Jake Wesley Rogers is a poet in glitter and leather, a kind of spiritual guide for queer kids growing up in a world that still hasn’t fully figured out how to hold them.
With a voice that feels like it was carved out of gospel and glam rock in equal measure, Rogers is part of a new generation of artists who are reshaping what it means to be both queer and seen. Look no further than his anthem “God Bless,” its refrain as much a balm as it is a battle cry as LGBTQ+ communities face increasingly hostile rhetoric and policy: “God bless the straight man in a dress. God bless threesomes when I’m celibate… God bless the trans kid in Texas. God bless the gods that don’t exist. Sometimes I wish it all would end, but God bless, it’s a beautiful fucking mess.”
With his debut album, “In the Key of Love,” finally arriving and ahead of a dream tour with Cyndi Lauper this summer, including a stop at Pine Knob on Aug. 1, the spiritual glam-rock artist recently spoke with me from Los Angeles during a video call about how the songs on his long-awaited album are “definitely part of the resistance.”
He says the release is arriving at what feels like precisely the right cultural moment. After health challenges delayed its release (last year, Wesley revealed he has Crohn’s disease), the timing now seems divinely orchestrated — giving his messages of radical love and acceptance an even more urgent platform. His music doesn’t shy away from the intersections of queerness and religion, instead transforming these complex relationships into powerful meditations on unconditional love. During Pride, these messages are especially poignant.
Between discussing his Midwest upbringing (where he found his voice singing in church while dating the preacher’s son), his spiritual journey and his upcoming tour with one of his idols, Rogers reveals himself to be both a student of queer history and someone actively writing its next chapter.
During our conversation ahead of the release of “In the Key of Love,” Rogers spoke about reconciling faith with identity, and why — even in the face of increasingly hostile legislation — he remains stubbornly, gloriously hopeful. He’s honest, thoughtful and deeply rooted in something rare: a belief that love — radical, loud and unconditional — is still the most subversive thing we have.
Young queer people who are feeling condemned by this administration for who they are have been at the top of my mind. But I am heartened knowing there are musicians like you who are allowing them that space to be themselves.
Thank you for saying that. When I was younger, I craved having an artist that looked like me and sounded like me and I found them, but they’re kind of few and far between. I remember when I found Oscar Wilde, I was like, “Whoa, this homosexual is doing this way back then.” Then I found Socrates too.
We didn’t formally get to study our queer heroes in school. My high school history class did not cover Oscar Wilde.
I would love to teach that class, though. Right now, it’s this extremely peculiar time. The news is just so absolutely horrific. It feels different than it ever has, and I guess it’s different than it has ever been. Really the only thing in my life that’s ever made sense is art. So that’s where I put my faith and energy. And especially with this album. It’s definitely part of the resistance.
What was on your mind when you first started creating it?
Well, I formally began it about three years ago when I moved to L.A. I guess I wasn’t really thinking about the world. I was thinking about my life and where I was and feeling this overwhelming call just to go deeper in my art.
I think it’s interesting listening to a lot of these songs now because in the context of today, for me, there’s even a deeper level that I didn’t anticipate. Obviously there’s a song I put out already called “God Bless” that is incredibly inherently political.
You could have written that song yesterday.
It was building toward that. So I was feeling that in the summer of 2022, right when Roe got overturned. I had just performed at the GLAAD Awards and there was this mom talking about her trans kid in Texas, and so many of us were becoming acutely aware of what was to come and feeling sort of premonitions. So yeah, that’s the funny thing too: The album was supposed to come out last fall and I had a lot of health stuff, so I had to postpone it and, honestly, thank God, because I think art in general is more necessary now than it was even five months ago. So I’m really grateful that the universe did what it had to do.
How are you doing now, health-wise?
I’m very good, thank you for asking. It threw me through a whole loop and took me out for about five months and [I had] four surgeries. Stuff like that just kind of seasons the soul. I am more healthy than I think I’ve been in years, which is also another gift that I don’t take for granted.
“God Bless” has been on repeat. Why is it important to you to explore the relationship between your queer identity and religion in your music?
“Hot Gospel,” another single, is literally what that song is about: how disparate things can exist together very beautifully. And in fact, they often do, but in our binary world, it’s either “good or bad” or “man or woman.”
I grew up in Missouri, but we weren’t a fundamental family. I was baptized Methodist, but Methodist is pretty chill. There’s always one lesbian in the church. So what’s interesting, if I’m being really honest, is I don’t have direct religious trauma. I have trauma from being in a religious environment in an area that was the Bible belt, that collectively was telling you it was going to help. But I wasn’t in a church every week getting it. When I came out very young, when I was in high school, I was dating the son of a preacher. That’s when I started singing at their church. I love the feeling of being on stage and singing to something beyond me and the audience. That’s carried over for me a hundred percent. That was an aha moment. But I’m not here to sing, to be applauded. I’m trying to connect to something bigger than myself.
I could talk to you for probably four hours about how interesting I find Christianity and the story of Christianity — what I think it was in the beginning versus what it became. All I’ll say right now is it is our sort of collective story in a way. In our world, we don’t even realize how many times during the day it’s what we reference. So for me, creating this album, it’s like, those are the touchstones. Religion is always for the oppressed. It always belongs to people that don’t have power. What’s really ironic is that power always corrupts it and takes it and uses it to have power over people. But, inherently, it is this really powerful tool to be subversive. But I don’t do it in a subversive way. I’m not trying to offend any believer. I’m trying to expand what it could mean for other people.
So, in your view, you think that the queer community is just expanding the story of Christianity?
I think they are. I hope so. And also, Chris, I’m still figuring it out. Every day I’m like, am I converting? Like, no, I’m not. Why would I ever convert? What the hell? That’s crazy. So it’s kind of my inner dilemma. But I feel like 50% a monk and 50% a rockstar, and that’s my cross to bear.
I am also so moved by the song “Mother, Mary, and Me.” What’s the story behind that one?
So I told you I began writing the album three years ago. It’s kind of a lie. Every single song except for “Mother, Mary, and Me” I wrote in L.A. in the last few years, but that one I wrote in 2019. I wrote it when I was still living in Nashville. And I’ve never really experienced writing a song like that before, or since. You always hear the stories of, “I just sat down at the piano and it just came out,” and whenever I hear that, I’m like, “OK, whatever.” However, that was that one for me.
And I knew when I wrote it to reserve it for the first album because it just felt like I needed to catch up to it. But that is kind of the foundation of the whole album. The album is devoted to this idea of unconditional love, the love that is innate to all of us, and it’s kind of our promise by being here and going back to that place of unconditional love toward self and toward others, and how freaky unconditional love is. It just kind of freaks me out. My college boyfriend had moved to Berlin. Long story, but I was really sad. So I started reading “Harry Potter” again. I was just trying to comfort myself.
The part where Harry Potter’s mom saved him with her love, but she died — she defeated pure evil with love — that’s when I was like, whoa, love is stronger than death, which I do think is a hundred percent true. So that’s kind of what that song is about.
I feel like there’s a throughline between the way that Mary loved Jesus and the way that your mother loves you.
Totally. I mean, it still confounds me. Sadly, I’m never going to know what it’s like to give birth from my body. That idea just blows my mind. It makes me sad that I’ll never know that feeling, but it must be that kind of love that’s next level. It does take an insane amount of love to keep us alive.
You seem like someone who, even right now, is still filled with so much hope.
It’s my gift and my curse, I think.
As a musician, what do you think is your role as far as visibility and representation for helping to shape the future for LGBTQ+ people?
That’s a great question. I think about it, but I also try not to think about it and just focus on the work and whatever it does or doesn’t do for people. Especially when I just signed a record deal and I was making my first music video, I was very intentional about being in bed with a guy. That was a choice for sure, because my closest representation growing up was Gaga, and obviously she’s an incredible ally, and also she doesn’t have my experience. So I think it’s really important to show my experience.
What advice do you have for LGBTQ+ young people who are trying to find their way right now, or who might want to be a musician like you?
I love this question, and it’s a hard one for me. I always want to say something like follow your heart, which is so oversimplified, but I guess I can only talk about my experience, and I had this affliction from a very early age that I just wanted to be on stage singing. My earliest memory is at 3, and so nothing was really going to ever stop me from doing that. I had a few experiences early on that really shaped me.
When I was 14, I auditioned for “America’s Got Talent,” and that was not a negative experience, but not positive either. It’s where I learned that to be an artist, you have to say something. I got home from that and I was 15, and everybody in my little town was like, “You made it.” And I felt like absolute garbage because I wanted to actually stand for something. That would be my advice. Figure out what you want to stand for. Maybe you want to stand for queer joy and just show and just write about relationships, and maybe that’s it. Maybe whatever it is, find that little itch that can be scratched. And keep going. There will be a lot of people that come in and try to alter and change that message, guaranteed. Especially when you start to get really good at telling the message. It’s like all the movies — when the hero gets closer, the challenges get bigger.
How are you feeling about getting this album out into the world?
I finally feel ready. I really didn’t feel ready until recently. Probably mid-January. I was still having kind of an existential crisis about it all. And then it was actually the day David Lynch died, and I loved David Lynch a lot, and I kept thinking that I didn’t know he was sick, and I just thought there’d be another movie. I was like, I bet Lynch will have another movie. It was something I even was thinking while rewatching “Twin Peaks.” And then when he died, I was like, oh, there’s no more. It’s a weird thing to think about when it comes to the artists that we admire. That was my wake-up call. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m alive. I get to do this right now and I need to do this.” And time is of the essence. So I feel very ready in that way. I mean, I still definitely feel scared, but I’m just ready to give this album away.
You’ll be touring as Cyndi Lauper’s opening act this summer. What’s your history with her and her music?
My real history is that I was obsessed from a pretty young age. “True Colors” is one of the first songs I learned on guitar. I wish I could say it was because of her, but it was kind of because of “Glee” first. In high school — and I haven’t told her this but I’m excited to — I went to my local record store. I was collecting a bunch of vinyl, and I just got a record player, and I wanted to get “She’s So Unusual,” of course. I went to buy it, and the guy was like, “I’ll give you this for free if you sing one of the songs to me.” I was 15 or 16. So I sang “Time After Time” to him and he gave it to me.
On this tour, she’s been inviting the opener to duet with her on “Time After Time.” What if that happens to you?
I can’t talk about that. That freaks me out. I’m going to start crying already. I better start practicing that harmony. Actually, I think I know it deep down. I don’t think I even have to practice.
Lastly, Jake, what’s something that’s bringing you hope right now?
Honestly, my small community. Really focusing on that and on the deep relationships in my life and starting there. That’s really giving me hope. And seeing people begin to organize is giving me hope that we are not asleep and we’re doing what is called for.
