@defacto_x, @shanethomas and @smokeab1unt

Shane Thomas Wants You on the Dance Floor

Shane Thomas has little patience for people scrolling TikTok on the dance floor. He'd much rather see them dancing, preferably in a look they spent hours putting together.  Having come up through San Francisco's drag scene before finding his footing as a DJ and promoter in Los Angeles, he's seen what happens when people put genuine effort into showing up for one another. His parties have become a gathering place for the city's queer underground, and the younger club kids who call him mother are part of what keeps him going. Friend Chloe Coover gets into the people behind the parties, the work of keeping them alive, and why Shane believes so firmly in the true power of a good night (or entire weekend…) out.

PHOTOGRAPHY RICHIE LEE DAVIS @richieleedavis
INTERVIEW CHLOE COOVER @trannehathaway
TALENT CIELO @gncsexsiren DANNY GUERRERO DEFACTO X @defacto_x MARC @aestheadache  NOAH SELENE @smokeab1unt RAIN @rainbonnaire SKUD @suicide_skud TRIUNE @triune__

CHLOE COOVER: I'm Chloe Coover. I'm a singer, songwriter, podcaster, artist, multi-hyphenate across the board, I guess. And I'm here with Shane Thomas. Tell me what your multi-hyphenate introduction is.

SHANE THOMAS: I am a DJ slash producer slash promoter slash chef 

CHLOE: Period.

SHANE: Bad gal slash diva extraordinaire.

CHLOE: I love that. And I can attest to the chef piece of that. Your food is really tasty.
So, let's go all the way back to the beginning. What was your introduction to nightlife overall?

SHANE: I would say my first introduction into the freak show would be when I was in my early 20s. I lived in San Francisco, and I put on a wig for the first time. You know Aunt Charlie's, I'm sure? They used to have this show every Tuesday called High Fantasy, and that's kind of where a lot of the girls got their start in performing. 
It was in the trans district in San Francisco, so a lot of the old trans performers in their 50s, 60s, 70s still perform for High Fantasy, but then they mix it up with the young they's and them's, the blue hairs, the yellow hairs… So it was this conglomeration of old fab drag queens and young freaky performance artists.

I started going to that show, and then realized..  I was like; I want the wig too. I deemed myself Blaire Witch, Blaire with an E because she was fab. That was my original performer name. And the first performance I did was the song "Crying" by Roy Orbison. Red lace gown, bouquet of roses, got my life.

But things then shifted. I took off the wig. I realized the wig wasn't for me, and I dropped the name Blaire Witch. I just kept my name Shane Thomas. I still call it drag. People wouldn't call it drag. It was just me in a fantasy, high fashion runway, doing FKA twigs, crying on the carpet type tea. I went through a split with the ex of five years, and what healed me was performing.

So I was just performing these shows, making like 20 bucks out of show, getting blacked out, and getting my life. When I started to get into the parties there, I became kind of a name as a  performer - because I was like the new girl in town, you know.
I started to get booked for parties at the Stud, big Pride events, events at Public Works, and I was really giving shows.

When you were performing in this era, was it lip sync performances?
It was lip sync, yeah. Anywhere from "Crying" to FKA twigs to Beyoncé to Sonic Youth, all the music. Now that I look back, especially now I'm a DJ, I was selecting these songs like a DJ in a way. There's all these artists that inspired me throughout my entire life. Sonic Youth I was listening to when I was 14, doing coke under the bleachers at high school, smoking cigarettes. 
I saw my first Beyoncé concert when I was 10, and then I opened for Beyoncé 20-something years later…

This queen Vivvyanne Forevermore, she was kind of like the mom of the freaks in SF that performed, and she had shows at the Stud. She also did shows at CounterPulse, which was a proper theater, and I got booked for a couple of the shows there. That's when I really got into the artistry of performing at the theater, doing choreography, working with all these other queens. That's when shit started popping off for me. I really unlocked something.

Then around early 2020, I competed in a pageant called Butch Queen that this queen Grace Towers did every year. It was an iconic SF pageant for the drag queens who were kind of like the other. They maybe had a little facial hair. There weren't really any full illusionist girls.

It was a proper pageant, a two-month process of training and group numbers and having costumes made. They did it at this smaller theater that Mae West used to perform at. It was very San Francisco.

I had a full gown made out of that sheet chainmail, like the Paris Hilton dress. My look was inspired by Zendaya's Versace Joan of Arc Met Gala. The gown was delivered to me at the show, and we had to go from the green room up the stairs. The gown had a split right in the center, and I wasn't wearing a panty because it showed my ass in the back. I walk up the stairs, and it fully splits, and my dick and balls are just fully out.
I hit the stage, and I'm just like, girl, whatever. This is SF down. This is what it's giving.

Then COVID hit. We gave shows on Twitch, on Instagram Live. Girl, I was performing FKA twigs on Instagram Live. I made $1,000 from this one show.
In SF, all these techies still had their jobs, and they wanted to support the girls. For the first two or three months of lockdown, we were making more money performing on Twitch and Instagram than we were at our actual shows.

But then people lost the moment. People kind of lost interest. 

So you moved to LA in 2020?
Yeah, I moved back to LA in June of 2020. I thought I was gonna go on RuPaul's Drag Race. I shaved my face, put the wig back on, and was making looks. And then I met Violet Chachki and kind of got into the reality of it all.
I thought, if I want to make it, I have to put the wig on, put a razor to my face and make this Mugler recreation look, and perform Kylie Minogue. It just wasn't giving for me, unfortunately.

One of my friends here, Mez, who's one of my only friends when I moved here, he's a DJ. My friend Kian's also a DJ from Trax Unit, and we were kikiing one night at Kian's place. They were DJing and then playing something on PlayStation. The song ran out, and they're like, "Go change the song."

I changed the song. I pressed play on Azealia Banks (RIP), and then my life changed. DJing is something I always wanted to do, but when I was a performer at parties, especially in SF, you're either DJ or performer and there's no crossover really - at least at that time. That's how it felt. I was like, the DJ's over there, I'm in a wig over here. Now things are different?

Maybe two years after that, Kian put Ableton on my computer, and I started making beats, and then started to write songs. I never thought I would write songs. It's something I always wanted, but I was like, I don't sing. That's not something I could do.

As someone who is truly immersed in nightlife for your livelihood, what are your pros and cons about the state of current-day LA nightlife?
The pros are the amount of artistry that people are putting into parties, specifically underground parties. People don't realize how much time it takes, how much things cost, and how much people actually care.
There's the underground parties that do actually care about the vibes, they care about the artistry. They care about your well-being. They care about the music. And then there's the parties that just want to clock a coin. They don't really care about the vibes. They don't care about your safety.

That's kind of why I started throwing parties. I had an aboveground party called Blush! for a couple years, but then I got into the underground doing Sorbet, and that's where I really locked into the vibe of what it takes to throw an underground party, specifically in LA, specifically right now. The community behind it, as much as that word is thrown around, and sometimes that word makes me cringe, it really is the community behind these parties that keep the vibes going and help us survive.

Underground is the ecosystem, and we all kind of support each other. We all have each other's backs. It supports the overall ecosystem of nightlife.

Talk about the collection of people you brought in for the Freak Show video, and the vision for the video, shown in the images here.
The overarching theme to my album is kind of Freak Show, and is being a club kid and being in the underground. Like I say, it's for people that leave the house on a Thursday and don't get home until  Monday.

With that video and specifically the themes of the song, I wanted to showcase a lot of the club kids in the underground and a lot of these girls who are kind of newer to the scene and give them their flowers as well, saying I can't do my events without y'all.

A lot of them call me mother too. These newer club kids started coming out, they started calling me that as well, and I was, you know what, I am the auntie, I am the old lady at the function, and I am doing it for them. Obviously I'm doing it for artistry and for the culture and for community, but a lot of times, especially when I'm DJing these other events, I'll say yes to a gig for a party I don't necessarily like, because I'm like - the children need me.

Cielo, who's in the music video -she has the red paint - when I first started being around her, she told me after a set, "Shane Thomas, you set me free." It almost made me cry. I never heard a compliment like that, and it really resonated with me.

There is something about that that is genuinely mothering in the literal sense. There's maternal care that you have for the scene that you're orchestrating and being a part of putting together and that is something that is felt throughout the world.
I think about especially just as queer people, I don't think for myself, for example, that I probably will ever be married and have a family, but there are ways in which the legacy of the ways that I show up around the community that I am with, those are just as valid as the things that anyone else would do, like raising children.
That's also where being a chef comes in for me too. I don't work as a chef as much anymore, but I'll host friends and cook these fab meals too.

It's like the ripple effect of care.
It's just become important to me at this stage in my career and in my status in the scene, the way people uplift me. I'm just gonna send it right back to you.

Do you have other people across the whole time you've been a part of nightlife that you want to shout out, who are either influences for you or up-and-coming people that you want people to know about?
I definitely want to shout out Mez, who honestly is one of the biggest reasons I became a DJ. He really pushed me to get in my bag. He saw something in me, and he throws the underground party Signal. It's not just saying this because that's my sis, but that's one of the best parties in LA.

Throwing these parties is so fucking hard, and it can really challenge you. You can lose coin, and when you lose coin, it really makes you question everything. You're like, damn, I should just go and get a nine-to-five because I'm suffering to do this.
But then it all comes back to the reason why we do it. It's for the artistry and the belief of the power that music holds, and the belief of these kids in the community. I really want to shout him out because he works so hard. I don't think he fully gets the credit that he deserves all the time. A lot of people don't.

I also want to shout out my sis Noah Selene. She's a really fab DJ, newish to the scene, but she's been going to parties for a while. She just played Sorbet in September under this new DJ alias, and a lot of girls really came out to see her. That night was for her.
She came from a different scene, the industrial renegade scene, super hard techno, very pots and pans vibes. But to see when someone starts going to these different parties, how they can influence you and your artistry.

I'm excited for what's next for her and also Cielo. Club Kid isn't really a thing anymore. I don't know if it's a part of drag being a dying art, but club kids aren't a thing. Her and Marc, who's also in the video, he's in the silver paint, they're the two last club kids in LA. They really are going out in looks because they care. It really elevates the entire night.

We were in San Francisco for Folsom a couple weeks ago, and Cielo specifically, every party I would end up at, she's at the booth. She has specific dance moves that are her signature style. She's at the booth with every DJ, waking it up.

Someone was saying that they asked the DJ if they could dance on the platform with them, and the DJ told them no. But Cielo just goes up there and starts tearing it, and the DJ turned to her and was like, "Thank you. I've been feeling so anxious and thought I was flopping my set."

It just adds to the vibe. LA is kind of known for people not really dancing and just having a kiki. The girls want to chat, sure. But bitch, when Cielo jumps up there, it's over. It activates the entire dance floor, and people lock in.

Did you work with other producers on the rest of the album too?
I'm gonna work with Gecki on my next track, who's another fab DJ producer. They recently played my party, Panic Room.

Through this, and it's the same as when I throw events, I really just want to highlight queer underground artists. It's important for me as a queer underground artist to share my space with other people that I feel should not only be uplifted, but I just think are so talented.

I want to share this moment with them. Creating with other people really woke me up for me too. When I first started to produce, I was like, I want it to be all my production. It has to all be me. But then after my second single, "Cold Floor All Night," my favorite song I produced, I was like, I just did my big one. What's next?

I started to do Freak Show, and then I was like, let me reach out to Eva Myra May . For my next single “Sean Cody”, I reached out to DJ Warning. 

"It's important for me as a queer underground artist to share my space with other people that I feel should not only be uplifted, but I just think are so talented."

Is there anything big-picture goal-wise, either as a DJ or as a music artist, that you have in mind going forward?
A really big goal of mine I've been working on for a while is I want to do a short film with all my music, like a visual album. It's not lip-syncy. It's acting.

I really want to act more, and I feel like with everything I've done, I've always carved out that space for myself. With my parties, with music, with performing. If I want to act, let me make myself the stage.

Also touring. I haven't really toured that much. I've been on tour supporting other artists, working on their team, but I've never done a tour of my own. I really want to tour. I want to go international. I want to perform more too. In SF people knew me as the performer, and that was my gig. I was very much a performer's performer. I love giving shows.

I just want people to hear my music and turn it.

If you could go back to any other nightlife era, is there anything that you want to take elements from?
I definitely dream of a time with no phones. I think in the '80s the girls were really tearing it. Early '90s, specifically with the sound in the music for sure, but also the fact that there were no phones or social media to pull them away from the vibe or from the moment.

There are parties that do no-phone dance floors, and it just doesn't really work for LA, unfortunately. But I do think we should wake that up more. I'll see people on the dance floor scrolling TikTok in the middle of the dance floor, and I'm like, babe, what are you here for? Just lock in and be a part of the vibe instead of taking away from it.

Also the Party Monster era of Club Kids. People getting that dressed up to just go out and kiki with their friends. Those are our elders that really did it for us. We have to continue to carry that torch for them.

FREAK SHOW VIDEO LINK 

@SHANETHOMAS