Denver-born singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, who co-wrote the original “I Kissed a Girl” song, invites the audience to listen to her unique journey as an artist in her new show, F*ck7thGrade, at the Wild Project.
Jill Sobule’s F*ck7thGrade, a queer musical-memoir that marries narrative and song, has returned to the Wild Project for a limited engagement. Directed by Lisa Peterson, Sobule (music, lyrics, and concept) shares her life story thus far, cleverly drawing upon her stultifying days in seventh grade as a jumping-off point to examine her life beyond middle school.
On a set designed by Rachel Hauck, F*ck7thGrade is presented as a rock concert, with Sobule front and center as lead guitarist, accompanied by her band, Secrets of the Vatican. The members are Julie Wolf on keyboards; Kristen Ellis-Henderson on drums; and Nini Camps on bass. Although occasionally band members will step in to play characters from Sobule’s life, there’s no question that the lion’s share of the musical belongs to Sobule, and rightly so. Only she can infuse the score (a mash-up of rock, pop, and country) and story with the emotional depth of “been there, done that” authenticity.
“Sobule breaks the fourth wall now and then to invite the audience to do some soul-searching of their own.”
When Sobule takes the stage she tears into the song “Raleigh Blue Chopper,” capturing the time when she was in the sixth grade in the early 1970s and got the bike of her dreams, “a blue Raleigh with a big seat and small front wheel,” for her birthday. Even though she realized that she was a weirdo next to the girls with their pretty girl bikes, she felt cool flying down the hill to the Jewish Community Center. Or as the song’s lyrics put it: “Flying down the hill to the JCC/kindergarten kids all lookin’ at me./ I can drive with no hands, with both eyes shut/swerve between cars at the Pizza Hut.”
A beat later, Sobule tells us that her bike wasn’t her only adolescent obsession. She yearned to play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix—not finger-picking her instrument like a girl but “shredding it” like Hendrix himself.
Sobule breaks the fourth wall now and then to invite the audience to do some soul-searching of their own: “Did any of you feel awesome when you were thirteen? Raise your hand if you wanted to die.” About one-third of the listeners raised their hands. Sobule smiles knowingly, adding that she felt she had it worse than anybody else in seventh grade. Not only did she break up with a whole group of girls, but she had to wear clunky orthopedic shoes to correct being pigeon-toed.
Sobule performs in her queer musical-memoir, F*ck7thGrade, accompanied by her band, Secrets of the Vatican. Photographs by Eric McNatt.
Sobule’s premise that “seventh grade is the pits” gains dramatic heft when she spins her yarn about Mary, who arrived halfway through the academic year. Sobule had a crush on her, and even tried acid with her at the tender age of thirteen. Later that year, when Mary invited Sobule to her family’s cabin for spring break for what might have been Sobule’s first same-sex experience, except that, after getting high on Seagram’s 7 and weed, she puked in Mary’s lap. Sobule described the disaster in her not-so-innocent song, “What Do I Do with my Tongue?”
Sobule’s storytelling gets juicier as she enters her college years—reinventing herself in a Latin key. In Spain on a year abroad, she began busking; she landed a nightclub gig and began writing songs. In Spain, too, she had her first serious relationship with a woman who looked like a sporty Sophia Loren. Band member Camps (dressed by costume designer David F. Zambrana in chic leather pants, sexy top, and red scarf) impersonates the Loren figure to perfection.
Of course, the meat of the show is when Sobule recounts her rise to stardom with her 1995 song “I Kissed a Girl.” Back in the States, she had decided to drop out of school to have time for “waitressing, open-mic nights, and figuring out where the lesbians hung out.” Her magical moment came when she was discovered at a Holiday Inn in Denver by a record label rep who persuaded her to come to Nashville with him—launching her career.
But Sobule also shares how having a mega-hit song can be suffocating. Her fans would ask her to play it at concerts ad nauseam. Then, in 2008, Katy Perry appropriated Sobule’s title for a song of her own. Sobule says that made her feel “erased” and, if not bitter, much wiser to the ways of the commercial music world.
The 64-year-old Sobule, who calls herself a two-hit wonder (“Supermodel” is her other claim to fame), wraps up the show with a feel-good ballad, “It Was a Good Life.” And one senses in both its title and reverberating refrain that she has come to terms with her life’s choices and is ready to embrace whatever comes next.
Produced by the Wild Project (195 E. 3rd St.), F*ck7thGrade runs through Feb. 11. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. For tickets and information, visit wildproject.org.
