Drag Racer and native Texan Tammie Brown goes unplugged at the Texas Veggie Fair
ANIMAL LOVER | Earth-mother and orca defender Tammie Brown will entertain at the 5th annual Texas Veggie Fair, which returns to the gayborhood’s Reverchon Park this Sunday. (Photography courtesy MissMissyPhotography.net)
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com
With his dreamy, porcelain look, shock of twisted henna hair and earth-mother aesthetic, you might peg Tammie Brown — who shot to fame on the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race — as a Bay Area hippie chick. And you’d be sort of right. But not the San Francisco Bay … instead, Texas’ Aransas Bay is where Brown calls home.
“I love Texas!” he says. “I wish it didn’t have such a bad rap because of the politics. I’ve lived in the Valley, in Bayview. I’ve been to Bandera — the cowboy capital — and went to Houston and San Antonio a lot as a kid. We never really cruised on up to Dallas but I am a huge Texas buff.”
Brown was born Keith Glen Schubert in Corpus Christi, but grew up in the nearby Rockport-Fulton area. Like many gay kids from small towns who end up doing drag, Brown moved to “the big city” — in his case, Los Angeles — and has traveled the world as an entertainer. But unlike most of those same folks, Brown has only affection for his hometown.
“It’s a cool community — I really do appreciate it. My mom and my sister are there, and one of my dear friends, who was really supportive of me doing drag back when I was still in high school, is still there,” he says by phone from his home in L.A. “My plan is to move back there within the next six years. I would love to open a roadhouse restaurant along Highway 35 and just be a philanthropist, preserving the oak trees and the whooping cranes. Have you ever been there? It’s very beautiful.”
As his passions might suggest, Brown’s fondness for the three Big Fs — flora, fauna and food — made him a natural to be sought out to entertain at the fifth annual Texas Veggie Fair, which returns to Reverchon Park on Sunday.
“I’m a foodie — I love food, and I love to cook,” Brown says. “My roadhouse would serve country food and recipes I’ve accumulated from my travels around the world.”
His own style he describes as “homemade Southern and soul — which are practically the same; both are fried and there are greens and lots of pies. Then there’s also Mexican, because I lived in Mexico for six years, as well as a lot of Asian-European influences.”
Brown’s favorite dish to make? “Camarones a la diavolo,” he says. “Every area of Mexico has a version of it, but my favorite is from Nayarit. It’s like a cocktail sauce with garlic and butter.”
Hmmm … wait a second. Shrimp? Though Brown is not a vegan himself — or even a vegetarian — he respects and works toward better treatment of the planet, from the trees to the cranes to the mammals of the ocean.
“I do like meat, as long as it’s humane, but I think I was asked to be part of the Veggie Fair because of my work bringing awareness of the planet, especially the orcas — these sentient beings in captivity,” he says.
Even carnivores are welcome at the Veggie Fair, as long as they are willing to put flesh aside for the day to experience the meatless options served at the many food trucks on hand, learn about animal welfare/rescue groups and access cruelty-free consumer products from soaps to clothing at the numerous booths. Last year, the event attracted 7,000 and organizer Jamey Scott expects that many or more this year as well.
Brown’s hippie, self-possessed attitude was one of the traits that distinguished his time on RuPaul’s Drag Race. He famously went home by refusing to “lip sync for his life” during one episode’s finale.
“You’ve just got to stand by who you are,” he says with no regrets. “I don’t need to be in a big city — I can perform in the bushes if I want. My job is not to conform to someone else’s life. Yes, you have to provide a living for yourself, but what’s the point of selling out? Do you now know who you are? I do have big dreams and I have been accomplishing them [on my own terms]. Shock value is not going to last — what’s next? Are they gonna cut themselves with a can? Talent is what lasts.”
Brown is one of those increasingly rare queens who actually doesn’t have to lip sync, but can sing on his own. His first album, Popcorn, came out in 2009, and a second, Hot Skunks, is on deck.
“At the fair, I’ll be performing my live concert, with my accompanist Michael. It’ll be mostly acoustic with me singing and Michael on guitar.”
If an unplugged Tammie Brown is less glamorous than you’ve come to expect from a drag queen, well, she’ll take that.
“I’m not afraid to try new things,” she says, “but mostly I play it so straight that you could put me in the middle of the Republican National Convention and they’d never know. I find that more fun!”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 17, 2014.
