2004 NOMINEES
For full list of nominations, categories, songs, albums + photos click here

Kevin Aviance
The Bootlickers
Boston Gay Men’s Chorus
Namoli Brennet
Andrea Bunch
Julie Clark
Catie Curtis
D1
Johnny Dangerous
KJ Denhert
Terry Duggins & The Zither Band
Brady Earnhart
Jen Foster
Steven Franz
Skott Freedman
Freddy Freeman
Jon Gilbert Leavitt
Girlyman
Ari Gold & Kendra Ross
Heartland Men’s Chorus
Michael Holland
Janis Ian
Kristina Jean
Adam Joseph
Junior Senior
Justus Boyz
Kris Landherr
Danielle Lo Presti & The Masses
Deian McBryde
Deidre McCalla
Pamela Means
Metropolitan Klezmer
Kaz Mitchell
Ashley Moore
Tony Moran, Keith Fluitt & Guiseppe
DiCaccamo Jr.
Nhojj
Alix Olson
Drew Paralic
Portland Gay Men’s Chorus
Cathy Richardson Band
Janell Rock
Rothko . BLK w/Bear
Rachael Sage & Andy Zulla
Eve Sicular (Isle of Klezbos)
Sister Funk
Skin Jobs
Andrew Spice
Super 8 Cum Shot/Jinx Titanic
Testosterone Kills
Thomas Raniszewski
Transcendence Gospel Choir
22 Mountains
Robert Urban
Jim Verraros
Rufus Wainwright
Wishing Chair (with Kara Barnard)
The Women’s Chorus of Dallas
Leah Zicari

SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD 2004
Maxine Feldman
This Special Recognition OMA recognizes the role of MAXINE FELDMAN who is credited with writing the earliest openly lesbian song, Angry Atthis, in 1969. It later appeared on an album, 1979's Closet Sale ../more. Also see: QMH April 2002

SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD 2004
Marsha Stevens
This Special Recognition OMA recognizes the role of MARSHA STEVENS, known as the mother of contemporary Christian music and the only major singer in contemporary Christian music to identify as a lesbian.../more. Also see Balm Ministries

About Outmusic

Outmusic is a network of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered performers, composers, lyricists, producers, recording artists, activists, promoters, press/media and even non-musicians who believe in LGBT music. Outmusic began over a decade ago when a group of musicians met in an East Village apartment to share music and experiences. This became the open mics, which are still held monthly in New York, where new and seasoned musicians still come together with goals not unlike the original sessions: to share music and experiences in a safe and welcoming space. Since its founding, Outmusic has participated in the community in many ways. Some years the organization sponsored festivals, other years there have been compilation CDs or special events. Outmusic members also collaborate on projects and offer a valuable peer support system. As an outgrowth of this support and recognition among peers, 2001 introduced the first annual OUTMUSIC AWARDS (OMAs). .../more

OUTMUSIC HERITAGE AWARD
Jayne County

Zecca Esquibel writes: In 1975, I was lucky to squeeze into Max's Kansas City to see a band called Queen Elizabeth, fronted by an extreme drag queen from Georgia named Wayne County. In just one set, the singer wore a dozen wigs stitched together and filled with Christmas lights, ate dog food from a toilet bowl while singing about "Toilet Love" and, as a climax, painfully and brutally stripped off her drag item by item while scandalizing the packed house with a nearly primal-scream repetition of "I Don't Know Why I'm So Slow". No mere clown drag with gimmicks thrown in to titillate, Wayne's intense, and intensely autobiographical theater pierced every soul in the club. I had seen an artist work the rock and roll stage.

Two years later in London, riding the crest of the New Wave with her most superb band ever, "The Electric Chairs", Wayne announced her decision to become Jayne County and rocked the notoriously hard-core Roxy club with her face covered in what appeared to be giant stitches, forcing all of us to confront the surgery she would have to endure to become a woman. To create one's own world in the arts takes real courage.

Outmusic is presenting Jayne County with its Heritage Award for this same courage, the courage to be totally and honestly out. Beginning with her groundbreaking 1971 recording of "Are You Man Enough To Be A Woman", Jayne has always embraced and celebrated the truth about her sexual identity, probing more aspects of gay and transgendered life than any artist in any medium I can think of. Fearlessly, and with great pride, she has never flinched from the beautiful, ugly or mundane truth onstage, in interviews or in her daily life, inspiring several (forgive me, Jayne) generations of out musicians to be honest and proud and write about what they know.

Well into her fourth decade as both pioneer and Goddess in experimental theater as well as music, Jayne County continues to inspire and challenge, lead and push and dare us into the brightest spotlight of theatrical truth. She was the definition of out music before it officially existed, and she still is.

Also see: Jayne's Home Page

SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD 2004
Maxine Feldman

The 2004 Special Recognition OMA - honoring special achievements in LGBT music - recognizes the role of MAXINE FELDMAN who is credited with writing the earliest openly lesbian song. It's called Angry Atthis. Here is a quote from her about the writing of that song:

"I went to California and wrote my first lesbian song, Angry Atthis in May 1969, one month before the Stonewall riots. I wrote it in about three minutes, in a bar in L.A. Before Stonewall we had mafia-run bars where you were a fourth-or fifth-class person. It was the only place for dykes to meet; we didn't have festivals, or women's bookstores. At these bars, if you were in butch drag you could be arrested; you had to wear three "female" items by law. And be prepared for the bar raids. I didn't like the way it made me feel -- like we were useless and sick. I felt we were worth a lot more. Stonewall proved I was not alone. It was time for our protests. Angry Atthis, of course, is a play on words. I was "angry at this" lesbian oppression. My brainy girl side wanted to call my piece Sappho's Song, but then I read that Atthis was the name of one of Sappho's lovers. And Atthis began to appear to me as a better statement of all I felt. The song just spewed out of me."

As she said, Feldman wrote the song in 1969, and it took another three years before it was recorded, as a 45. In those years she was OUT well before it was considered safe for a gay or lesbian artist to be performing openly. This was before Olivia Records or any of the other early openly lesbian recordings. Feldman's openness lost her bookings and she was banned from some clubs, but she never compromised her act or her music. The song Angry Atthis later appeared on an album, 1979's Closet Sale. As a performer, she was a fixture at the Michigan Women's Festival for most of the 70's, and her song Amazon became an annual theme song for the event.

Also see: QMH April 2002

SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD 2004
Marsha Stevens

The 2004 Special Recognition OMA - honoring special achievements in LGBT music - recognizes the role of MARSHA STEVENS who is known as the mother of contemporary Christian music. And she is the first - and only - major singer in the contemporary Christian music subculture to identify herself publicly as a lesbian.

Stevens was the leader of the world's first contemporary Christian music group, Children of the Day, recording six albums over nine years. She also sang and provided back-up vocals on several of the Maranatha and Praise albums and toured extensively in the United States, as well as Canada, Israel and Europe, opening for Pat Boone, Billy Graham, Andrae Crouch and Kris Kristofferson, among others. Her folk hymn, For Those Tears I Died (Come To The Water) launched her career as a Christian singer/songwriter and has become a standard of Christian Hymnals. One of the only artists from the early Jesus movement to be still recording and touring fulltime, Stevens has recorded nine solo albums and a concert video on her independent BALM (Born Again Lesbian Music) label - and she performs between 150 and 200 concerts a year. Her recordings are consistently rated among the top 25 of all gay releases and she has been nominated for a GLAMA, was a headliner at the Millennium March on Washington stage, and in 2003 she her song Jesus Wept was selected as the genre winner by the Stonewall Society.

Currently, Stevens focuses her talents on evangelizing the lesbian and gay community through her gospel music. Highly respected throughout the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), she is the first lay recipient of the prestigious Purple Grass Award for excellence as an evangelist. In 2003 Stevens launched the upBeat! Music Ministry Training Program for emerging music artists in ministry to the GLBT community. To date 14 artists have completed the program.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORT 2004
Larry Flick

The 2004 Outstanding Support OMA - honoring special achievements in LGBT music - recognizes the role of LARRY FLICK who has been one of the most influential voices in popular music for the past 20 years - and yet he has never sung or played a note! Rather, he has served as a journalist, a critic, and an activist for music and musicians - particularly for the queer community. He is currently providing a high-profile forum for recording artists on "OutQ In The Morning", a daily talk-show he hosts with Cheryl Barcenas for Sirius OutQ, the gay talk/entertainment channel of Sirius Satellite Radio.

Prior to taking his opinions to the airwaves, Flick enjoyed a 14-year tenure as a senior editor/writer for Billboard Magazine, the internationally renowned music business trade publication. During his time there, he scored world exclusives and scoops with such superstars as Madonna, U2's Bono, Alanis Morissette, Britney Spears, David Bowie, Cher, and Metallica, among numerous others.

As a result, Flick has become a frequent television commentator on the industry and its artists, offering insights on programs that include the nationally syndicated "Access Hollywood," VH1's "Behind The Music," and A&E's "Biography." He's also been regularly quoted in such publications as People, Time, the L.A. Times, and Entertainment Weekly.

Additionally, Flick has developed a strong reputation as a music journalist, often contributing to the Advocate, Vibe, and TV Guide.

Flick started his career during the early '80s, when he toured as a publicist and travel-assistant to Kiss, the Power Station, and Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon. He also served as a creative consultant to Prince and the now-defunct Paisley Park Records.

Also see Sirius OutQ pages

OUTMUSIC AWARDS HOST
Tom Robinson

TOM ROBINSON is a singer, songwriter, broadcaster and campaigner. In the early 1970's Robinson formed the acoustic trio Café Society with two friends in London, impressing Ray Davies of The Kinks enough for him to produce their debut album. Robinson then formed the more overtly political Tom Robinson Band (TRB) in 1977, scoring a hit that year with "2-4-6-8 Motorway", which was quickly followed into the Top 20 by a live EP despite a BBC ban on the controversial lead track "Glad To Be Gay". Swept along by a tide of music press hysteria, TRB's debut album "Power In The Darkness" went gold.

In the 1980's Robinson's band Sector 27 recorded a critically acclaimed album with Steve Lillywhite and in 1983, after working in East Berlin with a band of Eastern Block musicians, he returned home with a song that became his Top 10 comeback, 'War Baby'. In 1984 a radio producer offered Robinson a series of his own on the BBC World Service. He quickly moved into mainstream radio - as a DJ on Radio One and as a guest contributor on Radio Four where he fronted a ground-breaking series of programs for men "The Locker Room" from 1992-95. His mid-90s album was titled "Having It Both Ways" and in 1998 the bisexual epic "Blood Brother" won him GLAMAs for Best Song and Best Male Artist.

Robinson's documentaries include the acclaimed "Surviving Suicide", and "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" - on the history of gay music - which won a Sony Radio Award for the BBC. Accepting John Birt's thanks on behalf of the corporation that banned "Glad To Be Gay" 20 years earlier remains one of Robinson's sweetest moments. Since March 2002 he can also be found on BBC Radio Two's new digital music network 6 Music - where he introduces new and interesting music to a wider audience four nights a week.

Robinson is an active supporter of Amnesty International, The National Assembly Against Racism and The Samaritans along with Peter Tatchell's Outrage! campaign and many others. When not writing or performing, he runs creative workshop sessions. His spare time is spent working on a new batch of songs for his 24th album.

Also see: Tom's Home Page