It’s not very often that you can see a seven-foot-tall drag queen performing punk music in the streets, but that’s about to change.
Bev Rage and The Drinks are headlining the North Stage at the first Edgewater Music Fest on Friday, September 5. Chicago Reader named them the best punk band in the city in 2024, and they recently released two new singles in anticipation of a new album, out next year.
The band is a loud, post-punk, pop-rock band. Beverly Rage is the singer, guitarist and main songwriter of the band. The band’s been playing for nearly a decade, playing Chicago stages and beyond since 2016.
Drag and punk might seem like two worlds apart, but Rage said they’re not actually so different.
“They’re both built on this idea of protest and anti-authoritative spirit,” she said. “And that’s where my idea of drag and punk come from as well. Doing drag is really powerful, and it came up in my life around just being really influenced by powerful, fierce women in music. Honoring them through the art of drag is how I have viewed it.”
The band’s stage presence is also continually changing, and audience members from years ago might find show almost unrecognizable. Rage says every album is a complete evolution from the one before.
Rage was born in a small town outside of Canton, Ohio. She started learning guitar at 15 and grew up around the punk scene in Cleveland. When she moved to Chicago in 2008, she said becoming a part of the scene here happened quickly.
She was developing her own style of alternative drag at the time, but she couldn’t find other drag-punk bands doing what she wanted to do, so she made it happen.
“I had this ‘aha’ moment where I was like, ‘Oh, wait, I am a musician and a drag queen. Why can’t I be both?’” she said.
“I don’t give a fuck about anything, but there’s also this part of me where I’m like, what I do is important and it has a message,” she said. “I really want people to know why I do it and why it’s important for young queer people and young gender diverse people to see someone like me on stage.”
When Rage started to perform in drag, she said it was the height of RuPaul’s popularity. She said it was freeing to do drag without fear at the time. But, in the nine years since the band started, it’s gotten a little scarier to perform in drag, especially in the shows they play in small towns or red states. And with dozens of anti-drag bills moving through state legislatures across the country in the past few years, she says there’s been a notable shift.
“We’re stepping back a minute, and we have to bring back our punk rock attitude around queerness. It’s really important to protest… You have to be a part of your community to really move forward.”
She says that while it is riskier to be doing drag in these times, it’s actually galvanized her to do drag at a higher level, and to improve her costumes and makeup. She wants to make her live shows even more fun and exciting, because it’s a place where queer people can come to feel safe and seen.
“These people can think what they want to think,” she said. “I’m going to do the thing that allows queer people and drag and punk rock to all exist harmoniously and be in a space where it’s supposed to be.”
At the Edgewater Music Fest, the audience will get all the sounds and feelings from a typical punk show, with all the theatrics of a drag show. Rage hinted at some costume changes, audience participation—and certainly no boredom.
With a new album coming out next year, the band will likely play some unreleased songs. It could be the first time an audience will hear them in advance of the album release.
“I don’t get nervous on stage as a drag queen, she said. “I can get up there and I feel like the most powerful thing in the world.”
Their two new singles, “Gay Panic” and “Phantom,” are out now. Listeners can also expect to see their Audiotree session out sometime in September.