Columbia alternative-country artist Orville Peck cuts an enigmatic figure by design—his face is hidden behind a series of distinctive fringed masks. But the truth of his songs is in no way obscured, particularly on new set Bronco, which dropped in April. The extremely busy Peck is now on a U.S. headlining tour following splashy appearances at Stagecoach and Coachella. South Africa-born and Canada-based, he’s managed to cultivate a uniquely gay sensibility in a macho, traditionalist space.

You seem to be going nonstop this year. How does this cycle compare to the limited promotion you were able to do for the Show Pony EP? How does it feel to be back in the saddle?
It feels great. I regret that I was never really able to tour Show Pony. So many of us had to stop projects we’d been working on for a year or more because of the pandemic. But it feels awesome to have been able to work on Bronco, which I put so much into emotionally, and to now be able to share it with people.

What were your early experiences like as an openly gay performer? Did you face any obstacles?
Early on, I was naive about the fact that being an openly gay musician would have a bearing on what I could or couldn’t do. I grew up, thankfully, in a family that allowed me to be whoever I was going to be. I took an interest in making music and charged forward with blissful ignorance, or privileged ignorance. Obviously, as I got older and more successful, I started to notice that it was an obstacle in some sense, but I still maintain that early spirit to this day; I feel like if you can get to a place where you’re first and foremost safe to be who you are, comfortable to be who you are, happy to be who you are and proud to be who you are—things that are hard to achieve, and some people don’t have the luxury of even one of those—you can go forward not acknowledging the obstacles.

Where I’m at in my life, if I sit too deeply in the idea that there are obstacles ahead and all these hoops to jump through because of something I innately am, it would probably stop or at least hinder me. So I don’t accept the notion that being who I am should ever be any sort of obstacle to what I want to achieve in my career or personal life. I go ahead with hopefulness that there don’t have to be barriers any longer. Fundamentally, of course, there shouldn’t be. My attitude is a sort of militant disregard.

What advice would you give an openly gay performer just entering the industry?
If you can safely and comfortably be yourself, that is a privilege, and you should be as much yourself as you can be. It’s definitely been a journey for me to allow myself to be vulnerable enough to be myself. And not just in aspects of my sexuality but in lots of things about myself. To get yourself to a very vulnerable and open place, that’s the way to be a performer because then people can connect with you on an emotionally authentic level, which is what we want from art. And my measure of success is to be heard and to be connected. For better or worse, you have no choice but to be yourself.

Do you intentionally write from the perspective of an openly gay country artist?
It’s intentional, but at the same time, it’s just who I am. Though I do recognize the importance of someone like me telling my story in country music, where we don’t necessarily hear too many gay points of view. I probably represent a lot of stories that haven’t been told, and that might feel freeing and validating for fans of country music who maybe have the same perspective I do. As a country-music fan myself, I didn’t grow up with anything like that. So I take that responsibility very seriously and I take it on with a lot of pride.

Your stage wardrobe presents a glittering, cowboy-superhero image. How important is that in allowing you to fully express yourself?
My visual aesthetic is a huge part of what I do, and I’ve always been a fan of artists like David Bowie and Elton John and Dolly Parton. I’ve kind of screwed myself at this point, though, because I don’t wear anything twice and [costume designer and stylist] Cathy [Hahn] and I have set the bar really high, so we have to keep topping ourselves.

Cathy has such great knowledge of and love for not only Western fashion and cowboy fashion but contemporary looks. We have a reverence and respect for where Western culture and cowboy culture come from. Sometimes my outfits are straight-up vintage Western wear, Nudie suits, original pieces. But then there’s usually a twist of some kind of contemporary style. The process is very collaborative. We’ve developed that shorthand with each other where we just know what we’re both going to like. We have a huge archive of pieces now, things we’ve been holding onto for years waiting for the right moment. It’s turning into quite a museum.

Does Cathy also do your masks?
I made all my masks by hand myself for many years. Then, late last year, Cathy and I went to a special-effects team in Hollywood, and they did a full cast of my face. I still choose the colors and type and length of the fringe and other elements, but the mask itself is now completely form-fitting on my face. I feel like Batman!

You’ve been a huge supporter of drag culture. I saw you perform on Kimmel and was lucky enough to meet Trixie Mattel. With drag culture making its way into the mainstream, some of the performers are now pursuing more traditional music careers. What’s your take on that?
Trixie is a great example of taking it as far as you want to take it. She was on RuPaul’s Drag Race. For a lot of people, just being on the show would be enough. And that is a huge achievement. But with Trixie, that’s almost been a starting point in terms of her creativity and ambition. Her approach to what she does is very similar to my own in that she doesn’t let any one thing about her define her or limit her career. Her music stands on its own completely outside of the world of drag. She’s a really talented songwriter and guitarist. She has a makeup line and a very successful video series. She just opened a motel, for God’s sake—she’s a hospitality mogul! If tomorrow, she said, “I’m going to be an astronaut,” she would go and do it. That’s just how Trixie is.

RuPaul’s Drag Race and RuPaul herself have provided an outlet for the art of drag to be normalized to the pedestrian public and commercialized to the point that drag queens can now do anything within the sphere of their artistry.

You’ve collaborated and appeared with some incredible performers: Shania Twain, Tanya Tucker, actor Norman Reedus… Who’s on your wish list?
I’d love to do something with Willie Nelson or Elton John.

If you could say anything to your child self, what would it be?I actually write in my journal every day to little Orville Peck. I had a lonely, sad, hectic childhood with regards to bullying and things like that. And I think I spent many years of my life seeking out relationships where I wasn’t treated very well, surrounding myself with people who didn’t treat me very well and in turn realizing that I wasn’t treating myself very well—I was my own bully. That was just what I’d been trained to receive and thought I had to feel. I was essentially mean to myself and found people who could be mean to me too. What I say to my younger self constantly is that you are not only enough, you’re more than enough, and you deserve love and kindness because that’s what you always try to put into the world. And even more than finding people who will be kind to you, you need to practice every single day being kind to yourself. That’s kind of the secret to life.

That reminds me of “The Curse of the Blackened Eye.”
That song is about leaving a toxic situation. Though it’s not actually about the situation or even about leaving it; it’s about what lingers after leaving something like that and realizing that sometimes when we remove ourselves from toxic places or people, we still subconsciously carry around the trauma. We can’t quite shake it, which can also result in us being mean to ourselves. I suddenly realized that even though I’d been physically removed from the situation and had started my life over and tried to get into this better place, I mentally had something still following me around like a curse. And I couldn’t get rid of it.

“It ain’t the letting go/ It’s more about the things that you take with.”
That’s it!

You’ve said writing Bronco was a freeing experience. Can you elaborate?
When I started my life over last year on this journey to authenticity and radical self-acceptance, I got to a point where I didn’t care any longer what anybody else thought. I used to not care when I was younger, when I was a songwriter, because I had no audience; I was just making music for myself, and it didn’t matter what anyone thought because no one was listening.

During the Show Pony era, I suddenly had an audience, and I had this big expectation on me because Pony had been successful. There were questions about what the next album was going to be. Would it be better? Would it be worse? Would it be good enough? I was carrying around a lot of pressure and it was making me feel very inauthentic about who I was as an artist and the music I wanted to make. I was being pulled in directions that weren’t necessarily true to me.

Once I got back to not caring what people think, I started writing music for myself again. I didn’t care if I was going to feel embarrassed about it or if it was going to be a flop or successful or all the things that come with the pressure of any form of success. I suddenly got to a really pure place where I just wanted to write the album I wanted to write, which sounds simple, but it’s a really hard thing to do, especially when you come up like I did, working for your success and not being handed anything in this industry. It was really hard to find my way back to that pure place. And I’m so glad I did, because I feel validated that I made this album completely the way I wanted to make it. There isn’t a single thing—a note or song or lyric—that I didn’t want.