Chappell Roan wasn’t supposed to headline Kentuckiana Pride on June 15, but she did anyway. Icona Pop, the Swedish synth-pop duo originally scheduled to close out the fest on the main stage, called out sick the night before.
“Kentucky! We have some not so fun news. Aino is feeling super unwell, so we unfortunately last minute won’t be able to join Kentuckiana Pride tomorrow,” the duo wrote on Instagram, in part. “Please go extra hard for us at Chappell Roan’s set!”
Illness aside, I wouldn’t fault Icona Pop for finding relief in forking over their headlining spot to Chappell Roan – it took minimal observation to know most attendees of Kentuckiana Pride 2024 were treating the Midwest Princess as the festival’s unofficial headliner, and Kentuckiana Pride is far from the first fest to find themselves hastily accommodating Chappell Roan’s exploding fan base.
CityBeat spoke with Roan’s fans who came from near and far to catch a glimpse of her live spectacle, and why her drag queen persona is resonating so deeply in states that take sharp aim at LGBTQ+ folks.
H-O-T-T-O-G-O
Chappell Roan’s pushed-back start time gave me and others at Kentuckiana Pride some breathing room to take in the fest before she took the stage at 9 p.m. After strolling through the village of booths selling everything from spicy t-shirts to queer-friendly roofing services, I stumbled upon a tent where a DJ blasted quintessential club beats. In the broadest of sticky hot daylight, I danced with friends and friendly strangers like it was 2 a.m.
“We never had the concept of it getting this big!” I overheard one dancer wearing fairy wings say of Kentuckiana Pride.
They had a point – I asked my Pride companion, hometown homie-turned Louisville local Gracie, about the turnout.
“In the past, like, no one would come. Definitely not from out of town.”
In the festival’s 24-year history, the festival has never sold out. While the fenced-off park holding Kentuckiana Pride on the border between Kentucky and Indiana certainly fit the max number 25,000 guests, patience was key for getting to point A to B.
It took an hour to make it from the club tent to the stage-right media pit, carefully tip-toeing around Chappell fans who firmly planted their spot early in the day. My shoulders cut through the crowd with precision to finally reach the media holding area. That’s when I came face-to-face with Chappell fans who waited nearly 10 hours in the sun to be close to her set.
“We’ve been here since 10 a.m.!” yelled Cat Cox. “From south-central Kentucky!”
Izzy Blanks, only 16 years old, drove eight hours to Kentuckiana Pride to see Chappell Roan specifically, her face powdered to perfectly mimic Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess album cover.
“I came from Charlotte, North Carolina,” Blanks said.
I remarked that a lot of people were saying they’ve traveled in from the southern and Appalachian states. Her eyes lit up in agreement.
“She reinvents the way a lot of southerners think of queer people,” she said. “There’s so many people that I know who are straight who I wouldn’t clock as supportive, but then I’ll see them listening to her music. It’s amazing.”
Tess Taboor and Savannah Romblin drove six hours from West Virginia to make Chappell’s set.
“She involves a community in ways other artists don’t,” Taboor said. “We don’t get that with anyone else.”
“I think that she is bringing up that drag is for everyone,” Romblin added. “She brings it to southern communities. We get to be like, yes, we want this here.”
But 26-year-old Chappell Roan, aka Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, first had to leave her own midwestern hometown to connect with the community she's cultivating today. She was born and raised in a Willard, Missouri trailer park with a conservative Christian upbringing. Kenton Hallinan, a Louisville local, said he gets it.
Kentuckiana Pride 2024 was Hallinan’s very first pride festival experience, even though he’s been publicly out as gay for seven years. He said Louisville has always been one of the safer cities for LGBTQ+ people, but it doesn’t always feel that way.
“The thing about Louisville is, it’s gay. It’s definitely a more accepting, open place. But because of the fact we live in Kentucky, it’s hard sometimes to realize that. We’re in the bible belt,” he said. “You go into eastern Kentucky, to the hills, Appalachia, they have some of the largest Pride fests in the country that people don’t know about. There’s still that community there and it can’t be stamped out, it’s almost impossible at this point, though people are trying. There’s always going to be that tug of war between being in a state that hates you but there’s still a community that’s there for you.”
Here comes the “fucking queen”
The Aces, an alternative pop band made up almost entirely of lesbians, filled in last-minute to open for Chappell Roan. They told the crowd they’d never give up an opportunity to “open for the the fucking queen.”
Crowds chanting “Chappell! Chappell!” roared in anticipation from the lawn to the overhead pedestrian bridge packed with festivalgoers.
Media pass and flimsy iPhone in hand, my chest grazed the stage as I stood as close as anyone could to Chappell Roan. And I was perhaps truly starstruck for the first time in my life.
Chappell Roan floats on stage in drag, which everyone expected, but her persona was the surprise delight of the night. She was paying tribute to the late drag icon Divine — specifically her look from the John Waters cult classic Pink Flamingos. Her eyebrows arched skyward like her signature red hair, her blue shadow making her both cartoonish and intensely life-like. There’s no uncanny valley here – she’s a real person, and she’s looking right at me.
“Hit it like rom-pom-pom-pom; Get it hot like Papa John…” she sang with her eyes lowered, looking dead into my shitty phone’s lens. My face switched to bright red faster than a toggling Bumble setting.
The rest is a blur.
After a quick costume change into a cheetah print onesie and go-go boots, Chappell Roan performed sapphic pop anthems off The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, with some songs giving an almost punk-rock fervor in the live setting.
Her popular song “My Kink is Karma” had the crowd bloodthirsty as Eliza Petrosyan laid into the chords with the song’s cutting vengeance.
Songs with monologue-esque breaks like “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” highlight Chappell’s ability to truly own the stage as a drag queen.
“And so I take him to this bar, this man wouldn't dance/He didn't ask a single question/And he was wearing these fugly jeans!” the crowd roared along with Roan, who pranced across the stage like a cat playing with her prey.
Even her more subdued, croony ballads like “Picture You” run deep with symbolic layers that come to life within the art of drag.
Surrounded by silver lights cutting through fog, she sings to a wig on top of a mic stand, holding it tenderly, stroking the wig longingly – her tender vocals sucking you into the song’s painful subtlety.
“Every night/Both lips on the mirror/It's ritualistic, counting lipstick/Stains where you should be” she sings like she’s writing the song in real time to the familiar figure.
Closing out the night with “Pink Pony Club” felt like the perfect message to the thousands of fans who drove from far off, often hostile red states.
“I'm having wicked dreams of leaving Tennessee/Hear Santa Monica, I swear it's calling me/Won't make my mama proud, it's gonna cause a scene/She sees her baby girl, I know she's gonna scream/ God, what have you done?”
The crowd belts along, louder than any other sing-a-long from her hour set.
The dance-and-everything-will-be-ok anthem radiates from the Kentucky lawn. “Pink Pony Club” just might be this generation's “Dancing Queen.” The track sparkles with an intense love of living in a single moment on a dance floor or stage, with traces of melancholy woven through reminding the listener that real life awaits.
But it doesn't matter.
Because on June 15, kids from their own versions of a Willard trailer park found themselves dancing in complete community with others just like them -- accents, camo, sparkles, snapping fans -- all dancing with other queer kids who've walked a similar path. And Chappell is leading the way.
But it doesn't matter.
Because on June 15, kids from their own versions of a Willard trailer park found themselves dancing in complete community with others just like them -- accents, camo, sparkles, snapping fans -- all dancing with other queer kids who've walked a similar path. And Chappell is leading the way.
