This story is featured in CityBeat's March 20 print edition.
In 1995, while working as a Denver newspaper writer, I attended Austin’s South by Southwest music festival and discovered a talented and new — to me — singer/songwriter, Jill Sobule.
Another Denver writer at South by Southwest had encouraged me to attend a showcase for artists recently signed to Atlantic Records, because one was from Denver.
That was Sobule. She had a local following going back well before I had moved to Denver. After the showcase, she came over to talk to us and was thrilled with her Austin showcase. Although she had released an earlier album that hadn’t done much, her new self-titled Lava/Atlantic debut seemed to make her, at age 36, destined for bigger things.
The album contained a very touching and daring, strikingly written and convincing song that was also quite catchy. Her label was going to try to make a hit out of “I Kissed a Girl.” It would be groundbreaking.
Alas, Sobule didn’t become a breakthrough superstar — the video, which featured a very funny Fabio as a guest, was popular on MTV and the song itself was an alternative rock favorite, but it stalled out at No. 67 on the Billboard Top 100 songs charts. But she has ever since had a productive career as what she calls a “middle class” musician, meaning “mid-level.”
During a telephone interview from California ahead of a too-infrequent Cincinnati solo show on March 24 at Newport’s Southgate House Revival, she remembers that exciting time in Austin very well.
“I had no idea what to expect,” she says. “We complained about record companies and how they rip you off, but I was there during a time when you could be a middle-class artist and you’d still get an advance and a tour bus. That stuff doesn’t happen anymore. There are the Taylor Swifts or else someone on TikTok.”
“I Kissed a Girl” ultimately accomplished far more than the brief chart success it had at the time. Because it was an undeniably memorable song for anyone who heard it, especially those with sexual identity questions, it has become a pop landmark that signaled a change in society’s acceptance of queerness.
“Yeah, I moved the way people think about personal relationships, and love, and freedom,” she says proudly. (A Katy Perry hit with the same title that came out much later, in 2008, is a different song.)
Across her 10 studio-recorded albums, Sobule has proven a sensitively observant, sharp-witted singer/songwriter who can convincingly convey jubilance and anger, as well as emotions in-between. She also can write about all sorts of subjects and personal experiences.
Actually, Sobule comes here while a project that she started in New York in 2022 builds momentum. Back then, she created an off-Broadway musical called F*ck7thGrade, described as a queer musical memoir about her difficult time getting through the toughest year in school. She supplied the music and performed it on stage with a female group; Liza Birkenmeier provided the book.
The musical received a Critic’s Pick from The New York Times and was nominated for a Drama Desk Best Musical Award. It also built a devoted fanbase. She has since reprised the musical twice in New York and is slated for another revival there in November.
Creating the show meant revisiting an unpleasant time and place for Sobule. “In those days, and we’re talking the 70s, the only role models I knew who were queer women were Miss Hathaway of the Beverly Hillbillies (a television series) or my gym teacher who looked like Pete Rose. It was something you had to hide — so a lot of that was keeping secrets, having unrequited love.
“I got together with a writer for this and it was an amazing experience,” Sobule continues. “I exorcised all my demons from junior high school. It has redemption and a beautiful story at the end of it.”
It is not exclusively for a queer audience, Sobule explains. “The thing of it is, when I ask people what their worst year is, for girls it seems to be 7th and 8th grade and for boys it seems to be the first year of high school. What they can agree on is, ‘I wish I would have known everybody else was as miserable as me — that would have given me great comfort.’”
Sobule includes songs from the musical in her current tour. At the same time, she is planning to take her band from F*ck7thGrade on the road for some special dates doing concert versions of the musical. Further, she’s trying to line up other cities besides New York for full stagings of the musical.
“We need to bring it to your town,” she tells me.
On the current tour, Sobule says she will perform for employees of Abbott Laboratories near Chicago. That’s because she has an implanted Abbot neuromodulator that is designed to control her essential tremor condition.
A small generator in her chest tells thin wires traveling to her brain to stop the tremors in her hands that were interfering with her guitar playing. As a story on the Abbott website explains, she had the problem for years before an attendee at a TEDMED conference — where she was performing a musical set in-between a program of medical presentations — approached her about her hand tremors and offered suggestions on the cause.
She had the surgery in 2021 and is now happy to talk about her experience and the positive results. “While I was having surgery, they had me play guitar and sing,” she says. “And I joked my biggest fear was not that the operation would go wrong but my performance would not be up to snuff for the nurses and doctors.”
She even posted on Instagram about her unusual recital during the operation. “I put it up there and it was amazing how much response I got from people saying, ‘I have it, my son has it, my mother, can you tell me more,’” Sobule recounts. “It’s been great to be able to talk to people and be kind of a helper spokesperson. I feel like it’s the same thing with ‘I Kissed a Girl.’
“I feel the best about myself when I think about what I do as a kind of social service.”
Jill Sobule plays Southgate House Revival at 7 p.m. on March 24. More info: southgatehouse.com.
