker 1: want to go? Yeah, so good questions to be a
Speaker 1: trans woman in the South. I did not really realize
Speaker 1: what it meant until I was a transwoman elsewhere. Just recently, actually,
Speaker 1: just two days ago. I got back from Chicago, and
Speaker 1: I noticed that there are a shitload more out trans
Speaker 1: women just walking around, just out in public. And it's
Speaker 1: okay to be out in trans there. You know, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say it's okay to be out in trans there.
Speaker 1: It's okay to be out in trans anywhere. But it
Speaker 1: happens a lot more in Chicago than it does here,
Speaker 1: and it happens a lot more in New York than
Speaker 1: it does here. And in Los Angeles, and you know
Speaker 1: that's that's not by happenstance. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: ingrained culture here that makes it difficult to be that here.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that until recently. But also the type
Speaker 1: of music that me and my band play. I don't
Speaker 1: want my entire identity to be a novelty act that
Speaker 1: I'm a trans person who has a band full of
Speaker 1: trans people, except for our drummer. He's great, all of them.
Speaker 1: But we need to be seen as a legitimate rock
Speaker 1: and roll band. It's not that we need to, it's
Speaker 1: that we have this staunch desire too, and we are
Speaker 1: very good, and we put a lot of work into
Speaker 1: the performance and into you know, who we are. I
Speaker 1: want to see what opportunities are available for us as musicians,
Speaker 1: as songwriters, as performers in other cities. That's what you
Speaker 1: have to do. You have to get your likeness in
Speaker 1: front of audiences all around the country and all around
Speaker 1: the world. Don't nobody's going to know you or else.
Speaker 1: You're just like a local act. You're a local act. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with being a local act. It's just not
Speaker 1: where I want to be, right. You want to grow
Speaker 1: from that, because you've been a local act for that
Speaker 1: ten twelve years, and that's the starting point for some people.
Speaker 1: And that's also kind of like the retirement into the
Speaker 1: corporate world. Yeah, you know, I tried the corporate world
Speaker 1: and then I became a girl. So we'll see where
Speaker 1: that goes. Well, so where do you want to take
Speaker 1: the band? So I'm thinking, well, I guess that's harder
Speaker 1: than that. It is harder, it is. It is difficult answer,
Speaker 1: you know. Obviously, the the the answers are New York,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, you know, places like that, anywhere
Speaker 1: where people would be interested in hearing us. I think
Speaker 1: I want to tour and find a place that suits us.
Speaker 1: Another friend of mine, Mia Byrne, she just started and
Speaker 1: her her girlfriend Swan. They're both well known and respected
Speaker 1: musicians out in the Bay and soon to be in
Speaker 1: New York, and they just started this big ass collection
Speaker 1: of trans artists called Brooklyn Transcorps. Wow. Yeah, which is like, fuck,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a home for us somewhere. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe the maybe the answer is creating it here. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, Mia, she's like the first outsigned Nashville recording artist.
Speaker 1: That's huge. That is huge. That's not something that happens
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, right well, I definitely want for you
Speaker 1: to see bigger and better city. Thank you. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you spending the time with me this evening, Carman,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me on Beauty Translated.
Speaker 1: This is wildly important to me and I love what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Thank you. And I appreciate you sharing your
Speaker 1: story telling us about your music. It was wonderful. Chatting
Speaker 1: with you was wicking your brain. Thank you. But tell
Speaker 1: the listener where they can first, where they can find
Speaker 1: you and follow you. Sure. So. On Instagram is where
Speaker 1: most of my music is posted. That is at Robin
Speaker 1: dot Shakedown. At Robin dot Shakedown, our band is called
Speaker 1: the Robin Shakedown Band, the Robin Chef Robin Shakedown Band.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. I am the Robin in that. And
Speaker 1: are you a fan of Robin? I like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: singer to some make sent okay, Yeah, it's not a
Speaker 1: huge I know. And we do cover that song, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, you do. We do. It's such a bad friend.
Speaker 1: I haven't been to a single fucking live show. You will,
Speaker 1: I know, you will.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: In fact, you can start I know by coming to
Speaker 1: this month May twentieth. We are playing at the Atlanta
Speaker 1: roller Derby. Hell yeah, this is a Saturday, May twentieth.
Speaker 1: Get all your friends out, come on down to the
Speaker 1: Atlanta roller Derby and hear the Robin Shakedown Band. Fill
Speaker 1: your ears with rock and roll. That sounds amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Robin. I hope to be there at the
Speaker 1: upcoming show. Carmen, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: It was great to talk to It was great to
Speaker 1: talk to you sixty years or so. Alrighty folk. That
Speaker 1: brings us to the end of this deluxe mid season
Speaker 1: episode of Beauty translated. I hope you enjoyed my fun
Speaker 1: chat with the fabulous Robin Danger of Incent. The song
Speaker 1: you're hearing now and have been hearing throughout the episode
Speaker 1: is the song Shadows and Sun by Robin's band, Robin
Speaker 1: Shakedown Band. Check them out at the Atlanta roller Derby
Speaker 1: this Saturday, and please leave Beauty translated a rating and
Speaker 1: review over on Apple Podcasts. It means the world to me.
Speaker 1: Stay beautiful, y'all. Bye bye.
Speaker 2: Are you afraid of b Wendow? Are you afraid that way?
Speaker 2: So much?
Speaker 1: Beauty Translated is hopposted by me Carmen Law and produced
Speaker 1: by Burt Darn and Jessica Princhich, with production assistance from
Speaker 1: Jennifer Bassett. Special thanks to Ali Perry and Ali Canter
Speaker 1: for their support. Our theme song is composed by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Beauty Translated is proud to be part of the Outspoken
Speaker 1: network from iHeart Podcasts. For more iHeart Podcasts, listen on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.