Live singer Ivy, center, won the Season 5 finals of Kennedy Davenport’s All-Around Talent Competition at Marty’s Live at the end of November. Also pictured are, from left, Manager/DJ Jesse Rose Jr., first runner-up Ace, Kennedy Davenport and Marty’s Live General Manager Mikey Howard.

Drag star Kennedy Davenport, Marty’s Live! team up for All-Around Talent Competition

TAMMYE NASH | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com

It was November 2020; the first couple of waves in the COVID-19 pandemic were starting to wane, and the Delta variant had yet to begin its surge.

And Dallas drag icon Kennedy Davenport was looking for something to keep her occupied.

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Season 6 Finals
The Season 6 Finals of Kennedy Davenport’s All-Around Talent Competition will be held Tuesday, Feb. 15, at 10 p.m. at Marty’s Live, 4207 Maple Ave. Special guest Helen Holy will join Kennedy Davenport to share hosting duties.

Weekly prelims for Season 7 start the following Tuesday, Feb. 22. Sign up for competitors begins at 9 p.m. and cuts off at 10 p.m. Pre-registration is not necessary; Kennedy says, “Just show up and sign up, but be sure to sign up before 10 p.m.”

Anyone with questions can contact Kennedy via her social media pages. “I am easy to reach and easy to talk to,” she said. “Just hit me up on any of my social media platforms: KennedyDDofTx on Twitter and Instagram and Kennedy Davenport on Facebook.”

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“We didn’t have anything really going on at [her home bar, Marty’s Live!] and I needed something to do. But not just anything; I wanted to do something different,” Kennedy said this week. “I realized that we are really lacking in platforms for people to have the opportunity to display their talents, and we decided to do something about that.”

And thus was born Kennedy Davenport’s All-Around Talent Competition, a weekly contest held each Tuesday night at Marty’s, located at 4207 Maple Ave. Each “season” of the competition consists of 10 weeks of preliminary shows. Each preliminary winner receives $300 on the night that they win. Then they are invited back to perform as a guest entertainer for the next week’s prelim; when they return the next week, they receive another $100.

Then, at the end of the 10 weeks, all the preliminary winners are invited back to compete in the finals. The finals winner receives a $1,000 cash prize, and first runner-up takes home $500.

“The whole objective is to give people a chance to display their talent,” Kennedy said. “Whether you are a newcomer or a veteran performer, I wanted to create a safe space for you to feel comfortable performing, a place where people can get their start.”

While this is a safe space for performers, even those just starting out, that doesn’t mean it’s not a competition. Kennedy — a veteran pageant queen with a long list of titles on her resumé — has created a set of specific categories and elements by which contestants are judged. Audience applause is a scored category, but there are two standing judges plus a special guest judge each week who score the contestants in other categories. The guest judge, she said, is often one of the special guest entertainers performing that night, or sometimes “I find someone in the community who is well known and who people know is qualified to be a judge and will do a good job.”

Still, Kennedy stressed, this is a contest for everyone. “Yes, there are criteria, and, yes, there is a basic outline that the judges work from. But it’s not so strict. I am not in the business of pushing people away who want to perform. The judges are there to help the contests; they are there to judge, yes, but also to give constructive criticism and feedback that will help the contestants improve.

“The judges are there to help groom the contestants so they can get better,” she added. “Even us veterans need a little grooming every now and then.”

In the finals, Kennedy said, she adds two judges (to make five total) and she adds a category: creative presentation and self-expression.

“The idea is that we let them come out and be their authentic selves, present themselves to us so that we get to know them. Then we take a break and come back for the talent part,” she said.

“This competition is different from anything you will see anywhere else,” Kennedy continued. “You know, I have traveled a lot, especially since Drag Race — I have been all over the state, all over the U.S., even around the world — and I can tell you, nobody else is giving away this much money on a regular basis like this.

“But we aren’t just giving it away!” she declared. “They work for this money! These performers go above and beyond to win.”

The fact that Kennedy Davenport is a drag super star — having placed fourth in Season 7 of RuPaul’s Drag Race and second on Drag Race All-Stars 3, having performed all around the world and having captured numerous pageant titles — might lead one to think that this contest is strictly from drag entertainers. But the name alone — All-Around Talent — dispels that idea.

“This is a great competition for all kinds of performers,” Kennedy said. “Me being a drag queen myself, you know I have nothing against drag at all. But we welcome all kinds of performers.

“Last night [Feb. 8, the final prelim in Season 6], we actually had a spoken word performer win. That was a first for us, as far as a winner. The Season 5 finals singer was a live singer,” she continued. “Yes, we do have drag performers. But we also have male entertainers [who lip-sync]; we have strippers, live singers, poetry reader — as long as you’re looking good and looking the part, come on and bring your talent, baby! We don’t discriminate!”

For Kennedy, Marty’s Live is more than just a performance venue. Marty’s Manager Mikey Howard says the club is “very proud to be able to call itself ‘The Home of Kennedy Davenport.’” And Kennedy is just as proud to be able to call Marty’s Live! her home bar.

“When I moved back to Dallas from Florida in 2011, it was a real struggle finding a home bar. At first, I found that at The Brick; that’s where I got my start. But when the Brick closed, I just followed Mikey here to Marty’s.

“They have always welcomed me here; Lonzie [Hershner, the owner] told me I am always welcome here. And then Miss Wanda let it be known that this was my home bar, and, well, that was just that.”

As much as she loves being home — in Dallas and at Marty’s — being a drag star means Kennedy doesn’t get to just sit back and rest on her laurels.

Although the last nearly two years of pandemic have “really slowed my major bookings down,” Kennedy said, things are starting to get busy again.
“I just picked up a tour in the U.K., 27-city performance tour called “Snow White and the 7 Drag Queens. So, I leave March 28 and will be gone for six weeks,” she said.

But the All-Around Talent Competition will continued, she assured. “I am a perfectionist; I guess that is the Virgo in me,” she said. “I already have hosts lined up for the time I will be gone, and I am working on setting up three standing judges who will be here each week while I am gone.”

But Kennedy also wants people to know that there is more to Marty’s than just the talent contests on Tuesdays. “I want our community to know we have things going on each and every night at Marty’s, and all people are welcome here. And when it comes to Tuesday nights, all talents are welcome. You need to come on down, because you just never know what kind of talent is gonna walk through that door, baby!”