In some ways, these have been the best two years of Logan Lynn’s career.
He’s been a Gucci model. He signed to the legendary Portland label Kill Rock Stars and put out “New Money,” a rollicking electro/party record, full of energy, sweat and lust (one single was “Eat&Drink&Smoke&Shop&Fuck”), but also melody, poignancy and heart (“Rich and Beautiful,” covers of songs by Elliot Smith and Liz Phair). Such a record should have been accompanied by prolific touring and promotion. But instead of a victory lap, there was merely the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to releasing records for more than 20 years, Lynn has been a voice for the marginalized -— himself included. He’s a gay man, a suicide survivor, in addiction recovery, an advocate for mental health and an impassioned enemy of bigotry and trolling. In addition to being involved with the dot.gay internet domain, he spent several years in the c-suite working for the mental and behavioral health care organization Trillium Family Services, and is now executive director of the PTM Foundation — “PTM” being the Portland band Portgual. The Man — which is especially focused on helping Indigenous peoples, including initiatives involving health care, voting rights and COVID-19 relief.
So while the music business — and the world in general — is now “post-Covid,” particularly when it comes to masking and vaccine requirements, Lynn, who also has pre-existing medical conditions, doesn’t have that luxury, nor does he feel comfortable assuming his fans do. Plans to tour behind New Money, including a show at Austin’s SXSW music festival, just never happened. Instead, he did a pre-recorded, small-crowd showcase at the Dandy Warhols’ “Odditorium” as part of Kill Rock Stars’ “KRS Pride” virtual series (you can still watch it on YouTube). There was testing for everyone both ahead of and on the day of the event, with everybody masked except for the performers. But after months of rehearsal, Lynn’s whole band wound up testing positive for COVID, leaving him to do the whole thing solo/pre-recorded with the assistance of DJ/boylesque legend Isaiah Esquire.
“The best advice that I have ever received is that most of your bad decisions could have been avoided if you’d just stayed at home and rubbed one out instead,” went one of the samples Lynn used for the livestream show. Which, eventually, he found out the hard way. In June, more than two years into the pandemic, Lynn finally broke down and did just one little public thing he thought was worth the risk — a masked-and-tested, small indoor Portland Pride event.
“And I still got it, and I landed in the hospital, and I almost fucking died,” he said. “I’ve been inside ever since.”
Street Roots talked to Lynn via phone on the day after he wrapped up six months of writing and recording for the follow-up to New Money, the details of which he wasn’t yet ready to discuss. But he does allow it has a very different feeling than its predecessor.
“It is not a party record,” Lynn said. “It's much, much more about love and trying to come out of having been inside for so long.”
This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jason Cohen: So, we all have kind of our last memorable big thing we did before the pandemic. And in your case, I guess it was attending the 2020 Grammy Awards?
Logan Lynn: Yeah. I went to the Grammys with Ruth Radelet from The Chromatics. And we had just the best time. I came home from that just so excited. Inspired to start going out. I had gotten well — off of drugs and alcohol — 15 years ago in March, it will be. And I had done a lot of alone time and solitude to get and stay well. And so I had come out of that, and was like, ‘Yes! People! Humanity! Going out! I love it! I'm safe!’ And then the whole world stopped.
Cohen: So instead, we got New Money, which is full of joy and hedonism, albeit vicariously.
Lynn: Yeah, it was about me expressing what I wish I had. What I wanted to be doing, whether that was partying, or fucking or whatever it was that I wasn't able to do around connecting with others. All of those songs were written during that lockdown time of 2020.
And then I put out one song — “Rich and Beautiful” myself. And that is how Kill Rock Stars happened, in a way that was really cool. It all started with them retweeting the “Rich and Beautiful” video with, in all caps: "GAY JOY AS RESISTANCE."
And I was like, hell yeah! That is the exact thing I'm going for!
Cohen: Kind of a Portland music biz romance that made too much sense not to happen.
Lynn: I've obviously been in the Kill Rock Stars-adjacent circle for decades but had never submitted music. I had never thought about being on my favorite label just because it was so squarely focused on singer-songwriters and punk. Music that I love, but which isn’t necessarily music that I make. And I had never really heard Kill Rock Stars put out a dance-pop record.
But I think part of their 30th anniversary was rethinking the roster. Rethinking like what is punk; rethinking what is a singer-songwriter. And I fit into that. My songs are often dance-pop, but they are also singer-songwriter songs. And there's nothing more punk rock than putting out a dance record on a punk label. That felt really fucking cool. And it's been really magical. Like, any experience I had of the music industry before, I feel like has been healed through this experience. It just feels like family and love.
Cohen: I know a lot of artists who felt like they couldn't create during the pandemic, or at least didn’t feel ready to make sense of the moment. But you kind of embraced the moment.
Lynn: I did, man. I was gonna just die in here, or I was gonna figure out a way to make something pretty out of the whole experience. I really leaned in to try to make something pretty out of it. And I was also ready — at a point with my songwriting, and with who I am in the world, where, like, opportunity met preparedness.
My favorite game is to try to find positive things that came out of the pandemic. It's such a bleak few years we've been in that I'm determined to always try to find something good.
Cohen: So what are some of the other things?
Lynn: I feel like I really benefited from being alone and having that be okay. I am an introvert, and before, a lot of my day was spent working myself up into a “Logan Lynn place” ahead of leaving the house. Having to put on all that it takes to be in the world, fearing those experiences, and then coming home and having to spend a bunch of time decompressing and recalibrating. The pandemic took away that experience on either side. I really got to use all of my energy to create and to relate to folks in a way that was more comfortable.
So that was one. I also went to a bunch of telehealth therapy. Tried to figure out some of my issues during that alone time and was successful in that. I also identify as a person who's like, really afraid of dying and of all of his loved ones dying. I mean, we all are, but I have a heightened death thing, and it was good for me to face my fear. I lost some people. I was terrified about my family. I was terrified for myself. And learning to live in that space and be a happy person in the midst of all that was skill-building that would have never happened in my life had I not been forced to do it.
And also: my fashion dreams came true! I had booked that Gucci campaign that got canceled in March of 2020. And they just let me keep the clothes, and it shifted to at-home: models and musicians shooting themselves for that Gucci: The Ritual campaign. That gave me something to focus on in here that wasn’t scary. That was not about fear. That was not about death.
Cohen: How did Gucci find you originally?
Lynn: They dressed me for the Grammys. We ended up on a bunch of best-dressed lists, and then we started talking. I think Alessandro Michele’s whole vision for Gucci is pretty radical in that he's looking for unique people. He's not doing a stereotypical model thing. I don't think it's common for a 40-year-old gay dude to get a fashion contract like that.
Cohen: I think one of the hardest things for a lot of people during the pandemic is, we all thought after the first year, and after the vaccine, ‘Okay, it's gonna be over. Now we can go do stuff.’ And for you specifically, 2022 was supposed to be it. The record was gonna come out, you were gonna go on tour.
Lynn: Yeah, that didn't happen (laughs).
I remember thinking, ‘everything's gonna be done in three weeks.’ And then that just turned into years. I believed it every time I booked a show. Each of those times, we were paying for those shows to happen, people were rehearsing, spaces were rented … and everything just kept getting canceled. And at a certain point, I called it. Where I was like, ‘okay, I'm gonna stop booking things.’ And that was sort of my entire album release period.
I also had booked South by Southwest. Thought things were going to be better by March of 2022. And they weren't. So I started talking with them about like, hey, can I pay for this myself and do something where it's actually COVID-safe, with PCR testing on-site, where I’m sequestered? Or a virtual/hybrid (show). I have pre-existing conditions where I'm especially at risk. And they said yes at first, and then a few weeks before, they were like, 'oh, actually, no. We're not going to do this.' And I have no idea why. I think it was that they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that the festival wasn't safe.
Plus, it was right around the time that all these terrible laws about the transgender community and abortion rights started coming down in Texas, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my god, this shit is not the vibe.’ So I canceled that too. My label is cool. They were like, ‘fuck yeah.’ They didn't care. But it didn't land super well with the festival.
So at that point, I was like, listen, we're just going to do virtual until this shit is actually safe. People that are at risk, we have to watch out for ourselves. Because nobody else cares.
Cohen: And it wasn't just you, right — it was bandmates, and other people that you work with?
Lynn: Yeah, our whole team. Either having something themselves that puts them at risk, or they live with folks that are at risk. I didn't feel like my big break — my big moment — was enough of a reason for people I love and care about, including myself, to die. It was a no-brainer decision to be like, “well, we're not doing that.” “We're not doing this.” “Hell no.” “No.” I got asked to do New York City Pride this year. Turned it down. I said no many times. I turned down so much money. I paid an incredible amount of money to get out of things. I didn't want to be a vector for the communities that I care about. And so I just pulled the plug.
Cohen: So how does it make you feel when you see all these other bands kind of touring through it? Sometimes they cancel shows because of COVID, other times you gotta assume they're actually not canceling, or maybe don't know someone has it.
Lynn: Yeah. There's an inherent tension there between the stance that I've taken and the stance that most others have taken. I'm an outlier in that there's a hard “no” line we don't cross.
I think, good for them on not having health concerns. They're lucky. That's awesome. And I think it would be really amazing if the music industry would take the lead on this new world that's emerging. We could actually have a world and a music industry that makes space for people with disabilities and preexisting conditions. That isn't just: ‘sucks to be you if you don't have perfect health!’
I'm coming at this from a place of privilege in some ways. I don't have to tour. I put this record out, and the label was fine. I'm sure it would have done much bigger things had we gone on an endless tour, but I don't have to do that. And so I didn't. A lot of bands that are just starting out, or even some that are established, that's their source of income. The choice that's really being asked of musicians is to either starve or play shows. And that's not the situation I am in.
I do think it's a situation that a lot of people are in because of the way the industry came back without any protocols. There could have been a way for a compassionate re-entry had venues and the music industry — promoters, labels, artists, everybody — just said, ‘we're going to cater to the most vulnerable among us.’ Because that's what the ethos of music is, right? That it's for everybody. That there's a space at the table for all kinds of people. But that just didn't happen, man. Money matters most. Unfortunately, that didn't change just because the world did.
Cohen: Obviously, all of this is not incidental to other experiences in your life. The kind of work you've done, the fact that you're in recovery, the fact that you're a gay man — all those things give you a particular perspective on society's failure to grapple with something like this.
Lynn: Yeah. I think all of my public health stuff and just the advocacy work that I do, whether that's with Portugal. The Man or my years and years of LGBTQ+, community work, I've been in the mode of thinking about other people. And that's just the way that my whole life is calibrated. And there is not a distinction I make between that work and the music.
And I lived through the tail end of the worst part of the AIDS crisis. I saw all my friends and elders die. I just have a very particular experience of public health and taking care of each other and making sure that people feel safe. And are safe. And the COVID pandemic felt very similar in a lot of ways: around government failure, around people not caring about vast swaths of the population. It just triggered me in a way where I was like, ‘Okay, well, I have a skill set for this. I'm gonna use that.’ And I'm still in that mindset.
Cohen: So, you just finished another record, which probably won’t be out until sometime in 2023. Think touring might seem like an option then?
Lynn: Yeah, what if the pandemic gets under control over the next year? Or we have some kind of pill that makes it where it's not a big deal for real? Or the vaccines actually (prevent transmission). Any of that stuff could happen. And then I'm going out, and I'll tour both records at the same time.
I also love going to shows (as an audience member). I've experienced a great loss around all of this. But it’s just not worth it. I think the music industry has some work to do around making things safer and more sustainable. And I think we as individual artists have a responsibility to the folks that listen to our music, as well as the other bands we've performed with, and the venue staff, to do our part. Like encouraging our fans to wear their masks in a way that is non-optional, right? Like, I'll stand on the stage and not sing until you put your fucking mask on, dude!
I honestly don't know how well that will work. But it's not a lost cause. The music industry has been around for a long time. But we can create something better here. We actually have to be advocates, as musicians and artists, and we have power in that moment. I mean, I feel like I'm not super powerful and I've been able to make some things happen. Imagine what would happen if bigger bands did similar stuff.
So my hope is that things get better, and that we can all come back together in a way that's safe — like, actually safe — for everybody. And if that doesn't happen, then, y’know, please watch my virtual performance again.
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