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Finding and Living Your Passion – a conversation Parodist Dee Pelissier
19 Plays1 month ago
Parody often includes adult language. Please use headphones if listening in a public place.
Dee Pelisser, also known as Lady Laquelle is a musical parodist and drag performer.
In this episode of the Abeceder work life balance podcast Rest and Recreation Dee tells host Michael Millward about how they came to accept their gender fluidity discovered their passion for performance and creating parodies of songs they liked like The Banana Boat Song. or somethings loathed like Bubbly.
Dee explains parody referencing parodists like Paul Sherman and Weird Al Yankovic, Dee discusses the history of drag including Shakespear, pantomime, and TV shows like Are You Being Served.
Dee discusses the process of discovering their drag persona including references to drag performers like RuPaul and Paul O’Grady.
Dee reflects on performances at clubs like the Purple Rhino in Sarasota and the support they received from other drag performers like Berry Ayers, AKA Beneva Fruitville
At the time of recording Dee was preparing to move to Cleveland Ohio to further their performing career.
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Transcript
Introduction to "Rest and Recreation" Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysida. I'm your host, Michael Millward, Abysida.
00:00:17
Speaker
managing director of ah basida Today, from Abysida.
Guest Introduction: Dee Pellissier, Musical Parodist
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm going to be finding out about how to find your true passion in life and then live it from musical paradist D. Pellissier.
00:00:30
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Rex and Recreation is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that allows you to manage every stage of the podcast production process, including editing and distribution to all the platforms in one place and making it so easy.
00:00:51
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting for yourself using Zencastr, visit Zencastr using the link in the description.
Podcast's Purpose: Provoking Thought
00:00:58
Speaker
It has a built-in discount. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:01:06
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to. Very importantly, on rest and recreation, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
Dee Pellissier's Musical Inspirations
00:01:19
Speaker
Today, my guest is Dee Pellissier. a musical paradist. were going to find out what that means. Dee is based in Florida, the Sunshine State, but will soon be moving to Ohio, one of the mountain states. So we'll find out a little bit about that as well.
00:01:37
Speaker
But if you do fancy visiting either Florida or Ohio, the best way to travel is by making your arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because they give you access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, and so many other travel-related purchases.
00:01:53
Speaker
There is a link with a discount code built in in the description.
00:01:59
Speaker
Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make an episode of Rest and Recreation and say hello, Dee. Thank you for having me. Hello. Well, it's a great pleasure. I'm very interested in what you do, but ah I suppose we start off by saying, OK, what is a musical paradist?
00:02:18
Speaker
And I suppose it has its origins in parody and using music. But please tell us a little bit about your work. Well, the definition of musical parodist, the best examples I can cite, of course, are Alan Sherman and Weird Al Yankovic, um who take recognizable popular songs and rewrite the lyrics ah to create something comedic, which is what I have been doing to try and, for lack of a better word, ingratiate myself into the local drag performance community.
00:02:51
Speaker
right so this is when you say ingratiate yourself into a community that's something that been interesting to invest ask you about as well but you've mentioned artists that i'm aware of but i hadn't really thought of them in that way but you are quite right and uh it's very interesting i'm going to ask you again at the end but where can people find your music So I have a YouTube channel ah where I have videos for some of the parodies that I've written.
00:03:23
Speaker
um You can find that under the name Lady Laquel. That's L-A-Q-U-E-L-L-E. And I also have some recorded works on Reverb Nation under the same name.
00:03:36
Speaker
Right. OK, we'll put a link in the description for all of that.
Developing Skills in Florida (Q&A)
00:03:40
Speaker
But. how did you end up where you are today yeah know what's what's the back story that led to you doing this and so what's happened Well, um it's a bit of a convoluted story. I'll try to rush through the ah prologue.
00:03:58
Speaker
um I first came to Sarasota, Florida back in 2005 from Massachusetts, where I'm originally from, um to be with someone I met online, you know, the classic fool's mistake that one makes in their 20s.
00:04:12
Speaker
And I spent a long time working for a ah local liquor store to pay the bills and support my kids. And I would sometimes blow off some steam in the the neighboring bar where I would sing karaoke. and ah developed a little bit of a reputation singing like comedic tunes, Monty Python, Avenue Q and whatnot.
00:04:37
Speaker
And i had some regular customers who were connected with the local theater scene. And so they started encouraging me to get involved in community theater, which I've done.
00:04:48
Speaker
um But of course, with my hours at the liquor store, I could really only afford to do one or two shows per year um just because, you know, they couldn't reverse my schedule to have me working days. So I just ended up losing hours and losing income.
00:05:03
Speaker
But of course, once you start doing something creative, it becomes an
Creating Parody Lyrics and Videos
00:05:07
Speaker
addiction. So I started looking for other ways to fill that void. And listening to the crap on the radio in the liquor store was inspiration enough. I started making up goofy lyrics in my head.
00:05:18
Speaker
And it wasn't until many years later that I started writing them down and recording them. But you listen to a song on the radio and very often you sort mishear the lyrics.
00:05:29
Speaker
And then you say, did they really say that? And of course they didn't. But, you know, I have to ask you if you got an example of a hit that we would have, we would know. And then some example of the lyrics that you created to to go with it.
00:05:42
Speaker
Well, one in particular, um i tend not to stick to with a particular era or genre, but there was one relatively modern song that played repeatedly. ah The song Bubbly by Colby Collet, I found especially annoying.
00:05:57
Speaker
ah The chorus. I find the title even annoying, to be honest with you, Dee. Yes, actually. and um But the chorus goes something like, ah it starts at my toes and I tickles my nose. And it's very, very, as the title would suggest, very bubbly and very sweet and very saccharine.
00:06:14
Speaker
And I was not feeling very saccharine at the time. And so just on my own, I would start, you know, rewriting the chorus, the smell from your toes, it gets right up my nose and it grows and it grows like the farts that you squoze.
00:06:28
Speaker
And... At the time, I stopped there. And then years later, when I actually started writing and recording parodies, I thought, you know what, let me revisit that one.
00:06:39
Speaker
Because I had been recording older tunes like the Isley Brothers and you know standards like Talk to the Animals that younger audiences wouldn't really know. So I did that one. I still haven't made a video for it, but you can find that one on Reverb Nation.
00:06:53
Speaker
Right. It's almost like the the sort of songs then that when you're in school and you're at that age where it's like exciting to say naughty words that you would you would create.
00:07:06
Speaker
And yeah, I can see where the humor all comes from and and the entertainment value of it as well. So you're you're in the liquor store, so like satisfyising secretly, I suppose, in some way, satisfying your creative urges by making up these lyrics.
00:07:23
Speaker
and And how did that get from that sort of situation to where you are now? How did things develop? What's the next stage?
Embracing Drag Persona: Lady La Kell
00:07:30
Speaker
So um there was a time where...
00:07:35
Speaker
Well, going back a little bit to when I was in college, I was first beginning to come to terms with what to- today would be termed gender fluidity, which I kept closeted through my relationship when I first moved down here.
00:07:49
Speaker
um And then when I came to a point, you know, as I've begun to get involved in the theater community and wanting to feel a little bit more like I can be myself, And drag was very big down here in Sarasota at the time.
00:08:03
Speaker
And Beniva Fruitville, who is the big name in drag down here in Sarasota, um had directed some shows of the players. And I started trying to get involved in that scene.
00:08:13
Speaker
But I hadn't really gotten exposed to anything that really instructed me on what a drag queen is supposed to do. I had seen a few do lip syncs. I had seen some movies.
00:08:24
Speaker
I made myself watch an episode or two of RuPaul's Drag Race and didn't particularly enjoy it. But I thought there's something that I need to do to make it my own. And so um Lady La Kell became my musical parody drag persona.
00:08:42
Speaker
It's one of the interesting things about drag is RuPaul's drag race has taken off on a global basis, but it does seem to be a fit, a particular ah stereotype of what a drag performer is.
00:08:58
Speaker
Whereas it's, it's a very diverse scene, isn't it? It is. Yes. And with audiences down here in Sarasota regarding drag, I find that they tend to either be ah too old to appreciate my humor or too young to recognize the songs that I'm riffing. It's very difficult to find that Goldilocks audience. To cite an example, ah sometimes you know there's some that like a big hit with one audience and completely die with another.
00:09:26
Speaker
I was performing at this lodge here in Sarasota. It's called the Purple Rhino. It's like a LGBT version of an Elks Lodge. And every Saturday nights they would do a sort of drag amateur night.
00:09:39
Speaker
And I did my parody of the Banana Boat song, which I call the Calypso of Shame, which is absolutely raunchy, telling the story of getting blackout drunk and staggering my way home. You know daylight come, you want to go home.
00:09:54
Speaker
And it it hit them hard as hell, just explosive laughter, like they were caught off guard. Then few years later, I performed the same song at this Kava bar over on Whitfield called Manatee and Kava.
00:10:11
Speaker
And I performed the same song and the audience was mostly younger people, you know, more of an alternative crowd. And it was met by a lot of confused looks, some very polite applause and very few tips.
00:10:24
Speaker
um I didn't think at the time that Kava bars tend to be, um, Hangout spots for sober communities. So in retrospect, I think I may have
Adapting During COVID-19
00:10:36
Speaker
offended them.
00:10:37
Speaker
ah Probably. you never know, do you really? But it's horses for courses in many ways. i' suppose that is part of what the drag scene, regardless of where you are in the world, is about as well. it's about acceptance of people and for whatever.
00:10:53
Speaker
yeah Your difference is what makes you special and you you deserve acceptance. But it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to appreciate your art in in every way. There's going to be a line somewhere.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yes, yes, very much so. which so So tell us, talk us through the story further. You're you're doing these sorts of things on a part time basis, almost as a hobby, but now it's much more than a hobby, isn't it?
00:11:19
Speaker
Yes. um So after getting out of the liquor store and started getting into the cosmetology industry, starting to find a bit more of a little bit more of a work life balance in keeping with your theme,
00:11:34
Speaker
um i started to get more and more into performing um of course you know i'm very picky about the shows that i do so in the time that i first was working at the salon in osprey i ended up only doing two shows because there was only two i was interested in and then of course covid happened so there was no theater and who knew when it was going to you know go back to normal and so i just started looking for anything to do anything to make a video out of. I would do some Facebook live readings of horror stories.
00:12:09
Speaker
And, uh, then I started toying around with ah video editing apps on my phone. And then I thought maybe I'll busy myself writing more parodies. And, uh,
00:12:20
Speaker
In the the moment when I finally was able to take my state board exams and passed and got my license, I was so excited. It was like I was on an energetic and creative high.
00:12:31
Speaker
And that was when I came up with my Isley Brothers parody, going back to when you know we were kids. And you know we would hear Isley Brothers shout in a cleaning solution commercial.
00:12:44
Speaker
And of course, hearing it over and over again, of course, you start riffing on the lyrics. And so it became You Make Me Wanna Shit. And from there, it became all about public figures whose personalities are so abrasive that they upset your very bowels.
00:12:57
Speaker
And that ended up being my first. Yes, that was my first musical parody video that I had created. And it was all downhill from there.
00:13:09
Speaker
Downhill in a good way. Oh, yes. Yes, one parody after another. there was that one There was What is Fun, my Hathaway parody, parody of What is Love, about the frustrations of trying to find entertainment in southwest Florida when you're not geriatric.
00:13:26
Speaker
And then later there was um my parody of Talk to the Animals called Talk to the Assholes, which is about you know just finally giving up on trying to have a sane conversation with internet trolls.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yes.
Balancing Hairstyling with Creative Pursuits
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah. So like a 21st century issue for lots of people. It's a give, that gave up a long time ago, but all of this is on the website as well.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yes. Brilliant. So is this now your full-time job? No, um, my full-time job, I'm still cutting hair.
00:14:07
Speaker
Um, I don't want to say exactly where, you know, a chain salon and, um, the work there is very simple and that's the way I like to keep it. I like to be able to come home from work and still have the energy and the mental bandwidth to pursue my creative endeavors.
00:14:24
Speaker
Um, as of late, um, I've just with, you know, recent events, I find myself less inspired to write anything funny, but, um, i mean the time will come and I'll have a good idea and I'll write it down and revisit it later and it will become a thing.
00:14:41
Speaker
Does parody have to be funny? um I would argue yes. um Even if it's morbidly funny.
00:14:52
Speaker
um Otherwise you're doing is, you know taking somebody else's melody and making it your own song. And ah that would, I would argue that's just, that's not necessarily witty. It's just unoriginal.
00:15:04
Speaker
Right. So the art of the parody is to turn something that is not funny, but serious in many ways and turn it into something that is humorous, that talks about something serious in a way that changes or helps people to change their perception of that issue or encourages them to look at that issue in a different way.
00:15:30
Speaker
ah In general, I would say yes. Although I did make vacation, I did take a song that was originally funny and I updated it, if you will. um There's an old um song from the 1940s called Shaving Cream by Benny Bell.
00:15:48
Speaker
um It used to get regular rotation on the Dr. Demento show. I don't know how familiar you are with this song. I'm not familiar with it at all. So it just it's the same joke repeated over and over again. The verse would be something simple like, I have a sad story to tell you. It may hurt your feelings a bit.
00:16:08
Speaker
Last night I walked into my bathroom and stepped in a big pile of shaving cream. That sort of bait and switch. And so...
00:16:20
Speaker
I thought, what if I yeah did an updated version of that? Because I had actually heard an updated version on a recent album called Dr. Demento covered in punk, where they had punk artists doing covers of Dr. Demento standards and Dr. Demento artists doing covers of punk songs. It was very interesting.
00:16:37
Speaker
And I thought, what if I did one tailored to the plight of drag performers in Florida? So I got the so i created the Florida drag queens shaving cream song. which which contains such gems as Old Florida's Governor Ronnie wants story time drag queens to quit.
00:16:54
Speaker
He claims he's protecting our children, but my youngest knows he's full of shaving cream.
00:17:04
Speaker
I can't help myself, but you have to laugh. yeah and You have to laugh or you'll go crazy these days. This is true. This is true. There is definitely that element to life, but it is...
00:17:16
Speaker
it's It's interesting and it's a real art form, isn't it? To be able to take these the idea of a song and create something that is a parody and actually, i suppose, highlights to people their own stupidity or their own self-centeredness.
00:17:37
Speaker
It really does make you think about things in a different way.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah. What does the future hold? what's the What's the big plan, the big idea?
Future Plans: Moving to Cleveland
00:17:49
Speaker
So, um as you mentioned earlier, I'm getting ready to leave Sarasota, Florida and move to the Cleveland area up in Ohio.
00:17:56
Speaker
ah Part of the reason of that is I need to live in a more temperate climate. The summers are killing me. um Also, it's a lot more affordable to live up there. There's hope of being able to own a house up in Cleveland. yeah um Also, ah the performing arts are very big in the Cleveland area. They boast the second largest theater district in the country.
00:18:18
Speaker
And they also have an area called Coventry, which I have heard described as being like the Haight-Ashbury of Ohio. um i was actually up there last year ah with my girlfriend and we were visiting some friends and they took us to an alternative drag show ah in Coventry.
00:18:36
Speaker
And that gave me a little bit of hope that I might be able to find that Goldilocks audience that I've been looking for. and if not, of course, I'll... pursue some acting gigs in the theatre community. There's a lot more opportunities for talent representation up there than there is down here.
00:18:53
Speaker
And if not, I can still cut hair. It's always useful to have a skill, ah universal skill. But ah do you want to, you say, talk about, you talk about finding your Goldilocks audience, but is there a potential for your work to reach a wider crossover type audience as well?
00:19:13
Speaker
um perhaps um but once again it's very difficult because they have to you know be able to appreciate your humor and potentially also recognize the songs that you're riffing it's maybe not a necessity um but also i think back on something that weird al yankovic said in an interview um about trying to keep his uh his work, not only PG 13 at worst, but also steering away from topical material, uh, because you tend to lose, you you have to pick a side and you tend to lose half your audience invariably.
00:19:51
Speaker
But, um, I don't want to limit myself in that way. I want to be able to I generally try to stay away from topical parodies, but some topics just cry out to be riffed on. And I don't want to hold back for fear of losing an audience that in the end, I probably don't want.
00:20:08
Speaker
It's an interesting point, isn't it? Going for the the the quantity of audience and theyre all the various different rewards that that might bring, but then also balancing that with, actually, if I produce that and make lots of money out of it, I wouldn't necessarily be as happy as if I'm producing things that are really important to me and have a smaller audience.
00:20:35
Speaker
Quality versus quantity. Yes, and the qua quality of your audience as well as the quality of your work.
Community Reactions and Support
00:20:43
Speaker
i Is most of your audience from the LGBT community?
00:20:47
Speaker
um I have a pretty varied audience. My co-workers, of course, ah family and friends. And as far as people that have reached out from outside of my own inner circle, um I have gotten a lot of appreciation ah from the audiences at the Purple Rhino, like I mentioned.
00:21:06
Speaker
which is kind of a mixed audience, ah but not necessarily, i would say the the age range is probably like 30 and up. So I get a lot of appreciation from them. And LGBT audience members um tend to appreciate more of my topical stuff.
00:21:26
Speaker
Things like talk to the assholes, the banana boat song, shaving cream, et cetera. Right. So if there is someone in the ah Cleveland, Ohio area, who's running a club, looking for acts, what sort of things do you so say to them as the, the sort of act that you can provide that will draw in an audience?
Drag Style and Cultural History
00:21:52
Speaker
Well, I don't do what they do on drag race. Um, I won't lip sync for my life. I won't death drop. I do my own thing. And, uh, You know, if it works, it works.
00:22:04
Speaker
If not, we go home early. Exactly. At least you, but you gave me a chance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there are different schools of the drag art, aren't there? There what you see on the RuPaul Drag Race, which is probably the RuPaul school of it.
00:22:23
Speaker
In the UK, we had, unfortunately he has now passed, but um Paul O'Grady, whose drag persona was Lily Savage, which was a different type of um drag queen, very much into realism and and extreme realism I suppose, but talking about more of a working class type of lifestyle.
00:22:48
Speaker
yeah Lily was a streetwalker and all sorts of various different things, a fantastic character and um Paul became a very big star in the UK. um But there's different parts to it. We shouldn't assume just because there there's a drag act that it is in a particular box because it is a very wide spectrum of types of act. And it has a history that goes back you thousands of years.
00:23:19
Speaker
It does. a lot of people don't appreciate the the historical history. significance of it going back to shakespearean times and uh exactly and yeah speaking of are you drag performers um i was a big fan of are you being served when i was a kid and i remember john did a lot of uh i think they call it pantomime over there yes Yes.
00:23:44
Speaker
You have to remember with Shakespeare that every actor, every part in a Shakespearean play when they were first performed was performed by a man. um yeah The female parts were performed by um teenagers and pantomime has its origins in the Georgian and Victorian eras where with this the dame of the pantomime and the principal boy, ah genders were swapped and yeah created a tradition, a real big tradition of this pantomime, of the pantomime dame, the principal boy, all these sorts of things. It's ah been going along for a long, long time and not hurting anyone.
00:24:27
Speaker
So you're on your way to to um Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah, new adventures, possibly bigger, better things. Well, I hope so. I hope you have a great time. You're very happy and everything moves on to success as well. We'll put links into the website so people can share in that story and listen to your parodies as well. Where can people find your music?
00:24:50
Speaker
So I have a YouTube channel ah where I have videos for some of the parodies that I've written. um You can find that under the name Lady Laquel. That's L-A-Q-U-E-L-L-E.
00:25:04
Speaker
And I also have some recorded works on Reverb Nation under the same name. Right. OK, we'll put a link in the description for all of that. But today, Dee, thank you very much. I really enjoyed our conversation. It's been great.
00:25:19
Speaker
As did i Thank you very much for having me. been my pleasure. Thank you very much. I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abusida. And then in this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Di Palissier.
00:25:36
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abecita.co.uk. There is a link in the description. Best way to be healthy is to know the risks early, he said leading into a comment about our health sponsor, York Test.
00:25:49
Speaker
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00:26:32
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Dee and I have enjoyed making it. So why not give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:26:44
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:26:56
Speaker
Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.