FRUITSLICE PROUDLY PRESENTS...
SOUTHERN
PHOTO BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
EDITORIAL STAFF
STAFF
LAYOUT DESIGN
CONTRIBUTORS
STARLY LOU RIGGS
CAM REID
CASPER ORR
HAILEY GREEN
MICHAEL BEDNAR
MELANIE ZHGENTI
ANN MCCANN
BELLAMY BODIFORD
CASPER ORR
DOVE STONE
HAILEY GREEN
HARPER KING
LEO FAZIO
MICHAEL BEDNAR
STARLY LOU RIGGS
letter from the editor
I’m coming to you now from my kitchen in the small city of Juíz de Fora, Brazil. The windows are always open and I can hear our neighbor’s parrot next door who greets me every morning, repeating the name “Laura! Laura!”—which is a comfort, being the name of my friend and bandmate back in Portland. It’s been an interesting road getting here, to this exact house—which doubles as a studio called Canil—but the long and short of it is that I’m here, finally writing and producing my first solo album.
I was conceived in Olympia, Washington—the home of Riot Grrrl and a hotbed for punk and grunge once upon a time (maybe it still is? send me your music) but I don’t remember that. By the time I was born, my parents had already moved to another iconic location—born a Queer little alien in Roswell, later relocating to evangelical Ohio (oops). Regardless, there’s something about this loose connection to Olympia that has always left me wondering: could I have found heavy music sooner?
I did grow up around music. My grandma was a professional operasinger-slash-music-teacher, and my
mother a casual choir-singer-slashmusical-theater-performer. When I was 5, she put me in piano lessons, which I got bored with, barely practicing. This wasn’t it. Not my vibe. I wanted to rage, to scream and roll around. I wanted to slam on a guitar and get in people’s faces. I started to subtly identify music by the gendered boxes society was slotting it into. There was the type of music I was supposed to like, and the type of music that really spoke to me. Thus, I began recognizing that maybe binary gender wasn’t my vibe either.
My dad discovered Sleater-Kinney’s second album, Call the Doctor (1996), in the late ‘90s, and tiny me would beg to hear it, thrashing all around the house. I started by singing, “They want to socialize you / They want to purify
you” like a little heathen, culminating in shouting the chorus “CALL THE DOCTOR! CALL THE DOCTOR!” at the top of my lungs. I felt an urge to create music, but was unsure how to do it. That is, until high school when I discovered The Dresden Dolls. They were weird, a “punk cabaret” outfit made up of just piano and drums. It was heavy hitting and theatrical, and with my early introduction to piano lessons, I became obsessed. I learned all the Dresden Dolls songs when I was 16, shredding on the piano, yelling, and smashing any set of keys I could find. This was a pivotal moment, opening the door to live music and learning to play bass in my first band in college when I turned 20. I was finally putting myself out there as a musician. Was this it? Was this punk? Was I doing it?
I could tell you my whole musical journey, but really, this is the crux of it. There are kids with access to instruments or scenes earlier in life, and there are people who find this stuff later on. There are those who are made of music and need to play everyday, and there are people who just enjoy listening. At the heart of all of it is the community. Whether you play music, hear it, read about it, or simply rock out singing songs with your friends, music is a uniting force. Punk is what drives me, and for you it might be pop, country, soul, jazz, or any other vast genre or label-defying sound.
Noise Made By is here for all of you. It is built in homage to music zines before, from Riot Grrrl to Anti-Matter. It is here as a Queer archive, in addition to Fruitslice. It is here to uplift Queer musicians, music photographers, and other music community spaces—to uplift you!
Thank you for being here.
xoxo Starly
If you have stories you want to share about your musical journey, questions, or are looking for additional Queer music resources, you can reach out at noisemadeby@thefruitslice.com
PHOTO BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
WRITTEN BY DOVE STONE
WRITTEN BY HAILEY GREEN
IT IS WORTH IT TO BE DIFFICULT
The story of Lizzie No’s Journey in the Music Industry on their OWN terms
W.ith nearly a decade in the industry, Lizzie No (she/ they) is no stranger to the hills and valleys of this line of work.
As a Black Queer artist in the business of making music (part Americana, part blues, part folk and country, a dash or 2 of jazz and hardcore, combined with a sound all her own) they clawed their way onto the music scene with a harp and guitar and haven’t looked back.
Lizzie’s debut album, Hard Won (2017), was described by Billboard Magazine as “simultaneously understated and fervent.” It is about work. It is about political struggle, and the personal strife, and the active interpersonal issues Lizzie was going through as an
artist trying to put her first collection of music out into the world. “Was I fighting a man? Myself? My dad? My boss? A Lover? An angel? God?” Lizzie wasn’t sure. But what they are sure about is that a fight occurred, and it was worth it. “It is worth it to be difficult. That is what Lizzie No is about. I don’t have to explain why. I don’t have to explain myself, I am here to make art.”
Immediately following the release of Hard Won to critical acclaim, Lizzie released the single “Sundown,” a track about her family’s migration, reverse migration, and the execution of Black people by the state.
PHOTO BY COLE NIELSEN
TRIGGER WARNINGS: abuse, assault, mental health crisis & suicidal ideation.
Lizzie’s grandparents left the Carolinas after World War II. Lizzie calls theirs “a love story of that generation.” Her grandfather walked into a Baptist Church in New York and saw her grandmother sitting with the choir. For him, it was love at first sight. He invited her on a date to Coney Island and before long they were married and buying a house in Flatbush. Many years later, and after the death of Lizzie’s grandfather, her grandma has since returned to the Carolinas. “Sundown” captures the essence of that journey.
“Black people were sold a lie that going north was going to save them,” Lizzie says. “Choosing to work in the country music space is a reverse migration in and of itself. Black people created this genre (roots/folk/country music) and got kicked out. And guess what, bitch? I’m back. And I’m better than all of you. Black women are all that is interesting about country music. We are back to reclaim it. It isn’t about getting nominated for awards or how many of us get to play at the Opry. We are in a time where Black women have bitch slapped everyone that played the banjo.” At the time of release, the proceeds from the single were donated to Black Lives Matter.
With her second album, Vanity (2019), Lizzie takes us on a journey of “bitchy reckless fun,” writing about what it’s like to live as a struggling artist in Brooklyn. But we also see a human on the edge of a mental health crisis, especially in the latter half of the album. On the first track, “Narcissus,” Lizzie gives the listener insight into their struggles with their gender identity. “I was walking
every day to work at my nannying job, in the snow, wearing a huge carhartt jacket some ex-boyfriend‘s brother had left me. The lyrics: ‘As a great pretender/ In GROWNUPS clothing’ was originally ‘As a great pretender/ In BOYS clothing.’”
“I have always had a sense I wasn’t a real girl since I was very little–I was not ready to accept that feeling at the time, so it was easier to admit that I didn’t feel like a real adult.”
In her most recent album Halfsies (2024) we see the mental health crisis foreshadowed in Vanity, come to light. This album, a sequel to Hard Won, details the time surrounding Lizzie’s diagnosis of major depressive disorder.
“I moved to New York and realized I was just another Black woman. This album is about that. About getting blackout drunk the night before your boyfriend’s grandma’s funeral and not being able to be there for the person
PHOTO BY BARTEES STRANGE
you love because you are in so much pain. About engaging in the worst most self-destructive behavior imaginable.”
During the writing of Halfsies, Lizzie describes viewing her body as a “battleground.” The album, though she was unaware at the time, shows the process of Lizzie coming to terms with events of assault, abuse, and suicidal ideation. The struggles they were experiencing are really presented at the forefront in songs like “Annie Oakley” and “Babylon.”
If her stunning vocals, deeply introspective songwriting, and refusal to be defined by the construct of “genre” wasn’t enough to have you clamoring for a seat on the Lizzie No train, then her political activism within the space of reproductive justice should seal the deal. At the time of our digital chat for this article, Lizzie was enjoying a rare day off while on tour, sitting on a couch in her AirBNB in Chicago, sporting a t-shirt that read “Abortion Forever No Matter What.”
In 2019, Lizzie began their partnership with Abortion Care Tennessee, allowing them to table at her set during Americana Fest—a music festival spotlighting Americana music artists held yearly in Nashville, Tennessee. “There is so much of being a singer that feels so taxing. You have to participate in the deepest corners of capitalism. But you do it because you were a little kid that liked to sing in the bath and you heard the ancient echoes. You are a part of something. Listen.”
By making the choice to align her music with the fight for access to abortions for all who need them, Lizzie sees a way to
crawl out of the capitalist corner of the music industry and fight for something larger than themself. Since then, Lizzie has gone on to become a board member of the organization and is in an ongoing quest to “radicalize” her merch table with what they call a “Liberation Station.” There, they offer Plan B pills; QR codes that help people access abortion pills by mail, donate to both Abortion Care Tennessee, and the Mountain Access Brigade; and further reproductive justice resources in both Spanish and English. “I was in a relationship around the time of writing my song ‘Babylon.’ We had plenty of problems. I had just had a severe mental health episode. We had a very sweet love, but we had an argument once. At the time, I thought I wanted to have children. He said, ‘How can you give birth in this country? This country doesn’t give a fuck about you. Black women go into the hospital and die.’ And I wanted to ask him, ‘Are you ready to fucking fight? Because I am ready to fight.’ If you think the reason that I have hope is because I don’t know what is going on, you are wrong. That’s on Black women. That’s on Queer women. We know what we are up against.
We know what it is to be victims of violence and survive that shit. I felt like I needed a deeper connection to my leftist values and where I could be useful. And that is where my connection to Abortion Care Tennessee first came to be. The more I learned about the reproductive justice movement, it became clear that this was the largest, most exciting embodiment of Black feminism ethics and theory. Reproductive justice is about the right to thrive intergenerationally.” Lizzie views abortion access funds as part of the “landscape of revolution,” a way of “building power,” and being able to say, “Yes the laws are fucked up, but we’ve got you.”
BY
Lizzie No is a Black Queer Nonbinary musician & artist based in Nashville, Tennessee.
She is currently on tour with Iron & Wine, supporting them across the UK through the end of 2024. You can read more about her and their music at www.lizzieno.com or at @lizzie.no on instagram.
PHOTO
COLE NIELSON
WRITTEN BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
STEP INTO MY LABS:
CALLIE DAY’S TINKER LAB OFFERS
A PLACE TO PLAY IN
PORTLAND
PHOTOS BY JP BOGAN
Poortland, Oregon is a haven for musicians. The community shows up and thrives on sound, from DIY music spaces and festivals to venues with audiences of local diehard fans. If you spend enough time there, you might even spot the Rigsketball van, a colorful ride with a hoop rigged to the back, painted and re-painted regularly by local artists, serving as a mobile event spot for local bands to play basketball tournaments. While the city is truly a hotbed of creativity, there are still obstacles that many people face trying to get into the music scene, one being: studio accessibility.
I met music engineer Callie Day a few years ago through my bandmate Laura Hopkins, who was working alongside her as a producer. Soon after, I ran into Callie on set as she sported a sound-op rig. Needless to say, Callie works the spectrum of sound. When I heard about a new project she was putting on at Singing Sands Studio called Tinker Labs, I was curious to hear more.
“Around October [of 2023], I was like, ‘I wanna make something that’s going to bring people to me. [People who] are interested in the same stuff,’” Callie told me in a chat one afternoon. “It needed to be something creative, because that’s how I operate. The way that I make music is very weird. I’m not much of a musician, I’m more just a creative who wants to express myself.
So I wanted to see if there were other people who were down to be creative in my weird way.” And thus, Tinker Labs was born.
It began as a community project. The idea was to host musicians and offer them time in the studio for free. Callie would give them a prompt—“Body” or “Going Backwards,” for example—and the band would write, rehearse, and record a song right then and there based on that prompt. Callie produced and engineered everything, working with the bands over the course of 5 hours in the studio, helping them actualize their vision. Funded by RACC (a local artist grants council), and hosted at Singing Sands Studio, the bands wouldn’t pay for studio time. This allowed her to bring in musicians who had never been able to record in a studio before.
And people were interested. Originally, Callie planned to post fliers around the city, but an instagram post alone was enough to garner 62 applications for the project. Sifting through people’s responses, it was clear that the work she was doing would be valuable in the community space, and it became tricky to pick who would participate. “I wanted to get a variety of genres. I wanted to get people who had experience recording and I wanted to get people who were new at being in the studio. I just wanted to get diversity all around.” This is exactly what Callie got. She landed on 16 artists to work
with—including local acts like Wing Vilma, Kill Michael, Saroon, and Rosy Boa—people of all genders, ages, and backgrounds. Access to recording in a professional music studio can be extraordinarily costly and doesn’t leave much room for mistakes. This type of community venture could be a big deal for musicians who want to explore openly and feel confident in making sounds.
“My advice is to let go of perfectionism. That will hold you back forever,” Laura, who recorded a track for Tinker Labs under their musical moniker Terrehaunt, advised me. Laura has been one of my greatest musical inspirations and is an active advocate for many voices in the Portland scene. For Queer and fem-socialized people, navigating a scene that is historically cis-het male dominant can be hard.
It’s crucial to recognize our own personal worth. “To create is to meet yourself where you are at, and the more you do it, the more you learn,” Laura added. “There is no ultimate end goal, approaching everything with curiosity to learn more.” This feeling of searching for “perfection” can be daunting, usually hindering creation. But it’s important to keep going: play however you can, play at all costs, play where people tell you not to play, just play.
In this way, the name “Tinker Labs” is very fitting. It’s imperative to learn through experimentation, yet so often LGBTQ+ people and women are left out of or erased from musical spaces, questioned on their abilities, and given little room to “tinker around.” Callie expressed this to me in her experience being a female audio engineer: “If you
ask a question, people are going to think you don’t know what you’re talking about. But, sometimes you ask a question to yourself or you ask a question because you want to see all the different angles. That’s how engineer minds work! Female or not, anyone who wants to create something, you have to look at it from different angles. I own it. I own how I vocalize and how I process.” Gender be damned, we all deserve to take up space in our sound.
And in a way, Callie is queering the world of engineering, showing up for community, and exploring spaces that can be very difficult to navigate outside the cis-het male lens. “It’s important to me to give more access when I can, because I know the barriers that exist, and I know that there’s bogus barriers. I really try to make that space. I know that other people are coming in with those presumptions, and they’ve been gatekept for a while.”
And it’s true. A lot of the music world is gatekept, be it because of race, gender, or class. These barriers were built, but they can also be torn down. “Have the courage to show up like a mediocre white man. Know that you are allowed to be in these spaces,” Laura tells me. “It’s your duty to show up and share yourself with the world so others that look like you can see that they can do it, too.”
You can listen to or download the 16 Tinker Labs tracks here:
www.callieday.com/tinkerlabs
Featured bands:
• Rosy Boa
• Murida
• Erika Callahan and Lisa Haagen
• Carrie Smith
• Terrehaunt
• Saroon
• Johanna Kunin
• Wing Vilma
• James Sissler, Ben Cleek, Japhy Riddle
• Ashless
• Jewelry Exchange
• Tevis Hodge Jr. with Steve
• Shield Toad
• Kill Michael
• Luna Negra
Special thanks to Nate Snell, creator of Singing Sands Studio who also supports the local Portland music community. The goal of Singing Sands is to offer quality studio space, engineering, production, and mixing services with a focus on accessibility. The studio gives access to audio instruments and equipment with sliding scale rates.
FLUIZ
INTERVIEW BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
São Paulo’s Powerhouse of Pop, Fluiz, is Breaking Binary Boundaries by Making Sounds for a Bright Queer Future
From urban rubble comes glitz and glam: sparkling puddles, empty carnival rides, painted gold plastic, and a set of glittery, smiling eyes: Fluiz! Underneath the Brazilian artist’s premiere video “Comtemplação” a description reads: “Às vezes a beleza surge dos lugares mais inesperados,” which translates to, “Sometimes beauty emerges from the most unexpected places.” And while the city spaces in Fluiz’s videoclip may seem unexpected by some, it serves as a campy playground and the perfect encapsulation of Nonbinary joy.
Screenwriter, playwright, composer, and all-around icon, São Paulo-based Fluiz (who uses the Portuguese pronouns ele, ela, and elu) is a powerhouse of pop. Influenced by Brazilian funk and traditional music, their forthcoming album—fluiz!—touches on the heavy expectations of gender in society today, all while dreaming of a joyous Queer future.
PHOTO BY ANNE VIDAL
NMB: What’s the recording process been like? Who are you working with?
Fluiz: I’m working with Angie Lopez. She is our producer—we’re producing together. We met in university and we shared a passion for music. She introduced me to Frank Ocean, David Bowie, Radiohead. I introduced her to Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, and to lots of great Brazilian musicians, singers, and composers. We always had a really great exchange and at a certain point we both understood we were Trans people, and our connection just got deeper. I was already thinking about a project in which I could think about my future, because I just recorded something called “Songs from the End of the World,” which is my first EP. It’s very deep and dark.
NMB: Like the end of the world!
Fluiz: Yes, of course! It’s not bright and funny. I was in a very difficult emotional state and I was living with a family that actually expelled me from my previous home. It was the way I found to digest everything that was happening to me at the time. I was covering music from the civil dictatorship period in Brazil and trying to find new narratives in them, trying to see if they make sense today. Spoiler: they do! They make a lot of sense.
After that, I was looking for something more bright, more colorful. I wanted to think about my future, not only my past. Angie was also on that same road.
said, and I can feel the connection to a future. There’s a sense of hope, but at the same time, there is a darkness that is familiar to me, also as a Queer person. It’s about intimacy, it’s about identity, and about self reflection. I’m really excited for this project and I’m honored to have been able to listen to it while you’re in the process of making it.
Fluiz: It’s so crazy to hear that, because it’s definitely about all of those things.
The thing I love the most about what we’re doing is that we get to communicate with people. We get to connect our experiences. As Queer people, as Nonbinary people, we’re not claiming a specific position in the gender system. We’re actually renouncing the gender system itself. So, it’s important to understand we can still connect to each other, even though we are looking for space or just roaming through our endless possibilities. It’s so good to realize that we still have shared experiences.
NMB: What are some of your musical inspirations? I can hear all these different sounds, but I’ve never heard them come together quite in this way.
Fluiz: I feel this album’s process was very experimental, but not in the traditional sense. What we had in the beginning was a set of references for each track. As a screenwriter, I was also very concerned about the narrative of the whole album. That was what guided the specific moments in each scene we were presenting.
NMB: This album is truly a work of art—it’s incredible. It’s bright, like you
NMB: It feels kind of cinematic too.
BY
PHOTO
ANNE VIDAL
PHOTO BY ANNE VIDAL
Fluiz: It feels very visual, doesn’t it?
The initial references are very far from what we intended. We understood what we wanted to talk about in each song, and when we understood what we wanted to talk about, we got to the real references. Gilberto Gil is a huge reference. We also have a cover of one of his songs on our album.
NMB: Ah yeah, I saw that!
Fluiz: One of the songs on the B-side is “Francisco” from Milton Nascimento. He is also a great reference for us.
NMB: So that song is a cover as well? I remember chatting with you about names, because that name has significance to you.
Fluiz: I’m not talking specifically about gender in the album, but it surely is about gender. I wanted to talk about what’s really important: our subjectivity. The way we strive to look for ourselves under all the oppositions of a system that is trying to make us fit into boxes, to be exploited by the system. At the same time, it’s a system that has tried to make us get away from who we are and from our humanity. These two things, they are linked together. Me and Angie were growing as artists and were making a lot of discoveries. “Francisco” was one of the first songs by Milton Nascimento that I really paid attention to.
I have a vinyl collection that I love. I bought my first vinyl from Milton Nascimento. When I saw the back of the cover and saw one of the songs was called “Francisco,” I put it on,
and I just cried for 40 minutes. It had a huge impact on me. When I got to see myself, a Nonbinary person, it hit me in a place of grief. I wanted to have consciousness and peace as well. That’s why it’s placed in the album, in the position it is, it was one of the last epiphanies I had about my process. I left a lot of things behind. When I did my previous EP, I was thinking about death in a way that was not really getting the best of me. As Trans people, we understand death in a very different way.
NMB: Yes, and the future in a very different way.
Fluiz: I wanted to talk in a brighter sense, that’s why it’s there. It is a reflection of the process, because we stumbled upon that music.
NMB: I think that’s the beauty of covers, actually. And in a way, it touches on the concept of subjectivity, because you’re taking something that’s meaningful and resharing it, but it’s your interpretation of it.
Fluiz: Of course. A lot of songs in our global music history are Queer songs. I think it just depends on who is singing them and what is the dominant point of view. “Francisco” might be about grief because I know Milton also has a lot of interface with slavery and lots of tough Brazilian questions. But it’s such a poignant message that I think it can be applied to lots of different perspectives.
NMB: Definitely. I was looking through the lyrics—I had to translate everything—but I was reading through
the Gilberto Gil cover and was struck by how Queer it actually sounds. Or my perception of it, at least.
Fluiz: And that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to get these very important songs from our Brazilian collection and show how Queer they can be. Gilberto Gil, he does not identify as a Gay person. I’m not sure how much he identifies with the LBGT spectrum, but he does speak about being viado. Viado, I think, would be close to what in the English language could be described as fag. In Portuguese viado was taken by the LGBTQI+ community and used as a term of resistance and resilience. He has a song called “O Veado” in which he’s exploring his voice in the highest pitch possible, talking about the assassination of Queer people during the dictatorship. He said in some of his interviews that it’s important to be viado, to look for his inner viado, even though he’s not Gay.
NMB: I think you’re talking a lot about grief, too. I’m seeing more and more of my friends and communities talking openly about grief as a human experience. Grief is so often defined in these little boxes but needs to be free and needs to be felt.
Fluiz: Of course. We only gain things by sharing grief. Grief might be one of the biggest motives in human history, for lots of very relevant historical moments.
NMB: This is very human.
Fluiz: There’s magical characteristics to grief because it transforms us. I’m
still understanding my grief process because it’s hard to leave some things behind, but at the same time I’m seeing that grief always comes with other feelings. I’m not able to explain my grief process, but I’m able to share it.
NMB: When did you start making music?
Fluiz: Well, I used to write songs in elementary. I used to write them, hidden from everyone else. I listened to a lot of emocore, punk rock.
NMB: I didn’t know this about you! That’s my roots, too!
Fluiz: Yeah, here in Brazil we have a very different tradition of emocore. Have you listened to NX Zero? I love to listen to those songs and I love love songs. I always get so emotional and immersed when I listen to love songs. I love the perspective of emo—punkrock—which is kind of pessimistic, but at the same time it’s so stylish and fun.
NMB: It’s kind of got some of the things you’re talking about now— where it’s happy, catchy, and dancy, but it’s then also devastating lyrics or embarrassing feelings.
Fluiz: Really vulnerable feelings, right? People are very intense about love. So I really enjoyed that, as an intense person as well. After a while, I stopped listening to rock because people expected me to listen to rock. They saw me as a man, they wanted me to listen to rock and to play football, and mainly to occupy a certain social role in society.
NMB: Were you collaborating with people at any point in your creation?
Fluiz: Of course, yes! I come from theater, and I see music as a collective statement as well. That’s why for me, it’s so hard to do music without money because we live in São Paulo. It’s a city where money runs interests all over. My biggest dream is to build a huge network because of what we want sonically, not because of what we want to get monetarily.
The first thing I ever recorded was a project with a friend of mine called Pizzadelic—because we used to love pizza. It was very rough for me, because I was in this process with 3 cis men. Our communication was not the best, but we really tried to make music, even though we were in different places. They are the seeds of what we are recording right now. I composed all the songs, and the narrative was already there. The name of the EP we produced together was “I’ve Always Been Here.”
NMB: Yeah, so it’s there underneath.
Fluiz: And I’ve always been there.
The other members really wanted them to be pop songs. Right now, I consider what we’re doing—me and Angie—pop as well, but in a different sense.
And there was this amazing project I took part in called Naculudu. I wanted to explore my voice not only through lyrics or the instruments, because we have this mentality that voice should
be in the center of the mix. This album is quite like that. The lyrics are very important, and it is about voice. When Leo Fazio called me and said they wanted me to record some of the songs on Naculudu’s first EP, I remember they told me it would be awesome to have my voice because they and Wesley consider my voice as a force of nature. And I was like, “Oh my god, of course I will record! I’m a force of nature!”
NMB: I’m curious, are you writing in the studio, too? You said you’ve been working on your album for two years. There’s a lot of growth that happens in that span of time! Have the meanings of the songs changed for you over that period?
Fluiz: [laughs] A lot! They’ve changed dramatically. “Espehlo,” for instance. When I got to the lyrics of it, I didn’t want to sing it at all. The lyrics [“Consumir o seu corpo/ Não é conhecer/ O que o espelho/ Não vê”] mean “Consuming your body / Is not knowing / What the mirror doesn’t see.” So I was trying to talk a bit about dysphoria and about how it was difficult to live in a body, in an identity that did not belong to me. In a greater way, I was talking about how I was using my voice to hurt myself. I really enjoyed punk music, and was always singing in a very aggressive tone of voice. And right now, I see the song in a very different way. I can sing it in a smoother tone and it still has that depth and that urgency.
I also quit smoking. I’m drinking way less. It relates directly to what the song says. I see it as a song that changed me in a lot of ways.
This song, [“Braço Forte, Mão Amiga,”] has one of the best stories of the album. I discovered this phrase, “braço forte, mão amiga,” written on a wall. I was in an Uber ride going to my ex-boyfriend’s house and I saw this phrase on a wall and just laughed. It’s weird, it’s very sexual: “strong arm, helping hand.” It’s poetic, and I realized it was written on the wall of a military headquarters. This is the military motto in Brazil. I was like, “Okay, no, no, no, no stop it! I have to write a song about masculinity with this phrase!”
NMB: From identity to consciousness to subjectivity to grief—all of these things coexist and live together. Within our conversation, we’ve talked separately about these things, but they totally all link and I feel like in your music, all these separate entities come together perfectly.
Fluiz: I feel like these things connect seamlessly. I said before, we were looking for narrative motives, we were not looking for genders… genres in music. [laughs]
NMB: I love that in Portuguese, “genre” is the same word for “genre” and “gender.”
Fluiz: Yes! Genre in music exists so people can understand what they’re listening to. They can build their expectation on that, but it’s also to sell music. Defining genre is in this neoliberal system.
I feel it’s very important to connect to people, even when we’re not giving them what they expect. And it exists beyond gender, beyond genres.
LIVE AND DIE THIS WAY
WRITTEN BY ANN McCANN
PHOTO BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
How old were you when you realized Melissa Etheridge, Tracy Chapman, and k.d. lang were Lesbians? Were you sitting in the back seat of the car while your mom played “Fast Car,” pining to get out of your own small town, or was it when you finally saw k.d.’s Vanity Fair cover (yes, that cover)? When did you realize their Butchness made them attractive to you? When did you realize you related to “Come to My Window” because that was the only way you’d been able to see your first girlfriend, because her mom forbade you from seeing each other that first exciting summer after coming out in a small town? When did Lesbianism in music first make you feel alive, seen, heard, spoken to?
It’s 2024 and my wife plays “Give Me One Reason” by Chapman in the car while I’m driving home in the dark one night. They grab my hand and say “Before I met you, this was how I felt for years. I was ready to give up. Then I found you.” You sway back and forth to the bluesy instrumentals and wonder how lucky you are to have found each other. Meanwhile, you actively live the lyrics to “Fast Car” with each other, waiting to get out of your small town, waiting to get out and move to LA— except your wife considers going back to being a barista instead of a grocery store checkout girl to get us by so that I can follow my dreams of writing, of both of us becoming someone. You understand the longing—the Lesbianspecific longing—of having nothing but each other and big hopes and dreams. Why does “Fast Car” resonate in a way no other songs about getting out of a small town—of which there
are plenty—do? Because Chapman knows the feeling of being stuck in a small town as a Gay woman—the suffocation, the terrifying glances over your shoulder, the waiting to be hate-crimed, the feeling that you are wholly alone in your struggles in a town like this. Chapman’s Butchness, Lesbianism, and love made her a target then—as it did decades before her fame—and makes myself and my wife a target still, decades later. There is a deeply Queer resonance to her timbre that you cannot shake, that plants her firmly in the zeitgeist of the almost ceremonial longing elder Lesbians have felt before you and will after you, regardless of new Lesbian pop stars’ rocketing fame and snappy lyrics. There’s something to be said about knowing she’s singing about women without explicit pronouns in the same way you have had to love women without having come out yet.
You come out in high school and date your Bisexual best friend the summer after she breaks up with her boyfriend. You’re so excited you don’t even care that she’s not out to her mom. You write her love letters and burn her CDs with tongue in cheek playlists on them. There are no giant Lesbian pop stars out yet singing about loving women so you fill the CD with “Come to My Window” and “I’m the Only One” which feels pretty accurate because you do feel like you’re drowning in desire for this girl, the first girl. Your mom plays Etheridge’s Yes I Am album while she cleans the house on a Sunday morning and it almost feels like acceptance. If she can love Melissa, she can love me.
I don’t know if my first girlfriend’s mom plays Melissa Etheridge in the house while they clean, but when she finds my love letters, written in my best cursive and ended with x’s and o’s, she forbids us from ever seeing each other again. So we spend the summer sneaking around and stealing kisses and I make her listen to “I Want to Come Over” and we both cry and at the end of the summer she breaks up with me.
When I hear from her again years later, I learn that her mother had committed suicide. I give my condolences, but can think only of the screaming woman from years earlier that made me feel so much shame about my love. A decade later I find a Melissa Etheridge concert tee from 1988 for sale and I buy it without thinking twice. If my wife and I ever have kids, we’ll play Yes I Am on Sunday mornings while we clean the house and teach them that their partners will never have to come to their window, they can come to the door—even if you have to admit that the window is a little romantic.
In your twenties, you’ll be a proud Dyke. You’ll seek out your history. You’ll rediscover k.d. lang from your childhood, her ‘90s Butchness will turn you on in a way you’ve never recognized before. You’ll put a playlist of her songs on shuffle (long gone are the days of your CD mixed playlists you burned off the family computer). The song switches, the tempo slows. You almost hit “next,” but pause. You recognize it as “Hallelujah” and you try to reconcile your deeply Christian grandmother telling you Satan chose for you to be Gay with the crooning
sounds of k.d.’s voice. Suddenly, this is not the co-opted Christian religious hymn. It gains back its JewishLeonard-Cohen teeth and it’s a song about love, longing, and sex. But it’s k.d. so it’s sex between women—an act so sacred and so reviled it could only be acted out by Samson and Delilah, and this makes sense to you and you feel proud to be both a Lesbian and Jewish. You memorize all the words, every lilt of k.d.’s tone, you train yourself to hold the long notes. You think about a woman cutting your hair in the kitchen: short. A rite of passage, a Queer ritual as old as time.
Before my wife and I get home on our drive, Chappell Roan comes on the playlist—”Red Wine Supernova.” Explicit, Gay, sexual; she uses pronouns, and the Lesbianism is unmistakable. I am happy for young Queers who will never have to read into lyrics, who will see the crowds for their favorite singer waving Lesbian pride flags high above their heads. My heart is happy for them. I realize that it is fun and a privilege and send a silent thank you to the trifecta of Lesbians who raised me without all of that but still made me feel seen. Now, I will wear my Melissa Etheridge shirt to dinner with my wife, a quiet Lesbian pride flag, and I will still cry when k.d. sings “Hallelujah” because it’s so G-ddamn beautiful. And when my wife and I make it out of this town, we’ll sing “Fast Car” and thank Tracy for paving the road we drive upon.
PHOTO BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
PHOTO OF MUNA BY HARPER KING
PHOTO OF N3PTUNE BY HARPER KING
PHOTO OF ALICE LONGYU GAO BY HARPER KING
PHOTO OF CHAPPELL ROAN BY HARPER KING
QUEER IS COUNTRY
T.here were only ever two things playing in the car growing up: country or gospel music. Any other music genre was far too worldly, too sinful. For most of my childhood, I hated them both equally with a fierce passion (minus Dolly Parton, of course). As someone who grew up in an extremely religious household, I viewed these genres as my antithesis, my mortal enemies. I was very young when I realized that the people singing this music wouldn’t want someone like me listening to it, let alone performing it. I didn’t know why I felt so ostracized by it, but I couldn’t shake the choking shame I felt when my father turned on the radio in that red corolla that’s been gone for nearly a decade now.
WRITTEN BY CASPER ORR
Last spring, my instagram algorithm blessed me for the first time: I found Willi Carlisle. I’m not proud to admit that when I first discovered him, I played it safe, only listening to “Your Heart’s a Big Tent” on repeat. I could blame Willi Carlisle’s poetic and captivating lyrics for my reluctance to listen through his discography, though it was something much deeper that kept me stuck: something that had kept me on repeat for nearly my entire life. I was afraid. I was afraid I would shuffle his discography and would be betrayed, that all my worst fears would come true. Willi would know that I was listening and he would hate me for it. But I couldn’t stop listening to “Your Heart’s a Big Tent”—Ah, the heart’s a big tent/ Gotta let everybody
PHOTO BY JACKIE CLARKSON
in/ Doesn’t matter who they are/ If they do right or where they’ve been/ Everybody gets in—and I started to believe that maybe I wasn’t an interloper.
“Your Heart’s a Big Tent” was the first track on Carlisle’s gorgeous album Peculiar, Missouri (2022), so it was only right that I continued from there. However, my anxious heart could not have been prepared me for the second track on the album, “Life on the Fence.” I can vividly remember my first encounter with “Life on the Fence,” and yes, I was about as put together as you’d expect. As Carlisle uses his beautiful crooning voice to sing about Queer love, internalized homophobia, and alcoholism, I was sitting in the bedroom of my childhood home, surrounded by artifacts of my youth, sobbing like I hadn’t in years. A rift opened up inside me; I thought I wasn’t allowed in? I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted to be included until I discovered that Willi Carlisle was
Queer—He’s callin’ me up ‘cause he’s/ Sure I might love him/ Why’s livin’ the lie more easy/ Than life on the fence? From there, I had zero hesitations; I kept my spotify on repeat.
Willi sews Queer undertones into Peculiar, Missouri with his song “I Won’t Be Afraid Anymore”—And I will love whoever I well please/ I will kiss my friends upon the cheek/ Kiss my friends upon the cheek/ Repeat ‘til I believe/ I don’t have to be ashamed of what I love. Listening to this song as an adult Queer man, I wish I had known of someone like Willi Carlisle when I was a child. Maybe country music wouldn’t have felt like a gated community that I had no rights to.
I would be remiss if I did not call attention to my dear love, Critterland (2024). From the very first track named “Critterland,” Willi serenades his listeners about his experience being a Queer radical in the south—Oh, I never thought I could love like this/ They think I’m a queer and a communist/… ’Cause why have a god if no one is saved/ I think love is a burden if it ain’t
PHOTO BY JACKIE CLARKSON
PHOTO BY ROSE FLOWER CREATIVE
brave. It’s a harmonious cacophony of sound, and I can’t listen to it in the car because I will drive into a tree, which is appropriate given that it’s a call to nature. It is one of the most joyful songs on the album and it’s so explicitly Queer.
In late 2023, Willi Carlisle released “When the Pills Wear Off” as a single to raise money for the organization Hope in the Hills, a charity dedicated to aiding communities in Appalachia struggling with the opioid crisis. As heartbreaking as this song is, I adore Carlisle for the advocacy he’s done through it. The song is written about Carlisle’s experience with loss and addiction, but it’s not just his story. This breathtaking ballad is “an amalgamation of Queer stories [he’s] heard, lived, and seen.” Carlisle sings this beautifully broken hymn—Mother don’t ask me the things I have done/ It’s selfish to fall for yourself in someone/ I know that I want him and always will—it is the echo reverberated back from the canyon wall; it is the outcry out of the hillside; it is a hundred past lives living in one body. I don’t know if I will ever have the words to describe the breathless feeling “When the Pills Wear Off” leaves me with. It feels like a gasping, straining struggle, like I’m caught under a frozen lake. “When the Pills Wear Off” feels a lot like drowning. Willi Carlisle is what I wish I had had as a child—from everything he does and sings. Willi’s dedication to making country music more accessible and more inclusive has forever impacted the way I view this genre. I am so immensely overjoyed to be able to have found a country artist that I can identify with; someone who cares
about his community, loves his neighbors, and strives to mend the genre that has been so unapproachable to so many people. I need more Queer country artists now that the genre doesn’t have me running back into the closet. I want to see these artists be Queer and be loud. I want them to show young Queer people—more fortunate than I was—that Queer is country.
Hope in the Hills, healingappalachia.org
PHOTO BY JACKIE CLARKSON
GUITAR HOW-TO
WRITTEN BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
Being socialized female in the early ‘00s, I discovered that certain instruments “weren’t for me”: i.e., guitar. While people didn’t outright say this, they heavily implied it by means of misogyny, microaggressions, and the constant assumption that I didn’t know what I was doing. And the truth is: I didn’t.
As it turns out, it’s okay to not know what you’re doing! This is how everyone starts, no matter who you are. In some ways, I do feel like I missed out on the opportunity to learn by way of mistake. I was scared of being teased and felt I always had to put up a fight to be in musical spaces at all. When I express this sentiment today, my friends remind me that I am here now making music and that it’s never too late to try.
When I was 22, I bought an old schecter guitar off my ex, playing it mostly in secret. 6 years later, I casually mentioned to my bandmate in Death Parade that I’d always wanted to play guitar. To that, they said, “Okay! Now you play guitar in this band.” I felt seen and supported in that moment, and in every moment after; she showed me most of the tricks I know today and continues to help me as I keep learning. Here, in each Noise Made By issue, I want to be that support to anyone who needs it.
Included are some tips for getting started on your musical journey. <3
First, these are your strings in the standard tuning: EADGBE
You can tune using a website, app, or guitar tuner (there are a few different kinds).
Sometimes people will talk about the strings in numbers, from 6 to 1. The 6th string is going to be the top E string, the thickest and lowest sounding string on the guitar. The 5th will be the one below it, and so on until you get to the 1st string, the high E and the thinnest string. (Once you feel comfortable here, there are lots of other fun tunings to mess around with! My personal favorite is DADGAD, which gives a dark and gloomy vibe!)
Today, we’re going to start with some simple shapes begining on the 6th string.
Did you know that you can make major and minor chords all up and down the neck of your guitar using the same few easy shapes?
A really fun one to start with is the power chord. You might have heard of this in punk, rock, or metal music because it’s pretty simple and easy to play fast! The chord is made of just two notes (or three, if you want to add the octave). But be sure not to hit the bottom 3 strings, in order for it to work!
Most guitars mark the frets (where you put your fingers to make each note) with a little dot! This just makes it easier to remember key parts of the guitar: the 3rd fret, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, etc. This will come in handy!
Often, guitar is written out in “tabs” rather than on a staff. On a tab, you can see the guitar strings how they would look from your view of playing. There will be numbers on the strings to indicate which finger should play on that string—1 is the index finger, 2 is the middle, 3 is ring finger, 4 is pinkie.
We’re not going to get too deep into tabs right now, but it’s a good thing to know! For now, let’s just to start playing and making some sounds!
* These guitar tips are specifically for right-handed playing. I know some people who are left-handed play right-handed guitar, though I do want to note that some people opt to buy other types of guitars or string their guitars differently!
This is the shape of a simple power chord, playing just the bottom 2 strings with the 1 and 3 fingers:
And a power chord with the octave, adding the pinkie and playing just the bottom 3 strings with the 1, 3, and 4 fingers:
Now, the next few shapes are a little bit trickier! Your index finger will need to bar the full fret, meaning you’ll need to press down on all the notes with that finger! Don’t worry if you can’t do this at first, especially if you’re playing an acoustic guitar. It takes some practice. Try using your middle finger to add some extra pressure while you build muscle in the first finger.
PHOTOS BY LEO FAZIO
Now just remove the 2nd—or middle—finger. This looks the same as the power chord, but remember to bar the full fret with your index finger for that minor chord!
This shape will make a minor chord on the 6th string (more melancholic sounds):
If you’re trying to learn a song and you know what chord you want to play, these shapes will help a lot! Now, just figure out the note of the 6th string and make this major or minor shape! For example, if you know you want to play a G major chord, you can play the major shape on the 3rd fret! If you know you need a B minor chord, you can play the minor shape on the 7th fret!
It’s wild to me how long I was playing guitar before someone showed this to me. Of course, there are a lot of resources online, books, webpages, and videos to learn from, but I struggled to find accessible information. Hopefully this was helpful
This shape will make a major chord on the 6th string (generally, pretty happy sounding chords):
to you! I’d love to share more tips and tricks that have helped me— and to be honest, I’m still learning all the time!
Once you master these few shapes, you can move them around the guitar and make both simple and complex songs. Starting with the basics can give you the tools to play songs you know and love, or start jamming and writing.
Thanks for tuning in for Noise Made By’s Guitar How-To! If you have questions or want to share what you’re working on, feel free to send a message over to: noisemadeby@thefruitslice.com.
A QUEER ANTHOLOGY OF DRUMS
COVER ART FOR A QUEER ANTHOLOGY OF DRUMS BY ANDREA CAVAZZUTI
Some people say jazz is dead; others say jazz does not exist; but, whatever the truth is, we have the sound and we shape it, name it, rename it, and reshape it. And at the end of the day, everything is just a tag on the internet, anyway.
One night I decided to meander through bandcamp’s ocean of new releases, searching the tag “free jazz” to see what was going on. I’m a huge fan of contemporary jazz; names like Nubya Garcia, Steve Lehman, and Macie Stewart are pushing the boundaries of the genre to places I never imagined it could reach. I’m happy to find out that some people have the courage, the creativity, and, most importantly, the love for the concept of sound in order to push. Enter: Valentina Magaletti. On that search for boundary-pushing sound I came across her name, and it proved to be one of the happiest musical discoveries I’ve ever made.
Whether releasing experimental videos where she plays a drum set made of porcelain or blending dub and post-punk sounds on the record Suono Assente, Valentina Magaletti and her sounds caught my intrigue; and it was the album A Queer Anthology Of Drums that really got me. Originally released in 2020 as an 8-piece album on Cafe Oto’s label TakuRoku, it was later remastered for vinyl and rereleased with 9 tracks by the Chinese label bié Records. This piece perfectly showcases the craft of the UK-based drummer and percussionist. It’s not just jazz, per se. It brings the listener
through a journey of experimentation with full soundscapes and sound designs. Some people might expect a free jazz album to be only crazy improvisational sets of pure wild noise (which is also beautiful, let’s be honest), but in this case, you can sense that there is a lot of thought and intention put into each composition. It’s clear that Valentina’s research on different musical expressions is put to good use, as she often uses her instruments in non-conventional ways. Valentina plays and assembles percussions, drums, field recordings, vibraphone, toys, and oscillators—which she uses to show us a strong ritualistic side (one that would make Naná Vasconcelos proud). The postmodern vibes guide us, as if to continue the work Meredith Monk was trying to summon with her art.
I would not do justice to the richness of Valentina Magaletti’s sound if I simply described it as avant-garde. At the end of the day, the best thing you can do is go listen to the album— mixed by Leon Marks and mastered by Sara Register—and let the sound carry you through this Queer anthology.
PHOTO BY LOUISE MASON
ESSAY ON NOAHFINNCE
WRITING AND ARTWORK BY
Lights cast purple into my eyes while earplugs press the bass into my thumping eardrums. The floor shakes with the hum of the speakers and lights blink spotted patterns onto the faces of budding concert-goers. In that moment, everything seems to come together: seeing Noahfinnce in person and my journey as a Trans person, it has changed so drastically since our first introduction.
A new employee at my job mentioned being Nonbinary one summer morning. It was a time of patching together my identity. I lost my entire friend group, support, and community five months prior after leaving my fundamentalist Christian church, and was desperate for answers. Grief swept me up as I opened my computer at the kitchen counter.
Trans people were not something that was accepted in my conservative town in Georgia. I had heard about Trans people, but did not understand any part of it. Trans people were the butt of the joke, and it was always a topic I hesitated to develop an opinion on in the face of Christian bigotry.
I found Noahfinnce’s music through his youtube channel after googling for Queer artists. The first song I came across was “Asthma Attack.” An introduction to Noahfinnce’s catchy and upbeat musical persona and one of his first songs, “Asthma
BELLAMY BODIFORD
Attack” takes on themes of coming of age and the struggles of fitting in, which resonated with my coming out as Trans in the southern U.S. Noah’s videos led me upwards into the rocks of my gender crisis.
Music was a respite, a way for me to finally release my emotions. It’s hard for me to tune in to my emotions and the way my body and heart feel. I can only cry while listening to music. It is a permission, of sorts, to let go.
“Subtitles,” from his most recent album, Growing Up on the Internet, quickly became my favorite song. It touches on themes of being misunderstood as well as feeling as if one is “falling behind” in life, or overwhelmed with life’s demands and standards. Misogyny painted the backdrop to my childhood in the early 2000s. The perks boys received infuriated me. It’s not fair, I would grumble to myself on the playground after school when yet another boy got a free pass for throwing rocks at me. I got in trouble when I objected. The standards for little boys were far different from little girls.
My family always placed pressure on me to achieve. I felt as though I was falling behind my peers. My neurodiversity unknown at the time, I seemed to miss the mark academically and emotionally in the era of No Child Left Behind.
When I saw that Noahfinnce would be touring in America, I did not have high hopes that I would be able to see the concert. Being disabled and unemployed meant that opportunities were slim. However, Noah would be coming to Atlanta and I checked the accessibility at the venue. Much to my delight, the tickets were affordable! In a rush of panic and excitement, I reached out to one of my close friends to see if they would go to the upcoming concert with me. Thankfully, they said yes and we were set.
Wheelchairs and accompaniment were led back into a dark accessible maze, and we were put into a roped off section. Impatient chatter quickly occupied the dark basement. It was my first concert and I was thrilled to be there.
Overhead lights dimmed and the sun of the stage glow blinded front-row viewers. Noah and the band, equipped with bass and guitars, filed onto the stage to an excited roar.
Noah’s public experience as a Trans person helped my journey. I will continue developing my story for the rest of my life. Identity is fluid and part of being dynamic and living in an everchanging world. I hope Noah’s music grows with me as I grow up.
PHOTO BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
CONTRIBUTORS
Ann McCann (she/her) is a Senior Editor for Fruitslice and spends her time filling her bookshelves and TBR list with Queer and women authors while waxing poetic about a strange California in the tradition of Didion. instagram: @beegirlfriends
Bellamy Bodiford (he/they) is a writer and editor based in Georgia. They enjoy photography and drawing and are passionate about disability and queer activism. Their instagram is @savedbythe_bellamy
Casper Orr (he/him) is a QueerDisabled writer radically accepting his residence in New Jersey. He’s an editor for Fruitslice Magazine, as well as a student focusing in literature and creative writing because his one true love is the written word. He has previously contributed to Gypsophila, Bitter Melon Review, and Fruitslice Magazine and has work forthcoming in Clementine Journal and The Academy of the Heart and Mind. He can be found on instagram at androqurrr.
Dove Stone (they/them) is a musician and multidisciplinary RyukyuanAmerican artist from Portland, Oregon. They play music under the moniker Floating Room.
Hailey Green (she/her) is a lesbian writer, photographer, theatre educator & arts advocate based in North Texas. All my love always to E,G,C&M. website: www.haileyagreen.com instagram: @haileyagreencreative
Harper King (she/they) is a selftaught photographer, currently located in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in Eagle River, Alaska and relocated to Portland, Oregon at 19. Shooting the local punk, hardcore, and metal scene, she is not afraid to push her way through pits to get the shot. website: https://harperaking.com instagram: @harperaking
Leo Fazio (they/elu) is a musician from São Paulo, Brazil, currently residing in Juíz de Fora. They love jazz and Brazilian music and spend the late hours of the night writing their own noises, often wondering about the great vastness of sound.
website: leofazio.bandcamp.com/ instagram: @leossauro
Michael Bednar (he/him) is a writer and editor living in East Hollywood. instagram: @eyesoflauranyro
Starly Lou Riggs (xe/they/elu) is a Queer Agender musician, visual artist, and little rat creature residing in Juíz de Fora, Brazil. They are a Senior Editor at Fruitslice Magazine, a frequent contributor for Montreal-based music publication Also Cool Mag, and used to write, edit, and manage Portland, Oregon-based music magazine Eleven PDX. Musically, xe mostly writes about xir alternate reality as a Queer space demon, currently playing music around Brazil as Starly Kind. They are recording their first album—to be released in 2025—at Canil Studios. Until then, you can hear xem play in Death Parade and Rat Related. website: www.filthyart.space instagram: @get.filthy
ARTWORK BY STARLY LOU RIGGS
NOISE MADE BY... MIXTAPE VOL. 1
We are Queer, we are here, we are louder than ever! Noise Made By is here for you to keep noise made by everyone!
Thank you to Fruitslice Magazine and all of our contributors! A special thanks to our incredible editorial and design team. If you’d like to send a letter to the editor, share your music, or submit some visual art to Noise Made By, you can email us at noisemadeby@thefruitslice.com
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Noise Made By Volume 1: Coming of Age
Music zine in collaboration with Fruitslice Magazine