Chris Housman was raised on country music, playing guitar and fiddle in a family band in small-town Kansas. Right out of high school, he made the move to Nashville to pursue a career in music, one that was likely destined to be behind the scenes: As a gay man, Housman assumed he didn’t have a shot at pursuing his dream of being a country singer himself. At least not in Nashville’s big leagues.
But Housman began to believe otherwise when he heard a pair of Kacey Musgraves songs in 2014. Her debut single, the gritty small-town character study “Merry Go Round,” followed by the CMA Song of the Year-winning LGBTQ+ ally anthem “Follow Your Arrow,” got him to thinking that maybe, one day, there could be a spot for him as a queer man singing country music.
“I was like, ‘Oh, you can say this type of stuff in country music?’” Housman tells Rolling Stone. “Other than hearing the Chicks’ stuff that I grew up on, what reason would I have to think that I could do country music, be in Nashville, and be myself?”
A decade on from that epiphany, Housman has realized his dream with a collection of songs integrating his queer identity with his passion for country songcraft. His debut album, Blueneck, was released in June, and since then, the artist has been turning heads by co-starring with male love interests in the videos for his singles “Guilty as Sin” and “Laid Back.” The clips have racked up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube while also earning major support from the country-focused cable network CMT.
Lyrically, those two songs don’t specifically address Housman’s affections toward a man or a woman, but other tracks on the album are much bolder, especially the song that put him on the map, “Blueneck.” The lyrics describe him as “a homegrown hick with a hybrid car” who believes “Y’all means all,” which speaks to the tension he lives out reconciling his rural roots with his identity as a queer man with a global worldview.
“Even when we were writing ‘Blueneck,’ I knew it was a taboo subject,” he says. “Yeah, I’m literally talking about politics in a country song. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that’s the song that kind of got everyone’s attention.”
Housman’s risk in writing “Blueneck” paid off, as the song went viral on TikTok and inspired viewers to download the single, sending it to the top of the iTunes Country download chart in 2021. Building on that momentum, Housman has continued to tackle timely topics in a way that aims to build a bridge with more conservative country fans — those with whom songs with titles like “Drag Queen” may not resonate. (Housman’s lyrics tell the tale of a 6-foot-5 male teacher named Michael who moonlights as a fierce drag queen named Michelle.)
“I feel almost compelled to break things down in a way that makes sense to the people in my small town…that makes people undeniably realize we’re all humans,” he explains. “It makes so much sense in my soul to have this conversation in country music because of the simplicity and the craft in the songwriting.”
The album opener, “High Hopes,” was the last song Housman wrote for Blueneck along with producer Jerry Fuentes, formerly of the Last Bandoleros. It’s a defiant anthem of staying true to your heart in the face of a world that tells you to dim your shine. He says he’s already thinking about making albums number two and three with an ever-growing catalog of songs.
But Housman doesn’t have to look far for inspiration to keep forging ahead. The fans he’s connected with along the way confirm that an audience hungry to hear different perspectives represented in mainstream country does exist.
“I hear it over and over from people in comments on YouTube and TikTok,” Housman says, “telling me, ‘I didn’t think I was a country fan until today,’ or ‘I don’t like country music, but I love this.’ Or ‘I grew up on country music, but then I gravitated away from it because I felt unwelcome. But this is bringing me back.’”
Housman hopes the inroads he’s made so far will help the country industry recognize this moment as an opportunity to widen its audience.
He says he imagines country music as a house, one with an existing foundation that can’t be torn down.
“The living room is always going to be a straight white man playing guitar and singing songs about beer and trucks,” Houseman says. “But what if we just add on a little back porch, tiki bar situation for the gays and all the other outcasts? It’s not changing up anything from the living room or the house itself. It’s only adding value to the property.”