Orville Peck on feeling like an outsider and finding his home in country music

With his deep baritone voice and high-camp take on cowboy culture, Orville Peck has been steadily on the rise since the release of his debut album, Pony, in 2019. Now, he's back with his highly anticipated third album, Stampede, but in an interview with Q's Tom Power, Peck shares that he didn't always feel at home in the country world.

"It took a long time for me to build that confidence because I felt so outside of it," he says. "I didn't know how to even get my foot in the door."

Country music wasn't really that popular in Johannesburg, where Peck was born and raised. As a teenager, he played in punk bands and felt embarrassed to tell people that he had dreams of being a country singer.

"Not to get too deep about it, but I think I've always felt out of place in every room," he says. "I've always just felt different. Now, I'm 36 and I've learned that that feeling of feeling different is actually my power, not my weakness."

As a kid, Peck remembers feeling lonely most of the time. After watching westerns like The Lone Ranger, he says he began to connect to the "philosophical idea of the cowboy" as someone who doesn't fit into the dominant culture. But as a gay man, he didn't necessarily fit into the cowboy counterculture either. 

Peck's love for country music developed after hearing Johnny Cash's live album At Folsom Prison for the first time. Dolly Parton was also an influence.

"I think I'd seen her in a film," Peck says. "I remember thinking she was a character. I thought she was like Pee-wee Herman or something. I didn't realize this was a real person because she has this — and she still has this — incredibly sincere but camp juggling act."

In his early 20s, Peck started to find a sense of freedom and belonging while out on the road as a drummer in a touring punk band. "Everything made sense when I was on tour," he says. "It just felt like that was where I was meant to be."

But at that time in his life, he says he compartmentalized everything he was passionate about.

"I played as a drummer in punk bands, and that was one box," Peck explains. "Then I was an actor and I wanted to do classical theatre, and that was one box. And then I was a singer and a songwriter, and that was a whole other box."

While living in London to pursue acting, Peck says it finally clicked for him that his path in life was to be a country singer. That way, he could combine all of his passions under one box.

"There's the performance and theatricality of what I do," he says. "There's the kind of punk ethos and even sometimes sound that trickles into what I still do. I think I found a way, finally, to be entirely myself, and it turned into this project."

Though he's donned a mask since the beginning of his music career, Peck maintains that his professional persona is not so much a disguise as it is a representation of who he truly is. He says he used to struggle with the idea that people thought he was simply putting on a character.

"This is actually the amalgamation of everything that is the dearest and nearest to me," he tells Power. "[It's] truly the sort of best version of how I can open up my chest and show people who I am."

ll interview with Orville Peck is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Orville Peck produced by Lise Hosein.