Sweet Sick-cess

By Web Behrens, Contributing Writer
October 30, 2002

The Hair-Raising Humor of the Kinsey Sicks Quartet

"It was a dark and stormy night," jokes Irwin Keller, when asked to recount the event that would change his life. Nine years ago in December, a group of friends dressed in drag along with Keller, then the director of a Bay Area non-profit organization that provided legal assistance to people with HIV. "A group of us were going to see Bette Midler," he says, "and we decided to go as the Andrews Sisters. Because why not? It's San Francisco and it's a Bette Midler concert and we figured there would be plenty of drag queens there."

"When we arrived there was no one else in drag-other than Bette," Keller cracks. But though they were alone on the cross-dressing frontier that night, they did not go unappreciated. "People were applauding us and we were hamming it up," he continues. When an Olivia Tours promoter approached them about performing at an upcoming event, they told her, "Well, we don't sing."

A different realization was soon to come. "We left the concert that night all full of Bette's music," Keller continues. "And we started singing on the walk home. ...We compared notes and, sure enough, we realized we all had musical backgrounds. We had never thought about it before, but we hatched a plot that night."

They stayed up late, harmonizing into the wee hours, and the Kinsey Sicks were born. (The savage wordplay that begot their name riffs, of course, on the old zero-through-six Kinsey scale of sexuality, in which six represents "exclusively homosexual.") From such inadvertent origins and humble beginnings-their first show came the next summer on the corner of Castro and Market-the quartet has grown into a bona fide sensation, winning awards for their doo-wap a cappella vocals, as well as big-time accolades for last year's off-Broadway production, "Dragapella!"

Success has meant "good-bye" to their old jobs as lawyers and executives. "I am proud to say that we are now full-time singing drag queens. See what a University of Chicago degree can do for you?" says Keller, who was born in Niles and attended law school in Hyde Park.

Although they've toured around the country, the Kinsey Sicks make their Chicago debut when they zip into Davenport's this week for a quick two-night appearance. Originally scheduled only for two shows Friday night, a third performance was added in response to advance buzz about their skewed mix of original songs and irreverent parodies. (On the day between shows, they're dashing up to Michigan for a Halloween gig. That's good news for anyone looking to win a prize during the Halsted parade: You won't get upstaged by the Kinsey girls' closer-to-God bouffants.)

Some artists might get cocky after hearing the flattering news that, in a city where they've not yet performed, demand is high enough to warrant an additional show. Keller, on the other hand, has a modest side. "My mother could pull together enough people to fill Davenport's for two nights," he laughs, self-deprecatingly. "But I encourage people who don't know my mother to attend the show also." (He adds that the group hopes to return to Chicago for a longer run soon.)

For the uninitiated, four delightfully over-the-top personalities comprise the Kinseys: Winnie (Keller), Rachel (co-founder Ben Schatz), Trixie (Kevin Smith Kirkwood) and Trampolina (Chris Dilley). Kirkwood is relatively new to the group; he joined up last year as an understudy for "Dragapella!" and now steps into Trixie's heels for a year while original Kinsey girl Maurice Kelly takes a break. (When appearing before familiar audiences, they sometimes say that Trixie can't be with them, so "in her stead we have her long-lost identical twin sister, Trixie." The joke's even funnier if you know that Kirkwood's black while Kelly is white.)

The switch brings a new dynamic to the ensemble. In the group's original line-up, the singers were all the same age; now they range from early 40s down to Kirkwood's 25. (Dilley, who joined three years ago, is 30.) As a result, they've folded into their show a whole new set of cultural references. "The truth is, there's all this Gen X stuff that us early-40-year-olds completely don't understand," Keller admits. "Instead of pretending we do, that becomes a live dynamic on stage between the youngins and the old ones."

Just as the Kinseys themselves remain fluid in their relationships with each other, so do the performers with their audience. With a wealth of material (their three CDs don't fully document their repertoire) and many different fan bases (queer, Jewish, comedy, a cappella, et al.), they're accustomed to reading a crowd and judging what songs to perform next. "One thing was a little bit of a surprise to us," Keller reveals. "We don't have to talk down to non-gay audiences as much as we thought we'd have to. We do a fair amount of queer inside humor, but it turns out that straight people are savvier than our community gives them credit for. The ones who come to see us, at least."

"When we have a predominantly gay audience, we might do other songs that are a critique of gay culture or gay politics," says Keller. One great example of airing "dirty laundry" (as he puts it) would be "It's Crystal Time in the City," a very funny, very wicked ditty about boys on crystal meth. Some of those "critique" tunes are sure to surface at Davenport's, Keller says. "We love doing songs that are challenging to the queer community. We like making people think."

SIDEBAR: HISTORY LESSON

Irwin Keller's good work for the GLBT community began in Chicago, where in the mid- 1980s he authored the human rights ordinance under which the city currently operates. A version of a gay civil rights bill had met defeat in the City Council in 1986. In response, a populist movement arose -- Gay and Lesbian Town Meeting. "It was really all about trying to get the entire community involved," says Keller, who was studying law at the University of Chicago at the time.

"He's too modest," says Equality Illinois political director Rick Garcia about Keller. "Five or six of us got together in Albert Williams' apartment and said, 'Hey, we've got to do something.' Irwin looked at the failed ordinance and said, 'It isn't enough to add sexual orientation to what we have. We need a whole new ordinance.'"

That decision to write a stronger bill was crucial, according to Garcia. The process of securing legal victory, he says, "would have been very difficult, very different, without Keller's input."

The new bill failed on its first attempt through the City Council, on Sept. 14, 1988. But the Town Meeting activists didn't take no for an answer. Three months later, it came up for another vote and seven aldermen switched their "no" positions and the ordinance passed.

--W.B.

***

The Kinsey Sicks perform at Davenport's, 1383 N. Milwaukee, 8 p.m. Oct. 30 and at 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Oct. 31. For more information, call (773) 278-1830 or visit www.kinseysicks.com.