Drake Jensen to perform at Talo in Glace Bay.
Country singer to raise money for community project
As much as he loves his birthplace, Glace Bay’s Drake Jensen remembers a time when it was difficult for him to live there.
“It was tough growing up in a small town,” Jensen, 47, said in a telephone interview earlier this month from his present home in Ottawa, where he lives with his husband Michael Morin, who’s also his personal manager.
“When I left there, I wasn’t in great shape.”
On Dec. 29 and Dec. 30, Jensen will perform at Glace Bay’s Talo Cafebar in a fundraiser for #BayItForward and the launch of the #GlaceBay community fund. The money raised will go towards a new bandshell for the community. Tickets are $20 and will be available at Talo. The opening acts start at 7 p.m.
Jensen endured years of severe childhood abuse and bullying, memories that have inspired him to support causes that work towards eliminating bullying. But even that has adversely affected his career.
“We created a music video with a very LGBTQ content and it garnered a fair amount of attention in the U.S.,” says Jensen. “We got radio attention, we got major bloggers on it and that’s what got me on the map. So what happened was that the country music world completely turned their back on me and didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”
But Jensen kept working on his music, receiving support from the very people who helped him out at first.
“The LGBTQ community kind of revere me as a hero.”
Jensen came out in 2012 and is considered to be the first openly gay Canadian
country music performer. Being different hasn’t stopped him from performing, but it has made getting himself established more challenging.
“I got to Ottawa and I met my husband and we opened the company, started a team of support around us and basically got my career off the ground,” he says. “Music is very expensive to do it at the level that we do it, it takes an incredible amount of money and it took me a long time to find
the team that were charitable enough to help me to be able to take $100,000 to do what we do.
“The music industry is not a kind industry so it’s taken a long time.”
He started recording in 2001, and pursued a country music career full time from around 2007, which means he’s been competing in a field that’s becoming more and more youth-oriented. But he’s proud of his age and up for the challenges.
He says his music is starting to receive worldwide recognition, even if it’s been largely ignored in his home country. He’s just been written up in the new book, “David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music” by Darryl W. Bullock and his music is doing really well in Australia.