As a Seattleite, I’ve found it all but impossible to avoid the force of nature we know as Jinkx Monsoon. But who else, besides the most repressed, would want to?
Jinkx Monsoon is the drag personae of Portland-born, Seattleite Jerick Hoffer. I first encountered Hoffer as the star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in early 2013. What you realize is that Hoffer is a natural born performer who looks at home on a stage, and is the rare triple threat: one who can act, dance, and sing. Since then, Jinkx Monsoon has taken on a life (of fame) on its own, winning “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in season five and becoming an off-Broadway sensation in New York, plus a music star with the release of The Inevitable Album last spring. To keep track, Hoffer told the Stranger in his Genius Awards profile, “Jerick plays Jinkx, and then Jinkx plays those other characters.”
Starting this weekend, Jinkx Monsoon stars in The Vaudevillians, the off-Broadway hit that no less than the New York Times said, “Straight or gay, everyone leaves this show with sides aching from laughter.” It plays for about a month at the Seattle Rep. It’s a collaboration with Major Scales (known as Richard Andreissen formally) where they play two vaudeville performers from the 1920s that discover their songs have been covered by almost a century of pop stars who failed to give them credit. I even laughed at typing the plot, as straight-laced as I could.
I had a phone interview earlier this week to talk with Jinkx Monsoon about The Vaudevillians, The Inevitable Album, and what’s coming next.
Your new show The Vaudevillians debuts in Seattle this week at the Rep. What will that show entail for people seeing it?
The Vaudevillians is the love child between me and my music partner, Major Scales. It’s a story of two vaudeville stars that have been frozen alive since the 1920s. They have recently been thawed out, thanks to global warming. They found out that pop stars of the last century have been covering their music without giving them any credit and ripping off all of their songs that used to be big hits in the twenties. The pop stars have been passing their music off as their own. Our characters come back to the stage to show the original context and the original meaning and the original style of all of these iconic pop songs, like “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” or music by Madonna, or “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin. We span the map on musical references. But it’s also through these coke-addicted vaudeville stars of the 1920s.
How did the idea come about?
It started as a joke between me and my music partner. We would come home from rehearsal all tired and bleary-eyed. We started joking around about these two characters who were the oldest people alive. Through playing around and improv-ing with these characters, we morphed them and the story shifted to what the show is today. My music partner and I used to be part of an improv troupe so the whole show came out of me and him playing around with each other, testing out music with different song styles and just making each other laugh.
You also have an album, The Inevitable Album, out. Can you talk a little about that?
The album is with my same music partner who I do The Vaudevillians with. It’s a collaborative piece between the two of us, but it features original music and covers and it came out last May. It’s been out since the spring of 2014. It’s kind of an homage album to the torch singers who I used to listen to growing up, like Billie Holiday and Patsy Cline and Marlene Dietrich and Bette Midler. Those were the biggest inspirations for the album. It has a lot of jazzy, feely music, but a couple of big, brassy Broadway showtunes, and a couple tongue-in-cheek, funny songs. I think it’s a very good representation of my personality and my music style.
The video for “The Bacon Shake” just came out, and you work with Fred Schneider of the B-52s, one of my very, very favorite bands. Can I ask about how that partnership came to be?
Both Major and I have been huge fans of the B-52s since we were kids. It’s one of the things we bonded over. When we were doing our show in New York, The Vaudevillians, and our producer said he knew Fred Schneider because he heard us talking about how much we love the B-52s. He invited Fred to one of our shows, and Fred immediately took a shine to us and asked if he could start writing us some songs, and if we had any interest in using his songs. It didn’t work in the context of The Vaudevillians but we brought it up to him that we were producing an album. He started collaborating with us for a couple of pieces on the album. He also did the forward on the entire album, which made me very, very happy. It’s surreal for me that one of my childhood musical heroes is now a featured part on my album. It’s lovely working with Fred and we’ve become really good friends with him. We have plans to collaborate in the future with him, as well.
I’ve seen you perform before and heard the album, and thought you were a natural performer. Did you always know you’d be a triple threat?
I always knew that I wanted in career in performing. Specifically acting and singing. I didn’t know that I was going to get in to dance, as well. I don’t consider myself much of a dancer but I can hold my own on the stage. When I was a kid, it’s in my baby book, when I was able to speak, I was asked what I wanted to be and I said “an actor and a dolphin.” At least I accomplished one of the things I set out to do.
I’ll ask one more question because I know you’re very busy getting The Vaudevillians ready to premiere on Friday night at the Rep. But what are you working on next?
Immediately after The Vaudevillians, Major and I are working on a holiday show. That’s in New York and then a short trip through Europe. We’re also working on the sequel to The Vaudevillians. It’s a sequel show to the original story. It’s the same characters but in a new scenario. We’re going to be debuting that in the spring. We’re also going to travel to Provincetown next summer to do a cabaret version of our album. We’ve already booked everything up until this time next year. But we’re doing a lot of work with The Vaudevillians and we’re starting to think about producing a second album and we’re touring anywhere we can with our current album.
I always say “better busy than dead.” {laughs}
