Singer Merrill Beth Nisker may have taken some notes from David Bowie’s gender-bending days. The outrageous singer, better known as Peaches, makes Madonna look pale by comparison in regard to her in-your-face sexuality.
The Material Girl may writhe on the floor in a wedding dress singing about resembling a virgin, whereas Peaches get the message across wearing undies with a strap-on while screaming the lyrics to her song, “Shake Your Dix,” or her most famous tune, “Fuck the Pain Away.”
The Toronto native has stated that “Peaches” is an amplified portion of her own personality and definitely a big part of her true self. While preparing for a flight to Las Vegas to kick off the next leg of her tour, Peaches shared that her favorite site in Sin City is the Liberace Museum.
Her tour comes to Club Firestone on Saturday, Nov. 7, and she’ll sign autographs at Park Avenue CDs at 6 p.m. The tour is to support her latest release, “I Feel Cream.”
“I really love this album,” says Peaches. “For the first time, I decided to make a conscious effort to make a dance record with no guitars on it. I made a conscious decision to unleash my secret weapon—and that is that I am actually a singer.”
The performer keeps her ambiguous sexuality in the forefront of her career, but that is only a small part of why the LGBT community has seemed to latch onto her music.
“I think that what I say is very direct,” Peaches says. “I think gay and lesbian people are always ahead, in arts, politics and speech. From an early age, they realize, ‘Hey, I am not like all of the advertisements that are towards heterosexuality’ and they have to question themselves.”
“We have had so many years of bad and wrong stereotypes and traditional ways that don’t relate to most of the population. There is a lot of undoing that needs to be done.”
Peaches has performed since 1989 and says the new album gave her a chance to put more variety in her performance. With no musical background, the singer didn’t discover her talent until she picked up an acoustic guitar on a whim while in a bar with friends.
“We ended up playing there for a year–and-a-half because people liked it,” she says. “That is when I found out I was a musician.”
The 43-year-old knew right away that she didn’t want to perform folk music and she created bands around the instruments and influences around her personal life. She describes her music as transitional, beginning from arty jazz to new wave.
“Now it is much beyond music and performance,” she says, “conceptual art and video making.”
To accompany her ever-changing style, Peaches plans to throw in a surprise or two during her tour stop in Orlando. Her song “Billionaire” will feature Shunda K of Yo! Majesty as a guest rapper. Her band Sweet Machine will also be on stage with her.
Before she became Peaches, Nisker was an elementary school music teacher and drama teacher. She says she adopted the stage name as a tribute to singer Nina Simone, who sings the name “Peaches” at the end of her song “Four Women.”
“It is so passionate that I want her to sing it to me, so I changed my name to that,” Peaches says.
She says performers PJ Harvey, Nina Hagen and Deborah Harry are all musical influences. She is not a fan of LGBT icon Lady Gaga.
“She has nice clothes and really cool outfits,” Peaches says. “Her music is obviously for a younger demographic than mine, so it’s nice that they get to have some different kind of strange pop thing.”
Get more information on Peaches or purchase tickets for the Nov. 7 show.
