Kacey Musgraves Enlists Nashville Drag Queens to Debut Her New Album, 'Pageant Material'

Go inside the singer's Nashville bash.

ByABC News
June 16, 2015, 1:07 PM
Kacey Musgraves performs in concert at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival on June 12, 2015 in Manchester, Tenn.
Kacey Musgraves performs in concert at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival on June 12, 2015 in Manchester, Tenn.
Gary Miller/Getty Images

— -- Kacey Musgraves wanted to have a fabulous album release party for her sophomore project, "Pageant Material," so she enlisted the drag queens of Nashville gay bar, Play, to perform to the album for her friends and industry insiders.

The party took place Monday night in front of a capacity crowd, but Musgraves and her publicist friend, Elice Cuff, dreamed up the party during Cuff's recent birthday bash at Play.

Before the album release show got started, Musgraves said, "We were here for [Cuff's] birthday, slightly inebriated, and she leaned over and was like, 'You have to do something here for your album.' And I was like, 'That is a brilliant idea.' So, it's all Elice's idea, and it was a really good one."

The drag queens lip-synced and performed to most of the tracks from Musgraves' album, including the lead single, "Biscuits." In between the performances, she took the stage to introduce each song while decked out in a black, sequined jacket and satiny, black hot pants.

As for the venue of her party, Musgraves has been a regular at Play ever since she moved to Nashville several years ago. She went to a few gay bars while living in Austin, Texas, but none of them compared with the drag shows she saw in Music City, she said.

"Whenever I came here, I just fell in love with it," she said. "So, it's kind of cool to come back and have an event here like this -- a country music event at a drag bar. I mean, it's kind of brilliant. I can't wait to see what the girls are wearing. I'm pretty sure they're tucking and taping right now, getting ready."

Musgraves' CMA-winning Song of the Year, "Follow Your Arrow," has become an anthem for gay country fans in the past few years. She's proud to help make the LGBT community feel at home within the country format.

"I've had a lot of people come up to me and say that they can walk a little bit taller because they're a big country music fan and now they have something that really resonates with what they're going through," she said. "I see gay couples at my shows and they feel like they can be themselves, like, holding each other and singing, and that just makes me feel really good. I really am proud of that."

"Pageant Material" hits stores June 23.

Musgraves said she's hosting another party at Nashville's Acme Feed & Seed tonight to launch the Texas-based vodka brand, Zodiac.