Kinseys more than men in lipstick
By Web Behrens
Special to the Tribune
Chicago Tribune
April 11, 2003
One look at the Kinsey Sicks, and you’re bound to get some ideas about the men who make up this musical quartet. The super-sized skirts, the heavy cosmetics, the beehive hairdos: They’ve certainly got the style of outrageous, marvelous drag queens.
Although only one component of their performance, the hilarious look is the first thing people notice about the Kinseys, who make their second foray into the Chicago area starting Thursday (sandwiching a show in Glen Ellyn with two in Lakeview). But the troupe effortlessly melds several varieties of entertainment–they’re a drag show, they’re a comedy routine, they’re golden-throated vocalists. The Kinseys actually defy categorization to such a degree, they’ve coined their own genre: Dragapella Beauty Shop Quartet.
“The central part of what we do is our music and our lyrics and our comedy,” says Kinsey girl Ben Schatz. “Drag is the vehicle that gives us the permission to go places with an audience that we couldn’t otherwise.”
Those places range from simply silly to cutting satire, all in four-part harmony. With both original material and parodies of popular tunes, “I’m always trying to push the envelope culturally,” says Schatz, who writes the music. “The lyrics of many of our songs push the envelope more than I was able to do when I was a talking head on `Nightline,’ masquerading as a respectful homosexual.”
As with many aspects of the Kinsey Sicks, the men behind the makeup defy expectations. Both Schatz and co-founder Irwin Keller, a Niles native, are civil-rights attorneys with impressive resumes. Schatz, former executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, authored Bill Clinton’s HIV policy during the 1992 campaign. Before serving as executive director for a San Francisco-based AIDS legal group, Keller played a key role in adding sexual orientation to Chicago’s human-rights ordinance. He was principal author of the bill, which became law in December 1988.
“This [career] is something I never would have imagined,” Keller continues. “The Kinsey Sicks [began] as a place to let loose, to do something creative and really selfish. It was very much about getting to be a ham. Arranging and singing music was something I really, really loved. … For none of us was this a scheme to get out of the everyday work world.”
They’ve come a long way since their days in San Francisco, dressing in drag just for fun. After delighting fellow audience members at a Bette Midler concert nine years ago–some of whom assumed they were performers–and humming tunes together on their way home that night, the group of friends got a crazy idea. They dreamt up the clever name Kinsey Sicks–a pun on the Kinsey scale of sexual orientation from the 1950s–and had their first concert on a street corner the next summer.
Now much more than just a side project, their sassy doo-wop style has earned awards in a cappella competitions, and they won widespread attention in the press at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal last year. And then, of course, there’s the little matter of their critically hailed off-Broadway debut in 2001, “Dragapella.”
“It’s truly amazing,” says Chris Dilley, the tenor who arranges their music along with Keller. “You might think that we would be very much a gay men’s act and that other folks wouldn’t have much interest in us.” But their fan base includes people of all sexual orientations, ages and religions, he says. “I think it speaks to how unique our act is, that people have a hard time characterizing it. The truth is, we’re not just one thing; we’re many things at once.”
“As we’ve traveled the country and now the world,” Dilley adds, “we’re finding that there are people everywhere with bad taste. And that’s inspiring.”
In addition to their two city shows, The Kinsey Sicks will perform at 8 p.m. April 18 at McAninch Arts Center at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn; $10-$20. 630-942-4000.
