Laura Jane Grace

Laura Jane Grace is a major figure in today’s rock scene as both a solo artist and the front person of Against Me!, which she founded in Naples, FL in the late 1990s. As a working artist, she has released four solo offerings and seven albums with Against Me!, and in 2012 went public with her gender transition in the pages of Rolling Stone. In her music, she continues to detail her journey all while staying true to her earlier themes of outspoken political critique – environmentalism along with personal and social liberation – with a base in American music including country and folk-rock, with a penchant for noise and anarchy.

2014 was a monumental year for Grace, a year that saw the release of the bracing “Transgender Dysphoria Blues,” a culturally important and generation-defining statement that would become Against Me!’s most acclaimed album to date. Reception to the album would lead to the release of her 10-episode documentary series titled “True Trans With Laura Jane Grace” (AOL Studios), a body of work that went on to be nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award in the New Approaches: Arts, Lifestyle, Culture category. Grace would round out her year by being featured in the pages of “Out” as part of their annual "Out100" in December 2014.

Two years later, Against Me! would release its seventh studio LP titled “Shape Shift With Me,” an album NPR deemed "raging, tender, organic, erotic and liberating,” and one that has the distinction of being the first album Grace has written truly from the heart, with no metaphorical cloaks cast over the lyrics. It’s an album about love, that deceptively complex emotion we all struggle with yet has somehow eluded most of Grace’s songwriting for the past 20 years.

Shortly after its release, Grace would issue her highly anticipated memoir titled “TRANNY: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.” Co-written with journalist Dan Ozzi, “TRANNY,” one of Billboard's "100 Greatest Music Books Of All Time" and a memoir Harper’s Bazaar says “establishes Grace as a transgender icon and modern day literary heroine,” has gone on to be featured on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Fresh Air With Terry Gross and The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, who called Grace’s work "a truly gripping tale, and a beautiful exploration of what a human being is.”

With a stint opening Green Day’s 2017 Revolution Radio arena tour of North America and being given the esteemed “Icon Award” at the Alternative Press Music Awards that same year, Grace has since been releasing music solo as well as with her outfit Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers, which features Against Me! drummer Atom Willard and recordist/mixer Marc Hudson. 2018’s “Bought to Rot,” 2020’s “Stay Alive,” and 2021’s “At War With The Silverfish” EP found the celebrated songwriter continuing to take all of her pent-up fears, anger, and anxiety and releasing it, like a molotov cocktail thrown into the abyss.