The Pride Month countdown is underway, with events sprouting up throughout the Bay Area. In the East Bay, the Ivy Room in Albany is hosting themed happenings and queer performers in “Ivy Riot!”
From May 20, through July, “Ivy Riot!” features queer and transgender wellness panels and workshops, a queer prom and live music from the gay nü metal band COMMANDO and queercore veterans Team Dresch.
Comedian Irene Tu, a University of California, Berkeley alum, headlines a sold-out show on June 8.
“With comedy, there aren’t as many queer-focused shows, … so I think it’s really cool that they’re doing this, especially during Pride month,” says Tu, who has opened for Taylor Tomlinson, Patton Oswalt, W. Kamau Bell and Cameron Esposito and released the album “We’re Done Now” in 2022.
Tu, a SF Sketchfest veteran who has appeared at Cobb’s Comedy Club, co-founded and hosted the women- and queer-centered “Man Haters” at Oakland’s White Horse Bar and “Hysteria,” a weekly open mic night in San Francisco (currently at the SF Eagle Bar).
Tu, who lives in Los Angeles, heads back to the Bay Area every now and then. When in town, she’s up for a stop in a certain local comedy club.
“My favorite spot and my home club is the Punch Line, so usually I’ll go there, if I can,” she says.
This year, Tu is leaning toward a low-key Pride month: “I’m kind of going to just chill. I don’t do Pride as much as I used to. When I first came out, I felt like I would always go to the parade, and now I’m kind of an old gay that’s like, ‘I don’t want to leave the house, but it is Pride,’” quips Tu, who can be seen in “Big ‘They’ Energy” on YouTube.
“Ivy Riot!” kicks off May 20 with Oregon indie rock band Glitterfox, with Los Angeles indie musician Caitlin Jemma opening.
Queer, nonbinary married couple Solange Igoa and Andrea Walker are Glitterfox’s singer-songwriters, with Walker on guitar, Eric Stalker on bass and Blaine Heinonen on drums.
Igoa and Walker, who are both neurodivergent, met about 12 years ago, in Long Beach. They started dating—and playing music together—around the same time. From there, Glitterfox was formed.
“We’ve kind of always been together as a couple, and we’ve always been together as a band. It’s my whole life, my whole world, all wrapped up in one thing, and these songs are the songs of what we’ve been through. The songs are our story,” says Walker.
Glitterfox’s EPs are “Fringe” (2020) and “Night” (2022). In 2023-24, the band released singles under the Kill Rock Stars label including “Portland” and “Highway Forever,” in which Walker describes the couple’s time spent on the road, living in a van during their initial years as a band.
“You’d be driving all night and you’d be so tired and sometimes it’d be raining and it would be so sketchy. But you finally pull up and you can see the neon signs of a city and you feel that sense of relief, and that sense of arrival and feeling at home. I think Solange and I both very much feel at home on the road,” says Walker.
Glitterfox has appeared in “Gender Blender: A Queer Variety Show,” before the annual Portland Pride Waterfront Festival and Parade in July. The gig, performing among the LGBTQ+ community, comes with a guarantee of inclusion and acceptance.
“The queer community is the place where I feel the safest. It’s the place where I feel like I can be the most myself, where thinking about people’s pronouns is normalized—it’s not ‘a thing,’ you know? And so I just feel so safe and so comfortable,” Walker says.
“I think that it provides a space for all of us to go and just be ourselves,” Igoa adds.
For Igoa, performing at events like “Ivy Riot!” mean getting to be themself, with few, if any, assumptions about their gender and pronouns: “As the front person [in the band], I get misgendered a lot, and I don’t always correct people because if I let myself focus on it too much, it causes a lot of anxiety. … Sometimes it feels like I’m in gender drag as I’m talking to people, because people will be like, ‘Oh girl, your voice is so good, girl.’ And I’m like, ‘Thanks!’ I just play along because it’s just exhausting to do it [i.e., correct them] all the time. … But in a space like that, I just get to be myself, you know?”
Walker and Igoa have picked up on the presence of more LGBTQ+ individuals in Glitterfox’s audience.
“It makes me so happy that there are so many more queer people that are finding our band, that are finding our music [and] that are coming to our shows, because, honestly, I love the vibe of the queer community. It’s so kind and so respectful,” says Walker.
“I’m just like, ‘Finally, y’all are showing up! Where have you been for the last 12 years?” Igoa jokes.
Glitterfox appears at 8 p.m. May 20 at The Ivy Room, 860 San Pablo Ave., Albany. Tickets are $16-$20 at ivyroom.com/ivyriot#/events/10834. For the full “Ivy Riot!” schedule, visit ivyroom.com/ivyriot#/events.