“I was talking to a couple of homosexuals down in Melbourne, and they were talking to me about listening to Kylie,” John Grant says rather gleefully, clearly relishing this anecdote from his recent tour of Australia. “And I was like, ‘She came and guested at my show at Royal Albert Hall, and came on stage during ‘Glacier.’” The Aussies’ response? “They were just looking at me like I had two heads on my shoulders. They were looking at me like a German Shepherd hearing a weird noise.

“It was really hilarious,” he continues, “because it was just as epic for me as it was for them hearing that.”

The fact that the ultimate Australian superstar and beloved international gay diva wanted to come out and sing a duet with Grant during his London concert in 2016 is what he refers to as “a mindblower.” Yet, there’s more. “When I introduced her at Royal Albert Hall, that place went absolutely berserk. It was an incredible moment,” Grant says. “And then she asked me to come sing with her at her Christmas show [later that year], and I did that, too.” 

Grant sums up his experience and impression of Minogue by noting, “She’s cool. She’s really funny. You don’t want to ever underestimate Kylie.” Performing even once, let alone twice (so far), with Minogue would be a high water mark for any singer-songwriter — especially so for a gay, synth-pop-oriented Gen X artist. 

In Grant’s case, however, Minogue is just one among many laudable collaborators he’s had the honor of generating music with over the course of 15 years and counting in his solo career.

The impressive roster includes both fellow indie-electronic or alt-rock artists as well as bona fide music legends and superstars — from Amanda Palmer and Hercules and Love Affair, to Robbie Williams and the late Sinéad O’Connor.

He’s also good friends with Sir Elton John, who became a fan of Grant’s work right from the get-go, his 2010 solo debut Queen of Denmark.

“I was drawn to the brilliance of John [Grant]’s melodies, his very to-the-point lyrics, and the way he used synthesizers — he struck me as an original type of songwriter,” the gay music icon said in a 2021 profile published in the U.K. newspaper The Observer. Prompted to elaborate on their friendship, Mr. Rocketman added, “It’s not just because of the music. We are both alcoholics, but we’ve both long been sober, so we talk about that. Then when John came out as HIV positive, I thought it was incredibly brave of him…. And we are both gay, of course.” 

Born in Michigan, John Grant came of age in a repressive small town on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado. It was from there, while in his early 20s, that he launched his first foray in music as lead singer of The Czars, an alt-rock band that garnered some minor acclaim in the dozen years of its run.

Though it’s nothing compared to what he’s managed to achieve as a perennially acclaimed, bubbling-under solo artist known for his droll or frank lyrics, silvery and resonant baritone, and distinctive brooding and simmering, synth-enriched style. 

Currently, Grant is touring in support of The Art of the Lie, his sixth studio album. On Friday, April 11, he’ll make his solo debut at The Barns at Wolf Trap — marking his first-ever performance in Virginia.

“I’ve never been there before — I’m excited,” he says. “This is going to sound funny, but I’ve always wanted to ride the Loch Ness Monster in Williamsburg, Virginia.” Although a visit to Busch Gardens is an unlikely add-on to this outing, he’s hoping he can at least make the trek into D.C. for a return visit to Jimmy T’s on Capitol Hill. “That’s my favorite diner in the whole world. So if I get to go there, I’m going to be happy as a clam.”

METRO WEEKLY: Let’s start with The Art of the Lie. It’s a great title, by the way.

JOHN GRANT: Yeah, thank you. It’s funny that I don’t hear that a lot more. When I came up with the title, I thought, “Surely that’s been used a hundred times already.” But it hasn’t been.

I had a really good time making it. There were a lot of moments of joy just watching the musicians who worked on it do their thing. And I really like the words on it a lot. I’ve sort of been talking about the scourge that is MAGA since my Love is Magic album in 2018. And ever since 2015, it was clear what this movement was.

It was clear that it was what Frank Zappa was talking about in the ’80s, that this was finally that person that was going to let the Christian Nazis get their foot in the door, who had been talking about installing a theocracy in the United States for many decades.

So I’m glad that I’m saying what it is, not beating around the bush. It feels good to do that. It feels good to talk about how this. It’s not a new movement. It’s been going on for many, many decades, but they’ve never been able to get as organized as they are now.

So they’re definitely having their moment, and it’s pure, unadulterated evil. It’s good to just name it. People in my family believe I have Trump Derangement Syndrome because I’m saying the truth about it, and people don’t want to hear that.

I spent my whole life learning languages, including German and Russian, studying those countries and the histories of those countries. And if you know anything about those histories, it’s really easy to recognize what we have here now. If you know how the Nazis came to power — people always think that it started with Auschwitz, but it didn’t. That was like 10, 15 years later into the movement.

So it feels good to talk about all that stuff. But also, there are songs that don’t have much to do with that. There’s a song on the album that talks about Allen Schindler, who was a soldier in the Navy [in 1992]. “Mother and Son” is directed towards his mother.

It’s about a man who went into the Navy, and everybody found out that he was gay while he was in the Navy. A couple of his shipmates cornered him in a public restroom and jumped up and down on his head until it was smashed like a tomato. Then the Navy tried to cover it up, and they sent back the body to the mother who didn’t even know her son was gay.

And they said that they didn’t know anything about what had happened, and she had to go through hell to find out that it was a hate crime and that he’d been murdered in the most horrific fashion because he was gay.

The song is just sort of reaching out to the mother and saying, “What is it like to have a child and raise him and send him out into the world where he wants to go and protect his country? And he loves to be on ships and loves the whole thing of being in service to his country and everything. And then having him treated like that, and then having them try and cover it up and lie to you and send you back basically a box with tomato puree in it?”

So it’s nice to talk about Allen Schindler because a lot of people don’t know about that story. At least most of the people that I’ve told about it were like, “Who the hell is that? I’ve never heard of him.”

MW: Upon first listening to “Mother and Son,” I remember thinking it was about you and your mother.

GRANT: Yeah, a lot of people have asked me that. I haven’t written a song about my mother yet, which I’m sure I will do, but I don’t know. It’s just some songs, they seem like they’re not ready to happen yet, and you can tell because they just don’t come. If you try and coax them, they still just don’t happen. I’ve learned at this point that it’s okay when a song won’t come because maybe it’s not time for it yet. Or maybe, maybe you’re not ready for it yet. You just sort of let it percolate and it’ll happen when it should, or it won’t.

MW: The track before “Mother and Son” is “Father,” which is about your relationship with your father, right?

GRANT: Yeah. There’s a little bit of my mother in there. There’s a little bit of throwing the two of them together in some of the lines in the song. But yeah, chiefly it’s about my father and about thinking about having been judged so harshly throughout my life through the prism of religion, of Protestantism.

And then you get old, you start to age. And here I am in middle age — I’ll be 57 in July, which is how old my mother was when she died — and thinking about how you’ve been judged through this prism of religion, that you can’t be a homosexual and have a good life or have a relationship to God, or that you can’t have a good place in society as a homosexual. 

But then you come to find out that the people who have been judging you through this prism never even believed any of the shit that they were telling you because they’ve gone on to accept Trump as their new Lord and Savior. And all of that goes against any of the things that they ever said that they stood for. So it can make you pretty angry when you think about it.

MW: You were raised Methodist?

GRANT: Well, that was the early days in Michigan. I have to say that the Methodist experience was probably the best that I had in the church. Because when we moved to Colorado, my parents joined a Southern Baptist church, and that was a whole new ball of wax of legalism and religiosity, if you will, and hypocrisy and strictness and, I don’t know, projecting one’s human foibles onto the Bible.

Or like I talk about in my song “Jesus Hates Faggots,” about how people project what they hate onto the thing that they worship, and use it to justify that hatred. But I have to say the Methodist Church really felt like a place where people were kind. And there was a true sense of community in that.

MW: I grew up Methodist, so I understand what you’re saying. On the downside, it can get a little wishy-washy.

GRANT: Yeah. Perhaps. I say if I have to choose between the two, I’d prefer Methodists, because I really like the potluck dinners and the ice cream socials.

MW: How many siblings do you have?

GRANT: I have three. I have one sister and two brothers.

MW: Are you the baby?

GRANT: Yes, I am.

MW: Is your father still alive?

GRANT: He is, yeah. He went back down to live where he was born and raised, in the Ozarks of Missouri. And he lives in a house that he built when he was 75. He built another house from the ground up, with foundation and everything, and doing the roofing himself, and the plumbing, all that stuff. Which is crazy because that was like the third house that he built himself. So it’s quite impressive.

It’s right on the land that he was raised on, next to the house that he was raised in. And we went down there for Thanksgiving every year in the ’70s and less in the ’80s. I have these vivid memories of being down there in the Ozarks, in Willow Springs, Missouri. It’s an incredibly beautiful part of the country.

MW: Did singing come naturally for you growing up? 

GRANT: I really had a hard time finding my voice, being able to project. Even when I started out in the Czars, I constantly had the sound engineer telling me — because I wanted the monitors on stage to be louder all the time — “They’re as loud as they’ll go. You don’t project, you can’t sing out.” And that’s really strange because it’s exactly the opposite now.

And it’s really interesting because there was so much fear in me of just saying what I needed to say. It just took me a long time to be able to get there. And I didn’t really think I could do it in the context of the Czars, surrounded by all these straight dudes. Although they didn’t do anything to tell me I couldn’t do that. I just wasn’t able to. 

MW: In an in-depth interview on a music podcast from a few years ago, you revealed that when you were 16 or 17, you had an experience very similar to my own, something I’ve always referred to as developing stage fright. Because I acted in a number of plays and musicals for a couple of years in high school and did just fine, but then all of a sudden, I became too self-aware, and it became too unbearable to be in the spotlight on stage from that point on. 

GRANT: It’s interesting you should bring that up. I mean, it’s not good to know that you experienced that because it is one of the most horrifying things. I feel like it must be similar to these people who have strokes and then are trapped inside their bodies and can’t express themselves anymore. They’re completely present inside their mind, and yet they can’t communicate in any way. It felt like that at that moment, but it was much more. It was a horrifying experience. I remember it like it was yesterday. It’s something that I still think about. When was that for you?

MW: End of junior year in high school, so age 17.

GRANT: Yep. Same time for me. I was auditioning for a kid’s production of Alice in Wonderland, and we were going to go take it around to different elementary schools. And I was trying to be the Cheshire Cat, and I couldn’t do it at all. It seemed like an instantaneous thing, that all of a sudden I couldn’t do what I had been able to do so effortlessly and with ease and with comfort all the years before, because I knew all these people that I was auditioning in front of. They were like family to me. They were people that I was close to.

And then all of a sudden there was this horrible awareness, and it was like they could see inside my mind and inside my skin, or through my skin. And it was a horrifying experience, and I never really recovered from that. That unawareness is gone. In some ways, I suppose that’s good. But I did everything I could to try and stop it from happening, which in my case was a lot of drinking and drugging.

MW: When did you come out?

GRANT: I had a really slow, soft coming out. I wanted my parents to think that I was on board with getting healed [of homosexuality] because that was really the only option to be accepted. But I was never in that because I just wanted to go out and have sex and find a man. So it was in my mid-20s before I was able to really come out.

But I had to be — I’m just thinking about the truth of this statement that I’m about to say — I feel like I had to be drunk in order to do what I wanted to do because of the shame that I felt. To have sex, to just go out and be with my gay friends. I could hang out with them when I wasn’t drunk during the day, but when it came to sex, there was so much shame surrounding it that I felt like I had to be drunk. So, it wasn’t until many years later that I finally had sex while sober.

MW: The “horrible awareness” that kept you from playing the Cheshire Cat in high school, would you say that was brought on by your budding homosexuality? And did you realize at the time that was what it was?

GRANT: I definitely knew, and I was afraid that everybody could see it. And from what they were saying to me, they could see it, because I was constantly being called a “faggot” and all that stuff. “Why do you walk like a faggot? Why do you eat like a faggot? Shut your faggoty mouth. What the fuck are you smiling at, you fucking faggot?” There was all of that happening.

And I saw that it wasn’t happening to my other friends who were straight and masculine. The thing that makes me sad is that there were people that I could have confided in at the time, but I was so afraid for anybody to know because it was going to ruin my life. My parents couldn’t know. I didn’t want anybody at church to know, even though they all suspected it. And I was also angry because of the arrogance of these people who were telling me who I was. Do you know what I mean?

MW: Before you even knew.

GRANT: Before I could even deal with it or know for myself. There was a lot of rage built up around that. Just the arrogance and the cruelty and the viciousness of people. That made me very angry. But I also could never really stand up for myself because I was taught to believe that it was right for these people to react this way to me, that it was the correct reaction to what I was, which was totally wrong, an unforgivable sin, and impossible. So yeah, it sucked. It was very ugly.

MW: I wonder how much different the experience is for teenagers today, or if it is different?

GRANT: Well, I do notice that there are always a lot of people who are like, “God, what are you talking about? What is all this shit you’re talking about?” You hear a lot of gays talking about how they hate self-loathing gays, which I don’t understand at all, because that seems to me like a lack of understanding about where we’ve come from. 

It seems like there are a lot of gays who are pro-MAGA and pro-Trump as well. It’s funny, I wanted to act like I was surprised for a long time, and then I thought, “No, there are plenty of stupid people in the gay community as there are plenty of stupid people in the Black community, as there are plenty of stupid people in the Mexican community. This sociopathy and psychopathy, narcissism, greed, ignorance — all of these things — are no respecter of races, are they? All of these things are part of every community. So why should our community be any different? So from that standpoint, I would say, yeah, sure, there’s got to be a bunch of gays who love Trump and love MAGA as well. Although sometimes when I’m thinking about it, it just sort of blows my mind.

MW: Do you get many younger, aspiring musicians or artists seeking you out for advice or mentorship?

GRANT: Yes, I do. I have people approach me quite often, and it’s always an honor. But people have gotten a lot more confident these days — although we’re experiencing a huge setback right now. But there are so many gay artists out there now. It was quite rare when we didn’t know a lot of people — I guess we knew about Freddie Mercury and Holly Johnson [of Frankie Goes to Hollywood] and Elton John, perhaps. But it wasn’t, well, I’m preaching to the choir here, right? I mean, it wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now. Now everybody and their grandma is gay and in a band, or gay and a lead singer of a band.

MW: Or bi or pansexual and in a band. Or queer — a word that we would never say or identify as, at least back in the day.

GRANT: Yeah. I still don’t use that word. Because to me, it still has the connotations that it had when I was growing up, which was never positive.

MW: I’ve seen some flattering things Elton John has said about you, and I also read a recent interview with the two of you highlighting your friendship. How did that develop?

GRANT: Well, I first met his assistant, Mike, who had been with Elton for like 40 years. He was no longer working with Elton, but he was a fan of my music, and he turned Elton onto my music. Eventually, Mike told me that Elton would like to have a chat. And so I was given a number to call. I called him up, and I was super nervous. And we had a little chat [where] I was quite open about all the stuff that I was going through at the time, and he was a little bit like, “Geez, I didn’t really want to hear any of that.”

But we just kept in touch. I went and saw him backstage when he played at Madison Square Garden. I was so scared and nervous that night because I never thought that I would be in that position. I was just completely freaked out. Elton dedicated a song to me that night, but I was out in the hallway when he [did]. He also told the whole sold-out Madison Square Garden to go buy my new record, which was Pale Green Ghosts at the time.

And I was out in the hallway with an EMT thinking that I was having a heart attack or something. Because I was having such crazy panic. It was just a really bad panic attack. So I missed him dedicating that song to me in front of all those people, which would’ve been super epic. And then I went and saw him afterwards. I met Michael Stipe backstage, and I was just blown away by that. I mean, he was always very important to me. I listened to R.E.M. a lot. 

There were like 50 people in the room, at least. And I sat down at a table with Elton, and we just talked in the midst of all these people. It was very intimidating, actually. But he made me feel quite comfortable. And in the years since, we’ve just continued to stay in touch and talk on the phone and Zoom, and I go visit him when I can in London when he’s around. And sometimes I see him if we’re both in L.A. He is an amazing human being. He’s one of the funniest people I ever met. He’s got the most incredible sense of humor. And he’s very, very, very, very quick-witted. I mean, he always just has me belly laughing the whole time. And we talk about anything and everything.

MW: He’s also a great champion of newer and younger artists. 

GRANT: He is. I mean, he loves so many different types of music. It’s really incredible what he does. And he’s done that for me, too. He plays me on his [Apple Music radio series Rocket Show] once in a while and has talked about me there. And he basically goes through the charts every morning before breakfast, and he checks out everything every day, all the time. He wants to know what’s going on everywhere in the world in music. And he’s constantly searching. And when he finds something that he likes, he’ll reach out to that person and get them on his show. He’s super, super busy, and he just loves every minute of it. It’s not a chore to him in any way, shape, or form.

MW: I know you did a cover of Elton’s “Sweet Painted Lady,” but have you ever worked directly with him on a song? 

GRANT: No, not yet. I’m hoping that we will. I love what he’s done with Brandi Carlile. He played that album in its entirety for me — I think it was the last time I was at his house. And I was stunned. The songwriting is fantastic. And there are many really, really super powerful tracks on that album. So he’s not slowing down at all. He’s not touring anymore, but he’s far from being done with music. So I’m hoping that he and I will figure out something to do together.

MW: I hadn’t thought about it until you mentioned her name, but I would definitely be down for a collaboration between you and Brandi.

GRANT: Oh, me too. I mean, she’s got one of the greatest voices in the world. It’s really quite stupefying how good her voice is.

MW: Another collaboration I’d love to see you do is with Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters. I know that you’re friends with Jake, but have you worked on anything with him? 

GRANT: No, we haven’t done anything, either. I mean, I don’t really do that a lot. When I did it with CMAT, it was because she reached out to me, and she had a song already to go. And the song was incredible. And I was super impressed. I accidentally heard her when I was going back to my dressing room at a festival. I just heard this voice off in the distance. And I turned around and I was like, “Who the fuck is that? I like that.” And the guys I was with are Irish, and they said, “Oh, that’s CMAT. Yeah, she’s really great. We know her. She’s a big fan of yours.” And so that pricked up my ears. And then not long after that, I received an invitation to sing that song with her, “Where Are Your Kids Tonight?” But I’m sort of a lone wolf.

MW: If you say so. The truth of the matter is, I’m just getting started working my way through a list of all the collaborations I’ve loved from you — perhaps none more so than “Disappointing” with Tracey Thorn. 

GRANT: Thank you. I mean, Tracey Thorn, man, holy cow! I don’t think there’s one single thing that she’s done that I haven’t liked, or that I haven’t loved. And that new Everything But the Girl album is just as fantastic as anything they ever did.

MW: Oh yeah, Fuse from 2023. I’ll add it to my list to listen to.

GRANT: You must listen to it. It’s so fucking good.

MW: Sinéad O’Connor contributed vocals to three of your tracks on Pale Green Ghosts. How was working with her? 

GRANT: Well, it was a joy. It was super easy to work with her. She was a pro, very, very, very, very confident about her gift. She would just do a bunch of takes and send them to you and just be like, “Use, or don’t use, what you want.” She wasn’t precious about [it]. She just would step back. So it was pretty, pretty awesome.

MW: Her death due to lung disease in 2023 at only age 56 was such a loss.

GRANT: A huge loss. I remember when she tore up that picture of the Pope, I couldn’t understand why people were so upset about it. I thought it was great. I thought, “That’s a great idea. Of course, that’s what we should be doing.”

And I couldn’t believe what it did to her or what people tried to do to her. And in many cases, they really succeeded. I remember thinking about what a badass Kris Kristofferson was, the way he comforted her. But then I was just confused like, “What are all these fuckers doing at a Bob Dylan tribute? Why are they there? How can you be into that music and then ‘boo’ somebody like Sinead O’Connor for doing what she did?” That was very, very confusing to me.

I’m pretty grateful. I’ve also gotten to sing with Elizabeth Fraser [of the Cocteau Twins], and with Alison Goldfrapp. These were huge, huge moments for me.

MW: In preparing for this interview, I was listening through all of your material. And I have to say I was totally unprepared for what came out of my speakers after I hit play on Yawning Abyss, the 2023 album from Creep Show, a project of yours with Stephen Mallinder and the British musician/producer known simply as Benge. I was like, “What in the world?” In a good way. It’s so different, quirky, and upbeat to the point of being hyper, almost manic.

GRANT: I love that project. Being with those guys in the studio is heaven. Because we’re down in Cornwall, down in the extreme southwest corner of England. And it’s just one of the most beautiful places in the world, for me personally. And Benge has this incredible house that has a basement, this gigantic lower level that’s filled with every synth you can imagine. And it’s really idyllic.

It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. You’re completely isolated there. And in the middle of this incredible, lush landscape that’s really wild and sort of untamed, he lives in this gigantic sort of Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired house that’s sort of nestled into a hillside with incredible ground surrounding it, a river running through the property, and then there’s a meadow across from the river where the sheep come to graze at dusk. And one of those creeping hazes, one of those creeping mists, comes across the meadow at dusk. And then inside, you’re creating all these incredible sounds on one of the original first Moog synthesizers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He’s got just everything you could possibly imagine.

MW: Is it true you’re working on music you’ll perform with the Royal Ballet. 

GRANT: Yes. That’s something else I’ve been doing that’s really cool. The Royal Ballet of London is doing a presentation of A Single Man based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood, and I was asked to write songs for it. And so I’m going to be performing with the Royal Ballet. I’ll be singing these songs as the ballet acts out the story. And that’s going to be starting in rehearsals in June. I was writing the music for that in January and February, so I haven’t been too lazy lately.

MW: That’s a fast turnaround, isn’t it? 

GRANT: It’s too fast for me, I’ll tell you that. It’s nerve-wracking. And I haven’t finished yet. I still have two songs to finish. I’ve got like seven of them, and I’ve got two more. And I don’t know, I might use that for an entire album. Well, I don’t know, as far as the IP of doing something that’s based on a book and releasing it as your own album or something. I don’t know how all that works, but we’ll see. 

So anybody who’s going to be planning a trip to England in July or September [should check it out]. We’re starting off at the Manchester International Festival [the first week of July], and then it will move to London at the Royal Opera House for 10 performances or something like that in September. 

MW: What can we expect at Wolftrap? I mean, what are you going to be performing, just songs from the new album?

GRANT: Oh, no, it’s a lot of old stuff I’m doing. A friend of mine was like, “Could you please do ‘Angel Eyes?’” But I didn’t have time to learn that — I’ve never done it on the piano. And I was so busy doing the ballet and touring and everything, I just didn’t have time. But just between you and me, I did learn to play “Jesus Hates Faggots,” which I always had somebody else playing that, because it was more guitar-based, and somebody else was playing the synth on that. So I’d never actually played it. But I’m doing that. I’m doing a lot of songs off Queen of Denmark and off of, I mean, pretty much off of everything.

MW: How about “County Fair” from The Boy From Michigan?

GRANT: I’m not doing that. I wish I was. I hate to say this, but I just think it’s too boring on piano. I don’t feel like it works. 

MW: Will it just be you on stage?

GRANT: It’s just me, yeah.

MW: Do you like that? Or does that get lonely?

GRANT: It’s fantastic, but it’s a totally different beast. And there’s no safety net in that. There’s more of a safety net when you’re on stage with a bunch of people and a big production on a huge stage. And these gigs that are more intimate, that can be more scary. Because you can’t hide in a stage set. 

John Grant performs Friday, April 11, at 8 p.m., at The Barns at Wolf Trap, 1635 Trap Rd., Vienna, Va. Doors at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $41 to $51. Call 703-255-1900 or visit www.wolftrap.org.

Grant will appear the following night, April 12, at Roulette Intermedium, 509 Atlantic Ave.. in New York, followed by dates in Norway, the U.K., and Ireland throughout the summer. For more details on his appearances, visit www.johngrantmusic.com.