The Masked Singer Finds His Balance

On a day when he’s not wielding his custom Gretsch guitar on stage for thousands of adoring fans, or posing for a photoshoot in flashy Versace and Etro looks, or making music with buddies like Elton John, Kylie Minogue, and Willie Nelson, Orville Peck rises before the rooster crows its cock-a-doodle-do. “I wake up between 5 and 6 a.m., and then I go to the gym pretty much every single day,” Peck says in his signature drawl. “If I have nothing to do that day, I’ll probably hang out with my dog, go to a farmer’s market or something, and get some stuff to cook.” 

It’s not often he has nothing to do. Peck and I first met at New York City’s kitschy gay country-Western bar Flaming Saddles Saloon in May for an early listen of his third full-length studio album, Stampede (out now), and then again in June for his InStyle shoot. He’s busy, and his team (politely) rescheduled our interview a few times amid his summer ‘24 Stampede Tour.

Today, a few days off a performance in Winnipeg, Canada, Peck dials in via Zoom to chat from his home in Venice Beach, California, where he’s enjoying a two-week respite from the road. Like any cowboy, he’s hungry. “I love to cook,” he says, relating a favorite dish he makes for his partner, Billy: “I make a really great Moroccan Chicken Tagine.”  

Peck is one of few contemporary musicians that is genuinely groundbreaking. While honoring the hallmarks of country music, writing original songs about love, loss, hope, and the relatable camp of merely existing, he brilliantly subverts tropes about the American cowboy, intentionally collaborating with progressive artists that undoubtedly diversify country music. He sings in a commanding manner that could turn country haters into the genre’s number-one fan, his masculine, velvety croon among the many reasons that so many have jumped on his proverbial bandwagon. (His tattooed arms and those thigh-, derrière-, bulge-grazing pants don’t hurt, either—just take a look at his horny comments section.)

A proud and openly gay man, Peck regularly uses his platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Legends like Shania Twain, Lady Gaga, and Beck don’t hesitate to work with him. And with his unmistakable look—a subversive, subtly sexual, bedazzled and (sometimes, not always) fringed mask firmly fastened—he’s managed to become simultaneously recognizable and not recognizable at all, maintaining a church-and-state relationship between his private and professional life. (If you’re curious, he arrived to set for this shoot sans-mask. Orville Peck isn’t his real name, but his management team would prefer we don’t get into that; just Google it.)

For Peck, fame, the concept of being perceived as a celebrity, hasn’t been easy to grapple with. Last June, he decided to postpone and eventually canceled his Bronco Tour, citing mental and physical health issues and calling it “one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.” It was an unexpected move; just the night before, he’d performed at the Theater at Madison Square Garden (the more intimate venue inside New York City's iconic arena), receiving several standing ovations from a sold-out audience—country purists, children who, he says, probably think he’s “Batman or something,” queer people rooting on a fellow gay.

“We get every gender, race, age, spanning from kids to senior citizens,” Peck says, warmly. “I also have a massive following of people that you wouldn’t expect at an Orville Peck show, you know? Straight, heteronormative country fans that just like my music. It’s a pretty special crowd. Everyone has such a lovely experience at my shows, and everyone’s so kind to one another, and encouraging of each other—it’s a beautiful thing.”

He continues: “I’ve maybe been quick to assume things about people based on where they’re from, what their lifestyle is, how they dress, how they look. I mean, I’ve played [my cover of Lady Gaga’s] ‘Born This Way’ at really country music festivals in super red states where it’s very obvious there’s a certain vibe going on, and there are people you’d least expect dancing to it, singing to it, enjoying it. It’s been a really affirming thing for me to remember that I shouldn’t be quick to pass any judgment or assumptions on people.” 

If there’s joy in watching disparate worlds come together while on stage, why throw in the towel, even momentarily? Why bring an exciting tour to an abrupt halt? Peck, who describes himself as a socially awkward person, says the Bronco Tour was among the first to kick off post-pandemic, and being thrust right back into the public eye took a toll.

“I was just not taking care of myself. I was burning the candle at both ends, and it was all coming to a head. I was exhausted. I was physically in really bad shape, emotionally, mentally, the whole thing. I started to become so depressed, and I also started to lose a lot of love for this business, and I started to lose a lot of faith that this is something I could continue to do,” Peck says. “I felt like I was losing my identity.”

He finds the beast of Hollywood strange. “There’s a lot that I think is really unnatural about it,” he says. “In Western society, we are inundated to believe that fame and success and fortune are really important things to attain and reach for. Anybody who is a grounded person knows that when they start to get those things, you start to quickly realize, Oh, shit, this isn’t actually fun most of the time.”

Now 36, Peck doesn’t divulge many details about his personal life. Born in South Africa and raised in Vancouver, Canada, from age 15 onwards, Peck has said he grew up as a trained ballet dancer, actor, and performer with a penchant for country music. His father worked as a sound engineer and his parents were self-employed, at one point living in Lisbon for a year when Peck was a kid; his point of view is worldly. “We’d move around a lot, just kind of going where there was work, so we were always sort of a circus family vibe,” he says fondly. 

In March, Peck made a public appearance with Billy at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscars viewing party in L.A., and shortly after posed with him at the 2024 Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York City, where good friend Jennifer Lawrence honored Peck with the Vito Russo Award for “accelerating LGBTQ acceptance.” Appearing as a couple wasn’t a publicity stunt, just an organic move.

“I don’t think it was necessarily a decision that either of us made. I like keeping my personal life personal and private. My partner also values his privacy and our privacy, so I don’t know, there are certain events that, of course, he’s my date to, and I want to include him,” Peck says. “For GLAAD, I just wanted him to be there when I was getting something really important to me. I don’t think either of us really expected there to be so much commotion about it or about him. …It’s not like we were like, ‘Okay, here’s his big media moment.’” As for whether Peck would like to elaborate on how they met, or how long they’ve been together, he says, respectfully, but sternly: “No.” 

For Stampede, a duets album, Peck collaborated with an enviable litany of artists, stretching himself, even singing in Spanish on “Miénteme” with Bu Cuaron. Other collaborators include Willie Nelson, Midland, Noah Cyrus, Diplo, Kylie Minogue, Mickey Guyton, Teddy Swims, and Margo Price, all of whom he reached out to directly, curious as to whether they’d want to feature. Evidently, everyone is down to join Peck’s rodeo.

Singles include “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,” Peck and Nelson’s cover of Ned Sublette’s on-the-nose 1981 song about gay cowboys; “How Far Will We Take It?” with Cyrus (“She’s like my little sister”), a poetic love song that winks at bisexuality; and “Midnight Ride,” his disco-tinged duet with Minogue. 

On “You’re an Asshole, I Can’t Stand You (and I Want a Divorce,”) written by and featuring Price, he pays tribute to the campy humor that typifies country songwriting, with lyrics like, “Margo, you sure do take the ‘O’ out of country.” “There’s this bygone era in country, [when] in the ‘50s and ‘60s, there was a lot of what’s called hokum—a blending of music, humor, and comedy. Dolly Parton often has a lot of hokum in her songs. There’s wit, a wink, and a little bit of a funny entendre,” Peck says of the song. “There’s a really famous song called, ‘You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly’ [performed by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty]—that kind of vibe."

“Humor is a huge and very important part of my life. It’s a really vital part of [queer] culture. We’ve always had the ability to turn tragedy into humor with wit, wordplay, and comedy,” says Peck. “I’ve always been someone who’s used humor, even in times when it was a defense, you know? The idea of camp and country go hand in hand.”

In a year when everyone seems to have gone country—take, for example, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter—I’m curious how Peck feels about artists' genre-bending. “All of us who are firmly country, we appreciate it,” he says. “What we enjoy seeing is that it’s not weird for people anymore. Someone like Beyoncé doing country, that’s broken the ice for some people’s idea of what country music should be. Country music is and should be for everybody. …I think everyone’s catching up to that now.”

Although diverse stories and perspectives are not new to country music, the genre has been traditionally white and straight; Peck is helping usher in change. On “Where Are We Now?” he duets with Guyton, a longtime friend and the first Black female solo artist to be nominated for a Grammy in a country category.

“Orville and I are kindred spirits,” Guyton says. “We instantly clicked the moment we met and started working together. We just instinctively look after each other and it’s such a gift to call him my friend.”

Writing Stampede was a healing experience, Peck says, and so the Stampede Tour had to reflect his growth. “I did something that I’ve never done…which is limit the amount of time I’m actually on tour, separating my tour into chunks,” he says. “I’ve learned that I need balance in my life, so I can go and do two or three weeks of awesome shows and feel great, and then right [when] I’m getting to the point where I’m starting to feel run down, feel like I can’t enjoy this, or even pull off the show that people deserve, it’s like, I get to go home and have two or three weeks off to recharge.”

On the Stampede Tour, and in accompanying promotional images and videos, Peck’s inches-long, fringed mask has evolved to a more subdued version that reaches to just above his cheekbones. “Looking back, it’s very clear that I [wore a large mask] almost subconsciously because I really wanted to make vulnerable music. I wanted to tell my story in country music, and just sing about my life and experiences. I didn’t have the confidence back then to just do it without it,” Peck says. “As my career has gone on, I still strive for authenticity and vulnerability as the two most important things in my songwriting. What’s changed and evolved is my confidence. I feel very practiced and comfortable with being vulnerable now,” he says. “The mask has naturally started to become a little less important to me. Visually, I feel happier and more comfortable to show a bit more of myself because I don’t feel as scared.”

I tell Peck it’ll be exciting to witness the progression of the mask, to watch it taper and change alongside his discography. “Me too, honestly, and I say that totally unironically,” he says. “I am trying so hard in my life in general to be present, and not live in the past or live in the future, so I’m just letting it be what it is today.” 

Who’s your favorite movie or TV villain?

Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman is, like, kind of the best.

If you were required to spend $1,000 today, what would you buy and why?

This [Polo Ralph Lauren] suit ‘cause I really like it, actually.

If you ran for office, what would your slogan be?

What the heck? Vote for Peck!

Is there an outfit you regret wearing?

I once had to wear latex, and so, for anyone who’s ever worn latex out there, you know the process of getting into latex is a fucking nightmare. And I don’t even think the photos ended up in the shoot, in the end, so it was just getting head-to-toe covered in lube for no reason.

First album you ever owned?

The first album I ever bought with my own money was Patti Smith’s Horses.

Name one place you’ve never been but have always wanted to go.

I’ve never been to Japan and I want to go really badly.

Favorite joke? Tell it!

I love jokes. Um, I don’t know about a favorite one but… 

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Boo.

Boo-who?

Don’t cry, it’s only a joke. 

Favorite Hollywood Chris?

Chris Evans.