Taken on its own, the opening line of the Cowgays’ debut single may raise eyebrows. “Wish I wasn’t gay,” the group sings in hearty, full-throated harmony, in what may initially seem like an expression of internalized homophobia. But with the third repetition of the line, the three singers complete the thought: “I don’t wish I wasn’t gay no more.”

This song is actually a gleeful testament to rejecting the notion that there’s anything wrong with being who they are.

That baggage is in the rearview.

The three members of this brand new vocal band — Brooke Eden, Chris Housman and Adam Mac – are each openly gay solo artists who’ve leaned into contemporary country-pop sensibilities. As the Cowgays, they’re centering and celebrating their queerness in a way that may register as transgressive for country music. In reality, Houseman, Mac and Eden are embracing a whole constellation of country traditions, some widely recognized and others largely overlooked. 

They’re jubilant about reviving distinctive traits of ‘90s country music: the outsized personas, the rippling, demonstrative vocal styles, the hearty harmonizing and the down-home humor. At the same time, they’re also helping lift hidden traditions to the surface — including the long history of queer country fandom — because they know they’re part of a lineage.

During an interview at the photography studio they’ve been using as a home base, Eden relates a recent encounter with an elder cowboy she had at a line dance bar in California: “He was like, ‘Honey, I love what you’re doing for country music, but you’re missing a pin on your hat.’ And he took his [cowboy] hat off and he gave me this pin.” She points to a sliver of metal affixed to the front of her own cowboy hat. “And he said, ‘I won this at the gay rodeo in 1988.’ ”  

The Cowgays are just getting started. They just released “Wish I Wasn’t Gay” as their first single, and next week, they’ll give their first official live performance, singing the national anthem at the Nashville Predators’ Pride night.

But the response they’ve gotten in merely a month of posting joyfully campy clips on social media — one post has upwards of 18,000 likes and 10,000 shares — indicates that they’re already connecting with a hungry audience.

Audio postcard

At the top of this article, you can hear the Cowgays in an audio postcard feature, telling their story in their own words. Here’s the transcript to follow along as you listen:

Brooke Eden: These two, Adam and Chris, have been friends for eight years or so. 

Adam Mac: Mm-hmm, yeah, like eight or nine years. 

BE: Then I met Chris via TikTok. I heard “Blueneck” and I reached out to him and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m in love with this song!” 

BE: I was looking for queer couples for my “Outlaw Love” music video. 

BE: And Chris was like, “My friends Adam and Lee are the cutest couple.”

AM: And then it just kind of blossomed from there. We obviously knew when we met [that] we’re like cut from the same cloth. And then we went on vacation for Brooke’s birthday to Tulum. 

BE: That’s where the cow gays were born. 

Chris Housman: We’re back at the Airbnb [and] started singing in the stairwell, and we’re just singing our theme song of that trip at the time, which was “Water” by Tyla. 

AM: That turned into us singing “When Will I Be Loved.”

BE: And we literally get done and I go, “Wait, are we, like, a band? 

CH: It almost feels like we grew up as siblings at times, we have such similar influences. 

AM: There’s something about ‘90s country that just feels inherently gay. Something about it is so campy and so over the top. We all love it so much that it just felt natural for us to kind of lean into that. 

BE: [But] we never heard a 90s country song that sounded like they were singing to us. There was always a little piece that was missing, and now that piece is filled in by our story. 

AM: It felt purposeful that we chose this as our first single. When we wrote this song, it was Chris’s idea. And he had it as just a voice memo, like a little hymn of the anti-pray the gay away. It’s like the “pray the gay to stay” anthem.

We all have come to terms with our religious trauma and worked through our issues and came out on the other side. And this song sounds like the product of that.