When I first spoke to Jerry Garcia, the Baritone Captain for the Austin Gay Men’s Chorus, the main thing that struck me was his light. He had a joy that radiated off of him, a deep gratitude for the community he’d received through the chorus, and an intense passion for sharing his story and the lessons he’d taken with him. As I learned more about Garcia, the struggles and events that had shaped his life, I became in awe of this spirit. This unshakable optimism in the face of life’s heaviness. It’s this positivity that made our conversation such a delight.
Jerry Garcia was born and raised in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, but moved to Texas when he was just 16 years old. This initial adjustment was difficult, “I again dealt with loss and with sickness in [my] family and with a lot of depression growing up.” Garcia isolated himself a lot in those initial years, “I would stick with the kids that spoke Spanish because I was afraid of being bullied for speaking English. I was afraid of feeling like I didn’t fit in with those other kids since this was their native language. Now I’m kind of like, I don’t care.” Garcia laughs, “I’m like, screw it. You know, I am just as worthy. I’m just as smart. I’m just as important and if I make a fool out of myself, then I make a fool out of myself, you know?”
Garcia proved time and time again that he was just as smart, if not smarter, by excelling in academics and graduating high school in just two years, “I graduated as a sophomore from high school. And I remember that my counselor said, there’s no way that you’re gonna do this. There’s no way. And I remember exactly what I told her. I said to her, do my schedule as if I was able to make it, and allow me to figure out if I can make it or not.” Of course, in the end, Garcia was able to graduate with flying colors and was even rewarded a laptop for all of his troubles, “At the end of the year, I won the top prize of a raffle. They gave me a computer and nobody can tell me that they didn’t give me that on purpose, it was rigged!” Garcia said, laughing. It was that same brashness and determination that allowed him to graduate college in just three years, ending in the top 3% of his class.
During the COVID pandemic, everything changed, “I lived in McAllen right around the pandemic time. It was a very hard time for many people. For me included. I experienced a lot of loss. I experienced the loss of my stepfather around that time.” As awful as this period was, “I mean it was horrible.” It inspired Garcia to make a change, “I decided I wanted to do something out of the valley. I wanted to move away. I wanted to take some time for myself to figure out what is it that I wanted to do, and to find my authentic self.” Always wanting to make the world a better place, Garcia moved to Austin and began working with Habitat for Humanity. While the job was fulfilling, he still felt as if something was missing. Enter the Austin Gay Men’s Chorus.
“I was just scrolling through Instagram and I got an ad for the choir, and I was like, oh my gosh, this could be so cool. I would love to join… My stepdad was a singer, and he instilled in me a lot of that love and passion for music. So I really, really, really wanted to try out.” As Garcia prepared for the audition he rehearsed Adele’s song “Chasing Pavements”, hoping to make a good first impression, “I was like, okay, I am gonna do a great job. They are gonna take me in!” Garcia was prepped and ready to impress when he walked in to discover some devastating news, “the song that we had to sing was the National Anthem.” Record scratch, “I am not from the US, right? I was born in Mexico.” Garcia began laughing, “And I was like, oh, no way, [Garcia laughs again]. The one song I don’t freaking know is the national anthem.”
“I said, okay I apologize. I thought we had to prepare our own song. I am not prepared for this. Do you mind if I pull out my phone and look at the national anthem lyrics,” Garcia finishes between his laughter. Thankfully, they allowed him to take out his phone, and shortly after the audition, he was informed he got in! Almost immediately, he was certain this was the change he’d been looking for, “I was right. I needed that community. That’s what my soul wanted… And I’m just so grateful to have found it, honestly.”
Each week Garcia is reunited with his friends, and in between solos and sets they get to go over how their weekends were, the things on their minds, and just get to exist. It’s safe to say that throughout these interactions, the community Garcia has found at the Chorus has transformed his life, “Those people have become more than my friends. They’re my family now.” And as he told me the story of how he became Baritone Captain, it was clear to me that like family, the people at the Chorus advocate for one another, even when you don’t want them to.
“The person prior to me, his name is Jasper.” Garcia says excitedly, “Jasper was one of the people that, the first day when I went to rehearsal, he welcomed me with open arms. He became one of my greatest friends. He doesn’t live in Austin anymore, but before he left, he was in my position.” When Jasper was leaving and planning who would take over his role, he was adamant about Garcia, “He told me, I want you to be the captain. And I said, well, you know, I can’t do it because my brother is getting married in December and I’m going to [see] Taylor Swift.” Essentially, Garcia would be absent during the Chorus’s Holiday show and didn’t feel right about taking on the position when he wouldn’t be able to participate.
However, Jasper had other plans, “After he left, the president of the organization during a get-together, came up to me. He was like, so I heard you’ve been passed the torch. And I said, what? Who told you that? He mentioned, oh, Jasper told me.” Despite the scheduling conflicts, Garcia knew in his heart what he had to do, “So I did take the role. I wanted make my friend proud. Because he was there for me when I needed him. I really wanted to become who he was for me. That pillar of support.”
Do not worry though, Garcia assured me he’s still making time for the most important person in his life, “Yes. I’m still going to see Taylor Swift.” He laughs. Though he won’t be able to attend the Holiday concert, he’s been hard at work with his team, “So for my position, lemme tell you, what I do in particular, I’ll make sure that they’re all coming to rehearsal, they’re all memorizing their music, that they sound good…If we don’t see them during rehearsal, I am the one that is reaching out to them and making sure that they’re okay, that they’re safe, [if] they are sick…I’m like the baritone dad, well, me and Lewis who is the Leader of our section and one of my good friends.” Garcia explains.
The Chorus is separated into two principal roles, Section Captains, like Garcia, and then Section Leaders, like Lewis, “[The Section Leader’s] playing the piano, he’s going over certain sections in our music that we need to go over with and just making sure that everything sounds good, basically.” And though the music is magnificent, what spoke to Garcia more was the diversity within the Chorus, “It was great for me to see when I joined the choir, how many other Latino people I saw there. How many black people, how many trans people, how many Asian people I saw. It was not only inspiring, but I also felt like a great sense of relief.”
Being queer in many cultures can be challenging. There’s little representation of queer Latino people living happily, despite the existence of those stories. It was encouraging for Garcia to see other people just like him, and come together with people who weren’t like him at all, “There’s people in the choir that have been pastors, there’s people in the choir that have kids. There are people in the choir that have been married to a person of the other sex before. There are people in the choir that are not LGBTQIA+, but love our community. There are so many differences, but you see us all together on that church stage, and the message that we would like to convey is that it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to have differences from the person that is literally sitting next to you. At the end of the day, if there’s love and community, that’s all you need.”
The one thing everyone’s looking forward to is this year’s Holiday Show; Twas The Night Before. And what can one expect at this show? “I dunno that I can say what the songs are yet, but I can tell you that one of the songs is gonna be in Spanish… It is gonna be really, really fun. But we try to mix it up a lot. And for our performance, we’re doing a song completely in Russian. And that’s gonna be amazing because we’re learning not only the words, but also like the pronunciation. As our section leader said, I want people in the audience that speak Russian to stand up and be like, ‘Yeah!’”
For anyone who wants to participate in the Chorus, auditions open back up in the spring, “If you are curious to learn more, go to our Instagram page and check out a couple of our posts. We also have a direct link to purchase tickets to our next show. If you wanna come and take a look and see for yourself what we’re all about, see if it’s something that you would wanna join in the future. And the main thing that I encourage people to do is if you have any questions or anything like relating to somebody’s experience. You know, if you go to one of our concerts, just ask them.” Garcia’s certain any of the members would be happy to connect and help out.
As for Garcia himself, if you’re looking to connect you can find him on Instagram, and check out the link below to purchase tickets to their Holiday show, and see all the hard work the Austin Gay Men’s Chorus have put in come to life.
