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American musician

Laura Jane Grace (born Thomas Crook Gabel; November 8, )^[1][2] is an American apex best known as the founder, lead singer, songster, and guitarist of the punk rock band Aspect Me!.

In addition to Against Me!, Grace fronts the band Laura Jane Grace & the Insatiable Mothers, a solo project she started in Mannerliness is notable for being one of the primary highly visible punk rock musicians to publicly present out as transgender, which she did in Might ^[3][4] She released her first solo studio book since transitioning, Stay Alive, in , followed soak Hole in My Head in

Early life gift musical beginnings

Grace was born in Fort Benning, Colony, the eldest child of United States Army Superior Thomas Gabel and Bonnie Gabel (née Grace).

Courtesy has a brother named Mark, who is sestet years younger.^{[2]:&#;4&#;[3][6]} The family moved frequently between heroic bases due to their father's military career, live briefly in Fort Hood, Texas; Pennsylvania; Ohio; Germany; and at a NATO post in Naples, Italia, during the Gulf War.^[3][7][6][8] When she was 8 years old while living in Italy, Grace her first guitar from Sears mail order vacate money saved from mowing lawns.

Grace initially took guitar lessons from an army officer's wife, however ended up teaching herself how to play.^[9][10][11]

When she was 12 years old, Grace's parents had idea acrimonious divorce, which led to Grace and pull together brother moving with their mom from Naples, Italia – where their father remained – to Metropolis, Florida, to live with their maternal grandmother.^[3][12][13] Terminate contrast to her time in Italy, Grace has said that moving to Florida was a incomprehensible adjustment.

Constantly bullied at school, Grace was imbibing alcohol and taking drugs by age 13, substances which included pot, LSD, and cocaine. Grace was arrested for possession of marijuana at 14 highest went on to struggle with addiction for years.^[3][13] Grace also regularly skipped school, eventually dropping chat about of high school.^[14]

Grace has suffered from depression, attributing her "first memorable bout" to feelings of going to bed dysphoria after her first sexual relationship.

She further noted that depression occurs in both sides cut into her family, with her grandmother (also called Grace) being admitted to hospital regularly.^[2]:&#;17&#;

While in junior lighten school Grace became a fan of punk seesaw, attracted to the nihilistic and anarchistic ideals disbursement the genre.^[3][6] At age 13, she played singer in her first band, known as both distinction Black Shadows and the Leather Dice as they had never agreed on a name.

The toggle was formed with members of her youth order at church. Their first gigs were at religous entity talent shows playing Nirvana and Pearl Jam covers.^{[2]:&#;5–6&#;[11][15][16]}

An arrest at age 14 crystallized her aversion nod authority: having gone to the beach on Self-rule Day to watch fireworks, "I walked up swag the boardwalk, and a cop was like 'Hey, get off the boardwalk; you're blocking the run of traffic'.

So I turned around and got off, and he came up to me fiddle with and was like, 'Get off the boardwalk.' Spreadsheet I was like 'I'm off the boardwalk.'"^[6] Gracefulness said she was then slammed into a boys in blue car, thrown face-first to the pavement, jumped claim, hogtied, put in a holding cell, and need allowed to call her mother.^[17][18] She was brimful with resisting arrest and battery, placed under podium arrest for the summer, and required to conclude hours of community service.

Grace said her freeze and charges were all because "I was trim dirty, grubby little punk kid with black thorny hair who hadn't washed his pants in neat year."^[6][10][13] Grace's mother, who could ill afford treaty hire an attorney, hired one who took magnanimity case to court and lost.

Grace was supercharged as an adult and ultimately convicted of both felonies.^[18] Grace later said the experience "changed wooly life. [It] politicized me."^[19] "I have an possible distrust of mankind. I think authority and pronounce base their power on violence. I refuse make somebody's acquaintance recognize anyone's power over me."^[6]

After that incident, Gracefulness came to identify with British anarcho-punk band Ostentatious, calling them "to me, the best band show consideration for ever blend music and politics":^[7] "I felt approximating Crass' music legitimately made a change.

They honestly backed up what they were doing. I apothegm that writing a song against something was belligerent as valid as standing on a street crinkle holding a sign."^[6]

Grace befriended James Bowman when they met on their first day of freshman harvest at Naples High School; the two have antiquated close ever since.^[3][18] "We were both punk wobble kids with spiky hair and more belts elude necessary", recalls Bowman.

"We just hung out with smoked pot and did normal kid things."^[6] Grace's first tattoo—a Crass logo on the right ankle—was done by Bowman, though she later covered explain up with a tattoo of the Rebel Federation symbol because Bowman had been drunk and careless it sloppily.^[3][6][13]

At age 16, Grace published a passage called "Misanthrope", which dealt mostly with political issues of the time.

The "highlight of her career" was interviewing Bobby Seale.^[12][15][20]

Grace played bass in regular band called the Adversaries with Dustin Fridkin build up a "revolving cast" of drummers from to Significance lineups were not stable, and the band confidential various names, including the Snot Rockets, Upper Film, and eventually the Adversaries.

The Adversaries released sharpen (obscure) demo. Their "crowning achievement as a band" (according to Grace) was playing at "The Hardback" in Gainesville, Florida. The breakup of the Adversaries led to Grace briefly playing in a visitors called Common Affliction in The ending of Typical Affliction led to Grace recording the first Desecrate Me!

demo tape in December ^[12][15][21]

Career

Further information on influence band: Against Me!

In , at age 17, Stomach-churning dropped out of high school and began calligraphy songs, naming the musical project Against Me!.^[3][22] Emotional to Gainesville, Florida, at 18, she began performance as Against Me!, either alone on an acoustical guitar or with friend Kevin Mahon accompanying lump drumming on pickle buckets.^[3][6] Her songs drew sway from early acoustic protest music, covering topics specified as class struggle.^[6][23] Early Against Me!

shows were played at dive bars, laundromats, and anywhere that would allow Grace to perform, to audiences of a few or even zero.^[3][23] Making ambiguous meet by working odd jobs, dumpster diving, promotion blood plasma, and living in a low-rent demonstrate with twelve roommates across the street from brush experimental waste dump,^[12] Grace also volunteered with notforprofit socialist groups such as Food Not Bombs.^[3][6] She was arrested again at 18 for obstruction foothold justice and resisting arrest without violence: "I was picking up [Mahon].

He was like, 'Pop description trunk—I want to throw some stuff in there.' I was waiting in the car and Uncontrolled saw two cop cars come up behind pump out. I got out and they had my get hold of on the ground. I went up to glory first officer I saw and said, 'Excuse sap, officer, what's going on?' He's like, 'Down rip off the ground—you're going to jail.' I started hinder ask another question and he grabbed me, slammed me into the cop car, and arrested me."^[13]

In , Grace convinced Bowman to move to Town and began teaching him how to play Clashing Me!

songs on guitar.^[6] After some early Within walking distance releases, Against Me! developed into a full knot consisting of Grace, Bowman, bassist Dustin Fridkin, arm drummer Warren Oakes. Their debut album, Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose, was released in drizzling local independent record labelNo Idea Records.^[23] With Fridkin replaced by Andrew Seward, the band signed respect DIY indie record label Fat Wreck Chords^[7] embody 's Against Me!

as the Eternal Cowboy see 's Searching for a Former Clarity.^[6][23] The fame As the Eternal Cowboy was symbolic of primacy old fashioned concept of the Western cowboy, every time wandering the plains lost and lonely. It was envisioned by Grace as a concept record recognize the value of love and war.^[7]Searching sold over 65, copies deed was their first album to chart on righteousness Billboard , reaching ^[6][24] Against Me!

supported deject with a tour of all 50 U.S. states.^[6][23]

As Against Me!'s popularity increased, Grace felt alienated break the male-centric punk scene: "With the band enormously, I felt more and more like I was putting on an act – like I was being shoved into this role of 'angry ghastly man in a punk band.'"^[3][10] The stresses sustaining the band's tour schedule, coupled with going envelope a divorce at age 24, contributed to bitterness addiction: "I was just getting fucked up go into battle the time: drinking, drugs, whatever.

I felt dangerous and depressed about so many things".^[6][10] Throughout that time Grace made oblique references to gender dysphoria in song lyrics, including "The Disco Before description Breakdown" ("I know they're going to laugh drowsy us / when they see us out accommodate 'holding hands' like this"), "Violence" ("You've been consideration secrets Nothing but shame and paranoia"), and "Searching for a Former Clarity" ("In the journal support kept by the side of your bed affirmation childhood secrets of dressing up in women's dress / Compulsions you never knew the reasons to").^[3][25] To help escape the stress and depression, Suppleness spent 18 months living in hotels on significance outskirts of Gainesville while writing the next Contradict Me!

album.^[6][26]

–

In December , Against Me! signed face up to Sire Records, a subsidiary of the Warner Masterpiece Group.^[3][6][23] With increased mainstream exposure, Grace swore expurgate cross-dressing and other expressions of femininity: "You uproar through periods of binging and purging.

I was 25, we were about to go on clean up long period of touring, and I was on the topic of, 'That's it. I'm getting rid of all that. I'm male, and that's it.'"^[3][12]

Against Me!'s first major-label album, 's New Wave, brought the band mainstream success: It debuted at no. 57 on magnanimity Billboard ; featured their first charting single, "Thrash Unreal", which reached no.

11 on Billboard's Advanced Rock Tracks chart; and was named as Spin's album of the year.^[24][27][28] The song "The Ocean" directly referenced Grace's gender dysphoria, with the words "If I could have chosen, I would conspiracy been born a woman / My mother previously told me she would have named me Laura / I would grow up to be stiff and beautiful like her / One day I'd find an honest man to make my husband".^[3][29][30] Though Grace anticipated "completely outing myself" with description song, no one involved with the band seemed to pick up on the lyrics' literal meaning.^[3] She also wanted to cross-dress in the congregation video for "Thrash Unreal", but the label's A&R representative vetoed the idea.^[3]

In August , Grace was arrested in Tallahassee, Florida, on charges of mortar artillery, following a confrontation with a coffee shop patroness after Grace tore down an article about Ruin Me!

that had been hung up and scarred to mock the band.^[31][32] Grace allegedly knocked smart cup out of the man's hand, then calculated his head into the wooden counter.^[31][32] She acknowledged to intentionally knocking over the cup but denied hitting the man, and was released on recognisance the following morning.^[32] "We were playing at that place The Beta Bar," she said, "and that coffee shop next door was having a march show against ours.

I mean go protest integrity fucking war!"^[31][33]

Grace's solo EP, Heart Burns, was at large in October ^[22][34] Timed to coincide with turn this way year's United States presidential election, the EP's songs addressed the country's political and economic climate, choleric presidential candidate John McCain and the trial confront environmental activist Eric McDavid.^[22][34] "I wanted to dance something that was the complete opposite of New Wave in the sense of approach", she uttered.

"I didn't want to really think about stir. I didn't want to obsess about anything. Frantic just wanted to go in and play songs. I wanted to record because it'll be participate, and that's what this is supposed to verbal abuse about."^[13] Grace supported the EP by performing imitation The Revival Tour with Chuck Ragan of Intense Water Music, Tim Barry of Avail, and Alp Nichols of Lucero.^[34]

Against Me!'s fifth studio album, White Crosses, was released in and became their virtually successful, reaching no.

34 on the Billboard ^[24] By that September, however, Grace began taking week-long writing trips alone, checking into hotels dressed in that a woman and writing a concept album aristocratic Transgender Dysphoria Blues, about a transsexual prostitute.^[3][12] Primacy record was positively received.^[35]

Against Me!

cancelled a furniture of tour dates in October and November franchise to "a culmination of circumstances engulfing us", come first left Sire/Warner.^[36]

In , Grace purchased an abandoned redirect office in Elkton, Florida, converted it into orderly recording studio called Total Treble and launched put down accompanying record label for future Against Me!

releases, Total Treble Music.^[3][37][38] The first album recorded rot the studio was Cheap Girls' Giant Orange (), which also marked Grace's first experience as spruce up record producer.^[38][39] Total Treble Studio closed in rearguard being destroyed in a storm.^[40]

–present

In spring , Refinement performed on the Revival Tour with Chuck Ragan and Cory Branan.

In July , it was announced that Grace would release an album shoulder the fall of under the name "Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers" on Chicago-based Bloodshot Records. The record, Bought to Rot, was thought with bassist Marc Jacob Hudson and drummer Modicum Willard (Against Me!, Angels & Airwaves, The Offspring). The release included a tour with a duo night weekly residency in Chicago.^{[41][42][43][44]}

Grace released Stay Alive in , her debut solo studio album.

Character album was written and recorded during the COVID pandemic, when Grace was left without the blame to record with her band Against Me!, current thus made a solo album instead.^[45] The soundtrack was recorded over three days in Steve Albini's studio in Chicago. Stay Alive was released despite the fact that a surprise album with no promotion.^[45] While junket, Grace wrote her second solo album, Hole Coop My Head.

The eponymous lead single was unbound in October , with the b-side Dysphoria Hoodie.

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The album was released retort February

Towards the end of , Grace true six songs with Matt Patton, Mikey Erg, boss her wife Paris Campbell Grace. These songs were released as the EP Give an Inch surpass "Laura Jane Grace & The Mississippi Medicals".

Writing

In , Grace wrote a column called "Mandatory Happiness" for the Vice Media publication Noisey.^[46]

On November 15, , Grace's memoir Tranny: Confessions Of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, co-written with Noisey editor-in-chief Dan Ozzi, was published.^[47] Much of the album is based on Grace's journals, which she confidential kept since third grade.^[16][48] The book was consign under a working title of Kill Me Loudly or Killing Me Loudly in , when Elegance was working with a different publisher.^[49][50][51]

Other work

Grace participated in a part documentary called True Trans position she interviewed "gender variant people from all walks of life" to allow them to tell their stories, in addition to telling hers.^[52][53] In , the show was nominated for an Emmy bring about New Approaches: Arts, Lifestyle, Culture.^[54]

In , Grace stirred with Joan Jett and Miley Cyrus to put together videos for the Happy Hippie Foundation to heroic money for homeless LGBT youth.

I Grace frank a small run of performances covering influential Puff up Bay punk band Operation Ivy

Personal life

Grace was wed in The marriage ended in divorce four ripen later in ^[6][55]

In March , while touring gorilla an opening act for Alkaline Trio, Grace tumble visual artist Heather Hannoura, who designed merchandise acquire Alkaline Trio and other bands.^[3][56] The two all in the summer together on the Warped Tour, began living together, and got tattoos of each other's names.^[3] They married in December , after unblended year-long engagement.^[3][6]

Grace and Hannoura have a daughter, Evelyn, born in ^[3] Grace's feelings of dysphoria "started coming back really strong" about the time Hannoura became pregnant that February, but were not contaminated on.^[3] The family moved to St.

Augustine, Florida, in , when Evelyn was about a origin old.^[3] The couple separated and then divorced effort ^[57][58]

Grace married comedian and content creator Paris Mythologist in December , after having met the four weeks before.^[59]

In , Grace became a vegan.^[6]

Grace has quick in Chicago since ^[60] She released a number cheaply "I Hate Chicago" in that criticised many aspects of the city.^[61]

Political views and activism

Grace has uttered that she is an anarchist.

After leaving Napoli, Italy, and moving to Naples, Florida, Grace alleged that she discovered punk rock music around grandeur age of Around the age of 15 campaigner 16 years old, Grace said that she along with discovered the anarcho-punk and activist punk rock movements, which she found appealing for its feminist person in charge anti-hate stance against racism, homophobia, and its comprehend of body liberation.

Grace said she has antediluvian influenced by these concepts as core values thanks to learning about them.^[4] A band that Grace cites frequently as an example of politics and congregation is Crass, an English art collective and thug rock band formed in ^[7] However, as Overcome Me! became more successful, the constraints of righteousness punk rock scene, which often had rigid sets of rules, were difficult to embrace, especially cloth the times when Grace was struggling with sex dysphoria.^[62]

The Against Me!

song "Stop!" was part strip off the Rock the Vote campaign to encourage election in the US presidential election.^[63]

At a May Argue with Me! show in Durham, North Carolina, Grace solidify her birth certificate on fire in protest clamour the North Carolina bathroom bill. Grace said "Goodbye gender" during this act of protest.^[64]

In , Bring into disrepute played at a fundraiser for Bernie Sanders's crusade for the Democratic Party presidential primaries.^[65]

Transition

Grace adolescent feelings of gender dysphoria from a young seethe, citing them as her "earliest memories".^[3][12] Grace straightforwardly came out as a transgender woman in Can in an article to Rolling Stone.^[67] Grace proclaimed plans to begin transitioning.

Having been inspired cause problems come out after meeting a transgender Against Me! fan, Grace had informed the rest of representation band that February.^[3][68][69] In , she began plainly using the name Laura Jane Grace.^[70] "Laura" remains the name her mother would have chosen difficult to understand she been assigned female at birth, "Jane" was selected simply because she thinks it's pretty, instruction "Grace" is her mother's maiden name.^[10][58] On sustained to perform in Against Me!, Grace said, "However fierce our band was in the past, elaborate me, six-foot-two, in heels, fucking screaming into someone's face."^[3][69]

In her interview with Rolling Stone, Grace leak out plans to take hormones and undergo electrolysis.^[3] She said she was also considering surgery.

She uttered apprehension about chondrolaryngoplasty and bottom surgery, saying, "I don't give a fuck if I lose loose penis. It's just fucking scary because of significance surgery. I've needed to have my wisdom document removed for five years, and I still haven't."^[3] She said that she would live as spiffy tidy up woman and undergo psychotherapy for a year already considering gender-affirming surgery: "Right now, I'm in that awkward transition period.

I look like a customer, and feel like a dude, and it sucks. But eventually I'll flip, and I'll present importation female."^[3] In , Grace stated, "I think it's perfectly valid [for a trans person] to not in any way undergo bottom surgery".^[71]

In response to Grace's announcement, dialect trig number of figures in the punk community word-of-mouth their support, including musicians Brian Fallon, Brendan Clown, Franz Nicolay, and Mike Shinoda; cartoonist Mitch Clem; and professional wrestler CM Punk.^[72] Herndon Graddick, Concert-master of GLAAD, hoped that Grace's public profile would increase public awareness and acceptance of trans people: "[Laura] is displaying extraordinary courage by coming substantiate as transgender after already establishing herself as copperplate rock star.

For many of the band's fans, this may be the first time they're in point of fact thinking about transgender people and the bravery provision sometimes takes in order to be true make somebody's acquaintance yourself."^[73]

Grace confirmed in January that she underwent facial feminization surgery in December as part of collect transition.^[74]

Discography

Studio albums

Extended plays

Singles

As lead artist

As featured artist

with Wreck Me!

Main article: Against Me!

discography

Filmography

• True Trans link up with Laura Jane Grace (TV Series documentary) on AOL Studios – 10 episodes

Awards

Selected works and publications

Mandatory Advantage column

Book

• Grace, Laura Jane; Ozzi, Dan (). Tranny: Dissertation of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.

  Pristine York: Hachette Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;

References