Divine invention

Trinity swings in drag

by Laura Kiritsy

Ziegfield Zany Fanny Brice is back from the dead and channeling her legendary musical/comedy act through mild-mannered masseuse and Unitatarian minister Jamie Grace. He looks better in stiletto heels than Tina Turner and is just crazy enough, thinks Fanny, to spend all of his time, energy, and money to orchestrate a comeback that makes Cher's (re)current popularity look like the proverbial 15 minutes of fame, minus 10. But Jamie Grace (a/k/a Trinity), a drag-swing icon, is far from ready for the sequined straightjacket and a Norma Desmond close-up.

Trinity is Grace(d) with "the character of Barbra, the soul of Ella, and the emotion of Judy Garland," not to mention a marketing savvy that has you saying "Ru Paul who?"

Trinity has taken the entertainment world by a storm. And with her jazz CD A Good Man is Hard to Find tucked in her garter belt, she is poised to bust into the red-hot swing scene with her forthcoming disc, That Lady Can Swing.

Grace's alter ego first emerged in 1996 when, as a divinity-school student, he decided to throw himself a 33rd birthday gala. He decided on a drag theme ("All these ministers showed up in drag") and as a lark lip-synched a couple tunes as Trinity, a tribute to his theology studies and to his spiritual outlook on life. With the encouragement of fellow dragsters Spacepussy (now known as Roswell) and Musty Chiffon, who invited him on stage, Grace discovered his own voice, a rich contralto; and he threw himself, his life savings, and a life-insurance policy into his newfound career with reckless abandon. Honing his skills with singing lessons, he decided to perform as Trinity. "My dream is to sing with a big band; but I want to do it in drag because another gay man singing a jazz standard -- no one is going to notice me," says Grace. "But as soon as I threw that dress on all of a sudden the newspaper called."

Proving, of course, that the best man for the job is a woman, Grace cast Trinity in the image of a "favorite Jewish aunt," a self-deprecating glamor puss, who never turns her sharp wit on her audience.

The ambitious Grace then went to work assembling a 10-piece band, the Chris Luard Orchestra, and recording A Good Man is Hard to Find, a collection of wonderfully rendered jazz classics. Trinity then staged a sold-out theatrical extravaganza at the 650-seat Provincetown Town Hall that included limousines, dancers, and Grace's own mother, a retired performer herself.

In the process, Trinity held her hometown hostage with a media blitz that Provincetown newspapers not so lovingly dubbed "The Tsunami Publicity Campaign": with thrice-daily radio promos, paper-doll likenesses peering out from every shop window in town, and a banner announcing Trinity's debut tethered to an airplane circling local beaches like a shark looking for lunch. "I put myself on everything," laughs Grace. "My goal was that people would say, `If I hear the name Trinity one more time I'll kill myself, I can't stand that name,'"

Grace has now turned Trinity's attentions to hijacking the big-band sounds of the '20s and '30s.

"When you go to a swing club you always get five to eight straight guys in zoot suits and maybe they have a lead singer. And if there is a lead female vocalist, rarely is she dressed to the nines. When you go to see Trinity perform, you're always looking at glamor, what the entertainment industry used to be like, which was lots of sequins, lots of very glamorous, very starlet, very diva-type things. I'm bringing back all that excitement."

But looks aren't everything, and Trinity is as serious about her singing as she is about her evening gowns. Working with her orchestra (a band of international musicians affiliated with the Berklee School of Music, and three arrangers), Grace has visions of updating the big-band era. And the band "rehearses like slaves," confesses Grace. With a release date of June 10, That Lady Can Swing features versions of the oldies-radio classic, "Love Potion #9," and "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" rewritten with swing orchestrations. "Those two, we really sat down for hours and said, okay this is how we want it to be," says Grace, and the process can get quite technical. "It goes to the point where I'm like, `No I need two hits because I want to wiggle my hips in this number.'"

The album ends with a very '90s update of Marilyn Monroe's classic "Happy Birthday Mr. President."

"I had to, it was divine intervention," explains Grace. "It's a remake that we wrote for President Clinton and we're going to send it off to him." Hillary should be very pleased.

Trinity appears at Worcester's Gay Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Pride Celebration.