Artist Carter St. Hogan starts all of his performances with an unexpected bit: asking the audience to choose between two mustaches.
“I’m a trans person who still cannot grow a mustache. It’s not in me. I don’t have the genetics,” Hogan explained during an unofficial SXSW showcase last week at the White Horse, a historic country music venue and the oldest club in Austin.
Hogan, who performs country and folk music as Creekbed Carter, had everyone present vote by applause on two highly specific choices of mustache.
“We’re going to remember what democracy feels like, just for a moment, here in this dive bar,” Hogan told the laughing audience. That afternoon, the choice was between the mustache of “a very gay tennis instructor” and his Uncle Mark’s mustache. The White Horse crowd voted for the latter — which turned out to be big, broad, and bushy — and Hogan drew it on his face using a makeup mirror and an eyeliner pencil from Walgreens.
In a subsequent interview with The Barbed Wire at an Austin area bookstore and cafe, Hogan explained that he sees the mustache bit as part of a drag performance, and a way to make the audience an accomplice in the creation of his gender identity.
“That mustache becomes a way to make other people in dive bars comfortable with me, right? Because I’m about to talk about being trans, (and) it’s not a thing we do in fucking dive bars full of working class people or margarita moms,” Hogan said.
Hogan hopes that voting on a mustache also opens people up to other conversations about gender identity.
It did for him. Exploring masculine archetypes of country music in his performances helped Hogan figure out what it meant, for him, to be transmasculine.
Hogan came out publicly as transgender at his first Creekbed Carter performance in 2021, at Austin’s Sahara Lounge, as clubs reopened in the wake of the pandemic.
“During that year (of) isolation, we really had to reckon with some shit, and I was like, ‘OK, I think I am truly a trans person,” Hogan recalled.
Before that show, he drew his first eyeliner-pencil mustache, and said he felt like he was simultaneously coming out as transgender while stepping into a rich tradition of country and western musicians — like Nanci Griffith or Lyle Lovett — who build their identities through the songs they play. “It’s honest, but it also comes with an element of performance,” he said.
After continuing to hone his identity, he released a self-titled album in 2024.
But while Hogan felt at home in the musical traditions of Texas, he didn’t always feel so welcome in its political landscape. During the 2023 legislative session, Hogan protested and testified against some of the many anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ+ bills being debated that year. Although he was awed at the strength and resiliency of the community who came out to fight for their rights, he said he still felt beaten down by the process.
“You can only look at elected officials looking you dead in the eye and calling you a pedophile and an aberration and a monster and a deviant for so long before you’re starting to internalize some of it,” he said.
His partner, a trans woman, also began feeling increasingly unsafe in Texas around that time. So they left for Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.
They’re hardly alone in fleeing Texas for places that seem more welcoming to trans people. One 2025 study by the Movement Advancement Project estimated over 400,000 transgender people in the United States moved states after Donald Trump’s second presidential election. Minnesota currently has the highest population of people who identify as transgender in the U.S., according to a September 2025 report by the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute.
In Minneapolis, Hogan believed it would be easier and safer for them to find employment and access healthcare, including gender-affirming care (he’s started taking hormone replacement therapy since moving).
“It’s so hard to earn a living if you don’t work for a tech company,” Hogan said. “No judgment for anyone, get your bag (because) we’re in the end times, but I can’t do it without exploding inside.”
But he also yearned to surround himself with other trans people and live in a place where he felt their rights were supported. “What if every second of your life was not a battle constantly for resources and for care and for relief?” he remembered asking himself. Hogan said he enjoys returning to visit Texas, but is glad he left for his and his partner’s mental health. “Others have stayed, and (that’s) incredible and beautiful and important.”
Up north, he’s joined communities organizing against the federal invasion of the Twin Cities, while continuing to write music that’s now influenced by that state’s rich history of labor organizing and resistance to injustice.
He joined the Twin Cities United Performers, an advocacy organization for musicians. Hogan said pre-existing groups like the United Performers have also been pivotal in mobilizing to protect immigrant neighbors against the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security operations there in recent months. “When people started getting murdered in the streets by ICE, we had communities to tap into.”
During his performance at the White Horse, Hogan talked openly about what he’s seen. “It has been literally horrific, and it’s worse than it looks, and it’s still happening.”
But he’s also inspired by the state’s long history of working class labor and union organizing, as well as its history of resistance to police injustices. “Minnesotans … they’ve been violently striking against cops since the dawn of time,” he added.
During the past year, he’s been writing new songs for a future album based on that history, under a grant from the Cedar Cultural Center of Minneapolis. He performed one example at the White Horse, leading the audience in singing along with the chorus of an as-yet unnamed song, “slowing that machine of empire down.” The revolutionary acts in the song aren’t about huge confrontations, but smaller acts of defiance, like being an openly transgender chef at a logging camp.
The full chorus of the song goes, “Well you can mind your own business, or jump into the fray, because so often resistance means just getting through your day. It’s true that sometimes heroics means just getting in the way and slowing that machine of empire down.”
Despite it all, Hogan believes that these smaller actions, from painted-on mustaches to organizing a union at your workplace, are building a better future for all of us.
“The thing we want is there, like it feels so actionable, and I probably won’t see it in my lifetime, but my god, to be able to help build that is absolutely worth it,” he told The Barbed Wire.
Creekbed Carter’s next album, “PEASANTS REVOLT,” is due out from Gar Hole Records in summer of 2026.
More Queer Music Around SXSW
Los Angeles-based Australian electronic musician KUČKA wowed an audience at Austin’s queer bar Cheer Up Charlie’s with their bright, poppy, live digital mixing and ethereal vocals, during Saturday’s Neko Rave, an unofficial showcase that raised money to support Austin Pet’s Alive animal shelter. KUČKA told The Barbed Wire that they love visiting Austin on tour, but worry about the future for themself and their wife, who is of Mexican heritage, in the United States. “The community that I’m part of in Australia just feels a little more, ‘We want to help everyone. We think people should get social benefits.’ Whereas in the U.S. … there’s a bit less compassion from the wider society for people that need help.”
KUČKA’s album Can You Hear Me Dreaming is out now, and they’re about to return to the studio to record their next.
Over in the official showcases, Georgetown-based XBValentine introduced a Thursday-night audience at Swan Dive to new Spanish-language hip hop from her upcoming album “Mujer Con Proposito,” or “Woman with a Purpose.” After building a fanbase through performing in English, including over 160,000 followers on TikTok, she told The Barbed Wire she now feels confident enough to rap in her first language. “I’m really sure about who I am as a person, and I think just kind of embracing all of that and adding that into the music,” she said.
A lifelong Texan, she said she worries she might have to move someday in order to safely raise children with her wife. “At the end of the day, I think that’s why we have to keep speaking up, keep trying to fight for our rights as much as we can.”
Kind Clinic, a program of Texas Health Action, underwrites "Big & Bright," The Barbed Wire's coverage of queer life in Texas. All editorial decisions are made solely by The Barbed Wire's editorial team with no input from Kind Clinic or Texas Health Action.
Kind Clinic is dedicated to advancing sexual health and wellness through its healthcare services and community-based initiatives across Texas. The clinic provides care in a safe and supportive environment, offering comprehensive services to patients across Texas.