Queen of Halloween
Denver “Drag Race” champ Yvie Oddly is relishing her spooky homecoming
Yvie Oddly has spent the last year and a half touring nonstop — and that includes since mid- March, when the coronavirus pandemic fully arrived in the U. S.
That’s pretty typical for a drag queen with a national following, but there’s been nothing typical about 2020. Having won the 11th season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” last year, Denver- based Oddly has made countless stops at clubs and LGBTQ Pride celebrations in addition to theaters as part of the international “Werq the World” tour.
Unlike many artists, however, she stayed busy this summer with Voss Events’ soldout “Drive- and- Drag USA” tour, which brought nationalquality drag queens and “Drag
Race” vets to cities across the U. S.
Now Oddly is returning to Denver as part of the “DriveandDrag: Halloween” tour, which runs Oct. 23- 25 in the parking lot at Park Meadows Mall.
The show features jumbo LED screens, a “concert- quali
ty” light show and food trucks, potentially turning the parking lot into a makeshift festival of its own. Thematically, it opens with Asia O’Hara leading “a seance to summon the souls of ‘ RuPaul’s Drag Race’ favorites Oddly, Aquaria, Kameron Michaels, Kim Chi, Vanessa Vanjie and Violet Chachki, who all have died from obscure causes: food poisoning, burned at the stake, spider bite ... .”
The tour, which started Oct. 9 in Philadelphia, runs through Oct. 31 in New York City and includes Denver as its second- tolast stop. We talked with the 27year- old Oddly via phone this week about that, her new album, “Drag Trap” ( also releasing Oct. 23), and what it means to come back to Denver after conquering the world.
Q : When you signed onto “Drive- and- Drag USA,” did you know there would be a Halloween version?
A: I hadn’t heard about it until they pitched the idea during the summer tour. I told them if they needed a spooky queen, I’m their girl! Halloween is the day half of us were born.
Q : Your aesthetic is rooted, in part, in shocking, outsider and homemade looks that inject an element of art- damaged surrealism to drag. Does that lend itself well to Halloween looks?
A: If we’re going to boil ourselves down to trite inspirations, then yes, a lot of my visual inspirations have always been villains: Disney villains, supervillains. Character- wise, they’re more colorful and interesting. There’s always been something fun about tapping into that taboo, because it’s a naturally human experience.
Villains shine during Halloween — especially if you’re not a terrible person in real life.
Q : That seems to be part of why the LGBTQ community has always embraced Halloween: the culturally approved transgression.
A: We all want to be exactly what we’re not. That’s a very strangely human quality, to always desire the opposite of what we are or what we have. For me, because I spent so much of my life and time being a goody twoshoes who tries to play by the rules, drag was the first time really tapping into what I love about being queer, which is making your own rules and trying to do good by people.
Q : How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your work and art?
A: I have a biased, unique perspective on this because I’ve been touring and working nonstop to the point where I think it was affecting my artistry in a negative way. I wasn’t able to put in as much as I wanted. Being forced to be creative and do things from a socially distant standpoint has honestly helped me fall back in love with all of the things people loved about me in the first place. And it’s been a minute! Plus, drag is the art of transformation, so it is in your blood to transform with the times.
Q : The theme for “Drag- andDrive: Halloween” — of queens dying horribly from obscure causes — seems right up your alley, too.
A: I’m a storytelling queen, mama, so the fact that I get to have a storytelling performance is one of my favorite aspects! There’s always a method to my madness, even if it’s kind of off. I am actually here in Denver now, setting up for some pretty big
Halloween indoor festivities, which I can’t quite talk about, and I’ve got to get ready for my album release on Friday. I want to go hard for my home city. I was informed the last day of the summer tour that Denver was on the list for Halloween, so I’ve been squealing about the timing since Day One. I feel like prom queen!