THE GAY PIMP

by Whitney Weiss

Jonny McGovern’s “The Gay Pimp” is winning over kids from cornfields and the New York club scene alike with his “Velveeta cheese” beats and hilarious and sometimes inspiring lyrics. I finally got the chance to interview him after a couple of near misses due to his recent move. He couldn’t be closer to breaking through to the mainstream, and that’s fantastic.

Hello?

Hey it’s Whitney.

Heyyyy. Alright I’m all set.

Alright, great. Okay so first, what’s with the moving and the meetings? You’ve been a very busy person lately.

I am continually on the go. Trying to dominate the world with gayness is not an easy job and requires a lot of work.

Okay. First, when and how did you come up with this Gay Pimp persona?

Um, it started off as a small character I would do, um, I was with a theatre troupe when I first moved here to New York on the Lower East Side at a theatre called Surf Reality. Surf Reality was a scene, sort of a group of comedians and performers, just sort of weird Lower East Side people. That sort of typical downtown stop. They had an open mic and they performed shows and it was a really strong community so I was able to come into it and meet people and start performing in shows for this built-in audience that had seen you at open mic and in other places. It gave me this spot to start trying lots of different characters. One of the shows we did was called “The Wrong Fag to Fuck With.” It had come out right when Eminem was first sort of, coming out and bashing on the homos in all his lyrics.

Right.

I found that all sorts of normal and you know, intelligent, liberal-minded people were like ‘Oh, it’s cool, it’s fine’ and I was just appalled really. Seeing as if Eminem had been saying that about, oh, black people or any other minority group, people would have been appalled and shocked and said how wrong it was. But at the same time, all of the gay groups that were protesting it were doing it in a very boring, not boring, but a sort of timid way. Saying, ‘Hate is bad.’ Nothing that kids were going to listen to, or that was going to combat the glamour of a pop star and the power it has. I sort of created this character show that was a storybook world where Gay Pimp was a big pop superstar. The show took place at the MTV Music Video Awards where it was like Gay Pimp as sort of the dirty gay teen pop superstar versus Eminem and the story that revolved around it. And a lot of the music and the ideas started from that show.

Very cool. Has this character developed since “The Wrong Fag to Fuck With” or have things kind of stayed the same…

The character itself has kind of stayed the same in that Gay Pimp is sort of the all-dominating magical pop star that sort of appears out of nowhere to save the gay boys and turn straight boys gay and sort of fight against injustice and things like that as well as have a damn good time.

Very nice.

What has evolved and what’s grown as I’ve done many different shows and club performances and music videos is that the world of gay pimp has grown larger and there are now archetypes of that gay pimp world. There’s the clueless straight boy that gets turned gay, there’s my trio of drag queens that magically appear everywhere with me. Um, just sort of the feeling and the universe that gay pimp inhabits, the magical fun gay universe, has grown and become more defined. The gay pimp performance style has become more clear. But the character is very much the same as I imagined it a few years ago when I started doing this.

Now, apparently you went to B.U. for theatre when you were in college.

Yes I did.

And then you moved to New York. What’s the biggest difference in Boston and New York, in your opinion?

Um, well for me Boston was a very insulated experience because I was in school and it was very much all about school. The nightlife wasn’t really something I was doing other than going to school parties. In New York, it’s also that they’re very different cities. Boston is a lot more conservative, and a very nice city to live in. But to be a young artist, I think that New York has many different avenues to offer and it’s also a little wilder and crazier and you can be more different. It’s easier to grab some attention in New York also, because the sources are a little closer.

And also, goddammit, nightclubs close in 2am in Boston.

Ugh, yes they do.

Everything closes super early. And so much of what’s formed my work has been my experience in nightlife and being inspired by many of the things I’ve seen and heard and listened to. I’m constantly inspired by New York and the insane, crazy, and whacked-out people in it.

You started in theatre, you have this CD Dirty Gay Hits that just came out kind of recently. How did you make that translation to making your CD?

It was all kind of by accident. The gay pimp thing is a character, it developed out of theatrical works I had done. But as people started asking me to perform the songs of gay pimp at clubs, the last thing I wanted to do was me with a backing track just dressed up. I really wanted to bring it up to that sort of fake arena tour level that you’d see Britney and N’Sync and Madonna or somebody, they have tons of dancers and costume changers and that’s fun. Pure Velvetta cheesy fun. What I love about pop music. What I wanted do to with the gay pimp thing, especially since the idea is that he’s a big superstar, you can’t really get the joke if people think it’s just me trying to be, ‘I’m a singer, this is my song, and I’m just wearing sunglasses.’ That’s not it at all. Gay pimp, you’re supposed to get the idea that he’s this magical superstar. And the way to do that is to perform it on the biggest level possible with dancers and things like that. We started doing shows here and the shows were getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I would work on more and more tracks because we would have bigger and bigger shows so we couldn’t just do one or two songs. Eventually we got booked at PS122 here in New York to do a show which was called “Dirty Gay Teen Pop Superstars” and for that, we needed all the songs, at least ten songs, finished. With lots of different things. So basically, the Dirty Gay Hits album was the soundtrack for that show. We originally had it as a soundtrack you would have to the show. But as the music became more popular, we realized we had something a little wider reaching on our hands, and started to market it as well.

Right. Who’s in charge of the music end of everything? Did you do music or did you find someone whose production skills you liked?

Well I have no formal musical training, but I have listened to music for years and years and years and years and years. I’m a dance and R&B music phile. I definitely knew what I wanted, but what I had to do was to find someone creative who could work the computer and work all the sounds and collaborate with me on it. Earlier on, I heard a remix of, I had a friend who was a folksinger who had done a nice little folky track. One day someone played me a remix of this song that was just off the hook. It was just incredible. It sounded like a big pop hit. I said ‘Who did that?’ and my friends pointed me towards this guy called Secret Agent Gel. He helped me take some of the songs I had just done with a live band or with one-instrument accompaniment, and helped me turn them into electrofied hits. The process is very collaborative when I work with him. I’ll either have a melody or a lyric or an idea in mind. We’ll  just go in and play with sounds until we get something we both like, and we sort of vibe on it and keep pushing on it until it’s done. He comes from more electronic IDM, very serious about electronic music side and I’m very into the Velveeta pop and cheese, I’m all about the hook and the vocals. Together we make a very bizarre and interesting combination where it sounds a little bit like a pop it but also like something someone made on a Casio keyboard. And I like of like that mixing of the two worlds.

I definitely enjoy the music side as well as your lyrics. And that whole thing. Which is one of the things I really like. Because you don’t have the Weird Al thing going on where the lyrics are lame.

No, and it’s really not about parodying other people’s songs…

Right, absolutely

…as it is about creating a vibe of gay pimp. It’s really all about if gay pimp really was a pop star, what would the album be like?

Right. If…what kind of music does the gay pimp listen to?

 Gay Pimp listens to everything I like. That means a lot of dance beats and a lot of black ladies screaming.

Speaking of voices, who is the voice on the hidden track “Koko Would Like a Bump?”

That is Koko. Koko’s sort of my signature drag queen; her name is Koko Aviance. One of my very good friends here in New York, and also, well what I think is the best drag queen in New York. She’s a trained actor and she and I met at the club one night when she was doing runway and I was trying to pick up her friend. (laughs) We started to become friends more and more, and when I started performing and doing the shows, she became part of the Gay Pimp Dirty Gay Family, who always do shows with me and perform in the videos. When we were doing our first show, I wanted to break it up so it wasn’t all gay pimp, so that you were getting the rest of this world. So I created this song I wrote for her called “Koko Would Like a Bump” which was based on something she said to me at five in the morning one time on a couch.

(laughs)

Where she just looked over and said ‘Koko would like a bump.’ And I was like, ‘That is your song! I’m writing it!’ (laughs) So me and Secret Agent Gel got together and listened to a lot of Junior Vasquez records and took my favorite parts of sort of drag queen house, where you have the diva screaming over it and that sort of techno voice going (mimics voice) ‘Work. Walk. Carry.’ And Koko just sort of being, her tracks are about being that character of Koko that she already was. It was just like writing for another artist, even though Koko doesn’t do Koko 24/7. She has a very distinct personality and it’s very glamorous and it was all about creating this universe for her where she’s this superstar drag performer and this sort of ironic, tongue-in-cheek song about wanting a bump and having everything in the world and diamonds and riches but needing just a bump at five in the morning at a club. It’s meant to be fun.

It’s a great song.

The singer on the track, the lady vocals, is my best friend and roommate of 10 years, Maxine Inniss, who has her own single coming out right now called “I Appreciate.” She’s sort of my in-house diva.

Very cool. Who else is in the gay pimp family besides Koko and Maxine?

Well there’s sort of an interchangeable group, well not just interchangeable with anybody, but I have probably about eight or nine boys that I work with on a regular basis that have danced with me from the beginning, some of them come in and out. All of them are performers and actors in New York, who when they travel with me, assume the role of Brad and Chad, which is the interchangeable hot boys who follow the gay pimp around. And then there’s Koko Aviance, Maxine Inniss, my producer Secret Agent Gel. Another person who is not on the record but who has performed with me lately and is in the new video and at all the parties I throw here is one of my DJs, DJ Nita, who is a rapper and also one of downtown’s hottest DJs right now. And then there’s a sort of behind-the-scenes crew who are the core of the group because while I come up with all the concepts, as things have gotten bigger, our shows have to get bigger and have different aspects to them. The three core members of that group are Marteen Boshamp, who originally co-wrote the script for “Wrong Fag to Fuck With” with me and has continually, he and I co-write pretty much all of the material that we have. Not on the album, per say, but when I’m working on concepts or we’re doing a comedy show, he and I collaborate on that. He knows the vision of gay pimp world and helps me keep that in check. Then we have Courtney Munch, she played the cheerleader that gets beat up in the soccer practice video. She’s been my theatre director for three or four years now. Every project that I’ve worked on, she’s my director.

Oh wow.

And, um, she also acts in some of the pieces we do. Again, like Marteen, she knows about the project and cares about it and knows what the tone should be. She’s one of my eyes and keeps everything on track. And finally, Kim-Marie Lynch, who is one of the original members of Stomp! You know the on-Broadway show here that travels around the world. She has choreographed all my shows since the beginning, and choreographed the “soccer practice” video and has performed in a lot of shows with me. I’m not the greatest dancer in the world but I can pose better than anybody else, so she and I work on the shows and  the moves so that we’re catching all the jokes, all the pop star stuff that you love. But also making it fresh and interestin everytime. Every venue we perform at, sometimes they’re different shows. If we have to do a big circuit party, it’s a different show than I would do for someone at a video bar. If you go to a video place where they know the video and really get it, they can really listen and get the jokes. If you go to a circuit party and perform, they need spectacle. We did “soccer practice” on Ricki Lake and on Comedy Central, and both of them are different situations. We all work together to keep the gay pimp machine running and have all sorts of projects we work on together. They’re the core members of the behind-the-scenes team.

How exactly did “Soccer Practice” end up being performed on Comedy Central?

I performed a bunch of times at this monthly sort of homo-rock concert called HomoCorps here in New York. And it’s mostly a rock show but we would always come in and give you a little taste of Britney, you know, crazy Velveeta in the shows. One of the nights, the editor of next magazine had brought his friend from Comedy Central who saw it and was like, ‘God I love this, we’ve gotta get other people to see it.’ A couple months later, he said ‘Oh we’re working on a special with edgy comedians and gay comedians and we really want you to be part of it.’ I didn’t hear from them for a year, and then they were like, ‘We did it, we finally got it on, we got the special on!’

Yay!

We did sort of my MTV Music Video Awards version of “soccer practice” with flipping cheerleaders and boys taking their shirts off and towel dances and all sorts of stuff.

Very cool. Did you also just shoot “Looking Cute/Feeling Cute” as a video?

Yes, we just shot “Looking Cute/Feeling Cute” as a video. Right now we’re still in the editing process, but the song is very much sort of the, there are two sides to gay pimp. One is the “Yes I’m gonna fuck your brother and turn you gay” and then there’s the other side of Gay Pimp which is looking out for the gay boys and making sure gay kids can feel good about themselves and have someone cool and in charge to look up to. “Looking Cute/Feeling Cute” is kind of my anthem for those kids, the song I wish I had been able to hear when I was that age, when I was a gay teenager looking for someone to tell me gayness was alright, that it was cool. The video is about Gay Pimp where he saves these two boys, Brad and Chad, from these bullies and takes them on a magical tour of his gay universe. It’s a little bit like the Bjork “It’s So Quiet” video. There’s dancing in the street and we have a lot of jokes like Gay Pimp on a skateboard, Gay Pimp moonwalking, Gay Pimp doing like eight forward flips. And then it goes to a high school where Gay Pimp gives some kid inspiration for guys who call him a fag, you tell him to “Fuck your daddy.” And then kids come dancing out of the school, we sort of have an allusion to one of those J.Lo style breakdowns. You know, in the room that has nothing to do with the video where suddenly everyone’s doing a breakdown dance. We visit the Gay Pimp mansion with GayBoy bunnies, like boys dressed as Playboy bunnies and drag queens in bathing suits. And then it all ends up at the prom, where Brad and Chad are crowned Prom King and King.

Very nice.

Yes, and again, it’s kind of an homage to all my favorite over-the-top videos where magical things happen and it’s very showbiz, but at the same time it’s celebrating and making fun of all those things.

Right. It’s great, you have such enthusiasm when you talk about it. Yay! I like talking to enthusiastic people, it’s very nice.

Yeah.

So, we’ve mentioned your penchant for Velveeta cheese pop, and your bio talked about how you used to satisfy your pop cravings with bootlegs of “The Golden Girls”…

Mmmhmm.

What are your current pop cravings, and how do you go about satisfying them?

Well, I am a very big fan of reality TV shows where hot straight boys take their shirt off a lot. I like “Dismissed” I like “Jackass,” though it’s off the air, you can never get enough of it. All those silly shows. I loved “Boy Meets Boy.” Those blind dates, all those things where they’ve got a hot straight boy in the tub, or even better, when they finally do those gay-on-gay blind dates or Dismisseds, those are the bomb. I find them totally  vapid but completely amusing. And I’ve just recently gotten TiVo so I can watch all of them all the time and never miss them.

That’s excellent. Has TiVo started suggesting other things to you?

TiVo doesn’t really understand me yet. It still thinks because I like “Boy Meets Boy” that I wanna see “Boy Meets World.”

That’s quite funny.

(laughs) Or that I like “Golden Girls”; I’ll appreciate “Mama’s Family.”

(laughs)

Not quite the same.

Right. We talked a little politics when you mentioned Eminem, so I have to ask you, because you mentioned “Boy Meets Boy.” Do you think TV shows like “Boy Meets Boy” and “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy” are giving more positive exposure to homosexuals or are reinforcing a negative or not necessarily true stereotype?

Well I think, in terms of gays and their visibility in the media, it’s going to be baby steps to begin with. The fact that both those shows, yes, there’s a big queen-y faggoty lady on both of them, but at the same time you look at the “Queer Eye” guys and not all of them are super queens. Yes, they’re sort of being gays like fashion and this and that, but you know some of that’s true. There are a lot of more fashionable gays in the world than straight people, really. And gays kind of run the fashion business, though it’s very kind of hush-hush that way. It’s like “gay, gay, gay, but sell it straight.” I think “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” is a great show mostly because it shows gay people and straight people getting along in an easy way. It’s a show your grandma can watch and say ‘Oh gays, they’re lovely, they’re nice.’ It’s not going to be everything to everybody, but it is a baby step in this visibility of different types of gay guys, along with straight people, getting along in a really positive way and sort of helping each other. And I think that’s really important.

As far as ‘Boy Meets Boy’ goes, you know some people were like ‘How dare they trick him?’ and whatever. If you’re going to put yourself on a reality dating show, get ready to get tricked, fool.

(laughs) I like that perspective.

Yeah (laughs). It’s like, ‘C’mon, you’re going on a reality dating show.’ It’s not all hearts and candy. No one wants to see a boring old regular dating show. We want tricks. We want nasty things to happen. We want fights. That’s what it’s about. If you’re going to be on a reality dating show, that’s that. ‘Boy Meets Boy,’ in the end, if you look at it, had a really positive message. Which was that not all gay boys are queens, you know? All those gay guys on that show were pretty fucking butch. At least the guy didn’t choose the straight guy in the end. Thank god, that would have been a travesty of the world.

Yeah it would have.

Um, but, you know, that show is what it is. And at least they’re gay guys on TV kissing. It’s kind of the same way I feel about “Queer As Folk.” You get a lot of people complaining that ‘that’s not the way that we all are and people are going to think that’s a bad representation of gays.’ No one show is going to represent all of gayness and everyone. ‘Queer as Folk’ is ‘Dynasty’ and ‘Dallas.’ It’s a soap opera. And if you look it in any other way than that, then you’re just fooling yourself. They live in a fantasy land with this gigantic big club that’s also a back room. They’re all gorgeous. They all have beautiful apartments. They all have troubles and they go through all these, it’s just like a soap opera everyday. And if you look at it that way, and also the perspective is, ‘at least there’s some ass-fucking on TV!’

And so, you know, all these shows are going to lay a groundwork. It’s not like, yes they’re some queeny aspects of them all but they’re laying the groundwork for people getting used to seeing gays in a positive light. Not just as the best friend, but the people who are taking charge, or the people who are stars of the show. You know what I mean? And I think that is going to lead the way for people like me and other artists that I know who are pushing something a little edgier, a little different, that will start to really change people’s perspectives in a big way. But you can’t do that until you have the baby steps.

This is very true. I definitely like what you had to say about ‘Queer as Folk’ because people don’t look at ‘Days of our Lives’ and say, ‘That’s how all the straight people live!’

Yeah, exactly! I mean, that’s the way it is. And the fact that the show is on the air and people are watching it and it has a large advertising budget is really important. It’s making money, and that’s the most important thing in the entertainment industry. If things make money, other things will come out and have gay stuff and maybe they’ll be better and more interesting.

Also, that same thing, people can look at the stuff I do with Gay Pimp and be like, ‘oh it’s just all about sex and referencing drugs and nightclubs, that’s not a good representation of gays.’ I’m not trying to represent all the gays! You don’t look at Britney Spears and say she’s representing all young girls. C’mon! Gay Pimp’s about being a pop star and having fun and being cool. And like, you know, part of that is being sexy and dominating people and having all sorts of fun things like any other pop star would.

Right. I was going to ask if you get a lot of flack from people who are politically minded and working for positive perception of gay people for your line “We can’t get married but that’s okay/we like to fuck too much anyway” or are people not really giving you shit for it?

Noone’s giving me shit for that, but it is osmethig I think about. Again, the bottom line is, it’s a joke. If you can’t take it, then get out of my joke factory, baby. I mean obviously I want to get married and it’s not really okay, but you know, what am I going to do? Cry and moan? No, I’m putting it in your face.

Who is, because you took on Eminem with Gay Pimp vs. Eminem, who is next on your shit list?

I’m not happy with the Pope right now.

(laughs)

The Pope’s on my shit list sending out the thing saying that all Catholic politicians should deny gay marriage. That pisses me off. And that’s why, in my new video, there’s an appearance from Jesus.

He was hanging around with a whole lot of men.

Yeah, Jesus hangs out in my new video. He doesn’t do nothin’ nasty because I’m not trying to make people hate me. But in the song looking cute feeling cute, there’s a line “it’s a present from Jesus everyday” I walk past Jesus on the street who gives me a hi-five and he’s surrounded by drag queens.

What else have you been up to?

I just did a pilot with VH1 for a show called “Retrosexuals.” It’s sort of like “I love the 80s,” but where they have people talking about sex in the 80s and things like that. We’re also working on a show based on the show I did at Caroline’s. I headlined at Caroline’s last year. Doing something that wasn’t necessarily Gay Pimp but was more about me. But it’s all sort of under the same umbrella. With Koko and Nita and the whole cast of characters. A show called “you go, gay!” that we’re working on developing into a television show that we’re going to be trying to pitch. Because everyone’s buying gay and I’m coming on for the ride.

 Oh, absolutely. And you’ve been doing it for awhile. For (pause) yeah.

Yeah. (laughs)

(laughs)

I’ve got it covered, I’m prepared. The good thing is, the video really helped us get it out. I was really well-known here in New York for awhile, but New York’s only New York. My main objective is to get to those gay teens across the country who have nobody to look up to other than drag queens or screaming ladies. That’s one of the reasons with Gay Pimp’s music, coz it’s from a gay man’s perspective. It’s fun and ironic, but it’s a song about guys and other guys, which you don’t have very much of. The great thing about the “Soccer Practice” video and Ricki Lake, for that matter, is that I get emails from kids everyday across the country who are like, ‘Thank God for you! You make me feel cool!’ For me, it’s all about owning your sexuality. Not everything has to be about sex, but I heart weeners. That’s just the way it is.Accept it and love it and then we can get along fine. It’s not even about a political agenda, it’s just about “own it!” When I did Gay Pimp for the first year and a half, the audience was pretty much 95% straight and I was one of the only gay guys around there. But we had guys chanting ‘Gay pimp, gay pimp!’ lining up around the block and singing “Soccer Practice.” These are all straight dudes! People are ready for it as long as it comes in the right way, if people can appreciate the humor of it. Then they can accept it as well.

Yeah. You had a whole bunch of art school kids in Jacksonville, Florida, gay and straight and whatever, who absolutely loved the “Soccer Practice” video and showed it to everyone they knew.

Yeah, exactly! The ‘Soccer Practice’ video, and all of my stuff, is really about the joke and I think that’s what people can get. Anyone who’s secure in their sexuality knows that you can’t magically turn anyone gay. And they’re not going to suddenly turn gay by hanging out with gay guys or watching anything like that. And that’s sort of the joke of Gay Pimp. It’s playing up on those fears that irrational straight people have, that like, there’s some butch gay guy out there who’s got the magic power that is going to turn you gay, and you better watch out! You better not get close! And it’s sort of playing on those fears and playing on that silly sterotype and blowing it up so big that if you can’t laugh at it, you’re retarded. And at the same time it’s kind of empowering for gay guys to be like, ‘Yeah that’s right, shut up! Turn ‘em gay!’

That’s great. Does it bother you that they’re aren’t more musicians who are, even in indie music, who don’t use pronouns that are the same gender as the person singing, or do you think it’s going to come with time, with the Tv shows and everything else?

Um, you know there are, there are people doing it, it’s just a matter of them getting the attention and the record deals. If you’re in New York right now, I really feel that there’s a, especially in the East Village, in the nightlife scene that I’m part of, there are many different artists and groups who are doing amazing stuff that’s definitely gay, all different. Some are rappers, some are music groups, some are drag queens or whatever. But the people are doing really interesting, hot things that I feel like are going to be the next wave of stuff. And it’s just going to take a few more people breaking down some doors to have all these people rush in. And I think then we’ll be seeing a lot more of all that. It’s going to take a long time for all of America to get it. Start with the hipsters and then move on to the kids. Eventually it will all come around. And it doesn’t bother me, because there’s nothing worse than bad gay music.

(laughs)

(laughs) You know, just because someone says he or she doesn’t mean it’s good. But I love him. It can still suck and  be boring. But I really feel like there’s a new crop coming up now of kids and artists who are from New York and other places who are doing something fresh and different that people are hungry for. Especially gay audience, but also that straight people can get into it, and get with. So I can smell it coming.

I definitely hope that you’re right.

http://www.gaypimp.com/