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With Pride Month coming up in June, Livermore’s Bankhead Theater will kick off the celebrations on May 31 with an explosive performance by the Pride Anthems, a New York-based music collective who will play cover songs from the ’60s to today that represent significant moments in LGBTQIA+ history.
Pride Anthems musical director Brian J. Nash said that the group will be taking the audience on the musical journey not only to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots, which were one of the first monumental steps in the modern LGBTQIA+ fight for freedom, but also to celebrate what gay pride means today and how far the community has come since Stonewall.
“We’re really just excited to get out there and bring this music to people,” Nash told the Weekly. “It’s a really fun time.”
He also said that with the Livermore show being on May 31, and the fact that it will be the first stop of the group’s countrywide tour, it’s going to be the best way to get Pride Month started.
“We are going to be amped,” Nash said. “We’re very very excited to get out there.”
This is the second time ever that Pride Anthems will be touring the country to perform its show, but this will also be their first time coming to the West Coast after last year’s tour mainly kept them in the Eastern time zone.
The show consists of off-Broadway performer Kevin Smith Kirkwood, award-winning cabaret artist Amy Jo Jackson and Grammy-nominated recording artist and actor Marty Thomas, who are all queer artists who will be accompanied by an all-queer live band.
The three singers will be going through significant moments throughout the decades starting from the late-1960s to the present where artists like Donna Summer, Queen, George Michael, Madonna and Lady Gaga all made significant contributions to LGBTQIA+ history.
Nash said during the set the singers will be breaking down the context of songs like Summer’s hit song “I’m Coming Out” to when Freddie Mercury sang Queen’s song “I Want to Break Free” and what that meant for gay culture at that time because Nash said the story for LGBTQIA+ equality was directly linked to that music because those artists were going through the same struggles.
“Knowing that makes the lyrics for Queen’s ‘I Want to Break Free’ … you hear what Freddie wanted to say, but wasn’t necessarily brave enough to say just in terms of his own life, that he wrote it in his lyrics,” Nash said.
Along with the kick-off of Pride Month, June is also a month for other celebrations such as Juneteenth, which is the U.S. holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
The Bankhead will be hosting its third annual Juneteenth Celebration event on June 15 at the Bankhead Plaza, but it will start the celebration the day after the Pride Anthems show on June 1 with another free musical performance by local radio personality and comedian Faith Alpher.
She will be performing “More Than A Song”, which is an afternoon of uplifting songs that are accompanied by inspiring stories behind the songs.
Alpher, who has been performing at the Bankhead since 2009, told the Weekly it will be her last performance at the theater for a long time because she is working on a book and plans to go on tour next year, which is why she hopes people come out to the June 1 show so that they can learn more about Black and African American history through music.
“People throw around ‘the struggle is real’ — well it is,” Alpher said. “That’s why I believe these programs are so important. Maybe there is a person struggling in finding themselves, finding community. I believe you can come to one of these programs and you can find community.”
At the end of the month, the theater will finally be hosting the return of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir for a performance on June 21 that the Livermore Valley Arts says will be a “soaring performance that will both entertain and enliven.”
For reservation and ticket information, visit www.livermorearts.org.
