about Sing Out, Louise!

In October 2016, some members of Gays Against Guns began writing Christmas carols about gun violence for an action called GAG Nog. We’d written about a dozen songs when the unthinkable happened—Trump was elected. We quickly turned our brains to music that captured our mood, and survived that very bleak December belting “Donny the Con Man” at Christmas markets around New York.

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After the holidays, GAG Nog morphed into GAG Reflex, a full-fledged Resistance Queertet. When GAG joined the Women’s March the day after the inauguration, we were there, leading hundreds of folks in “Battle Him for the Republic,” “He’s a Nasty Neonazi,” and other patriotic songs. Soon we’d amassed what we call our hymnal: an always-evolving collection of irreverent, in-your-face songs “in the key of F you.”

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By the fall of 2017, we decided to spin off from GAG. The Reflex became Sing Out, Louise! That may seem odd as a resistance credo, a line from a Broadway show, but to us it resonates: Get out there—make your voice heard!

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From there the magic continued to grow, as did our love of hot pink and glitter and theatrics (well, that was always there). We've sung in bar basements, at Stonewall and the 92nd Street Y, in front of the White House and the Supreme Court, at the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, at holiday markets around NYC, in parks and on corners, in front of thousands at marches, or just for our own entertainment. 

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And here we are, 10 years later. We've survived (sometimes barely) elections, a pandemic, some quieter years, and more political insanity than we could ever have imagined possible. But the songs keep coming, the hymnal keeps changing, and the hot pink isn't going anywhere. With a renewed sense of urgency (and plenty of new material), we're still showing up, singing out, and bringing joy to the resistance.

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We aren’t necessarily pretty, and we’re never polite. We don’t care if you can't sing a note—we want you to take the hymnal and sing along. We are reclaiming our time and having a blast doing it.

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