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Music

Cassia Hardy Found a New Perspective With Her New Identity

Cassia Hardy is Edmonton’s first transgender musician. We spoke to her about handling abuse in a blue collar city and her incredible live music show.

When I first saw Cassia Hardy on stage, I knew her as James. Since then, her name may have changed, but the music of her band Wares is as raw, aggressive and gritty as it’s ever been. To see Wares take the stage is to see passion incarnate. Stomping around in front of the crowd, she starts her songs by smashing a single drum repeatedly as hard as she can, then explodes into song. The veins in her neck bulge as she makes the loudest noise possible. Maneuvering herself into the audience, she meets a fan face to face and sings directly to them. One woman, one guitar, and a lot of noise. It’s an incredibly aggressive and loud spectacle that everyone should aim to see at least once. A child of the punk scene, Hardy has been present in the Edmonton music world for years now. Starting out as a member of several small local bands, she has now decided to focus on her own music.

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Since the birth of Wares she has released two albums: Sunshine in the summer of 2013 and City Kids just this spring. City Kids, a four song EP, showcases Hardy’s musical versatility and fearless lyrics. It’s a fast and sporadic genre hopping album that mirrors Hardy’s live show in its aggression. "Last night I dreamt I paid $100 to lock the door and fuck you in a bathroom stall.” That's a line from "Barely Knew Her", one of the best written songs to come out of Edmonton in a long long time. “I cracked the road in two with my religion.” The album is chock full of little lyrical gems. It’s an album full of angst, exploring life, love. Everything a twennty-something has to deal with when trying to find oneself. For Hardy, finding herself has been a difficult thing to do. Although born a male, Cassia identifies as female. Several months ago she publically came out as gender variant. She can now be seen up on stage confidently strumming the shit out of her guitar with painted nails and proudly singing her voice ragged with painted lips.

Other than lipstick, nail polish, and the name, little has changed for Wares. If anything, becoming Cassia has made the musician more fearless than before. A Wares show is brave and unapologetic, as if challenging people to say one little fucking thing about the red lips. Edmonton, a town bloated with oil money, houses a hefty population of assholes comfortable spouting off sexual slurs like "faggot" and "cunt." For someone who is not a straight white male, Edmonton can be … disagreeable. In a study this year, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives ranked Edmonton as the worst place in Canada to be a woman. Imagine life here as a gender variant person. The douchebags will not stop Cassia Hardy. Her audience is only growing, and this fall Wares took the show on the road, partnering with BC musician Johnny de Courcy. As Wares crashed into the west coast for the first time, I sat down with Cassia Hardy deep within the confines of the Edmonton river valley to discuss her music and what it’s like to be an openly transgender musician in one of the most conservative cities in Canada.

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Noisey: Where are you from?
Cassia Hardy: I moved to Alberta as an infant, so long ago I can’t remember. This is my home. Edmonton’s my home. I’ve lived in the Greater Edmonton Area since I was like, two years old.

You've been playing in this city for a few years now, how would you describe your music? Maybe take us through your albums?
Well Sunshine was very much me just trying to get out there. I put it out a couple days before my 21st birthday. I had been writing songs as I was 18 but I was never able to hold a band together. It was in a way born out of frustration, it was me making the loudest noise that I knew how to make.

How was recording City Kids?
City Kids is just me and a guitar and in retrospect it really helps me reconcile, because so much of Wares in that early part was just me wishing I had a bass player and a drummer. Whereas City Kids is finally me being okay with just being me. I made my peace with the fact that I’m primarily a solo act.

I’ve heard you give a sort of Wares tagline before. What is that?
Everybody’s got something to sell, that’s kind of the nature of the world we live in. Some people take issue with that. Everyone in the world has value and everyone’s got one or many things that they can offer to the world. Wares is me, Wares is my offering to the world. That’s my outlook, that’s my life, that’s my songs, that’s my show. That’s me. It’s everything.

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Why did you pick the name Cassia?
Cassia Eller was a Brazilian musician in the 90s who rose to fame with a single that was a love song, but was ambiguous sexually with regards to whether if it was about a male or female. She was one of the first openly gay Brazilian singers, I think. South American even. She really campaigned for LGBT rights down there. Very fierce strong woman, I think she died some years ago. I read her story and was looking for a name that just suited me I guess. You just don’t hear it lot. I liked the musical legacy it had. I needed something different than my birthname.

Why did you need something different than your birthname?
I'm a woman. I'm pretty of confident in that. People try and take that from you. There's a very real need for visibility for people such as myself. It is, I believe it's important for people like me who are aspiring to be in the public life that I represent myself as truly possible. I think there's a lot of duplicity and just straight up bullshit that permeates our culture in regards to gender and presentation and body standards. I hope that I can one day be an example for someone, that you can leave the house and whatever you want. You can express yourself however you want you. You can just really—I know it's cliché to say be who you want to be—but you would be surprised what people tell themselves, and you would be surprised of the crazy places they will take themselves to avoid the truth.

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How has the reaction been since you have come out as a woman?
Very positive largely, in the art scene it is a largely very accepting populous, I've been very fortunate. I've been so unimaginably fortunate coming from a place of such privilege, as far as my gender expression goes. I have noticed a change in how people treat me. I was walking down the streets one day and someone walks up to me it and asked for smoke. I said I don't smoke and they said they wanted to eat my cunt. That doesn't happen to males. I've had people throw things at me. What you can take are the people that know that it just doesn't fucking matter and treat you like a pal or like an acquaintance or like a colleague anyway. 40% of transgender people or gender variant people have attempted to commit suicide before coming out. I'm part of that statistic. That more than anything has really showed me that I need to be as honest and as open with myself for other people's wellbeing as well as mine.

How has this affected your music since coming out as a woman?
Well I was selling false product, wasn’t I? That’s not necessarily true, all my songs I’ve tried to write as honestly as I could. But there is just some stuff that you can’t admit to yourself sometimes. Where I am now, I hold myself to a better standard, a more healthy standard. Music doesn't have an implicit gender. I don't have a static gender, I've been all kinds of shit in my life. You know the one thing I can really say is, when you come to Wares show, I’m going to sell you everything I have. That's more all-encompassing now because I've accepted more of who am. I can give that to people.

What do you want to say that I haven’t asked you yet?
While I don't like making my music too political, the core of what I sing about, everything I do, is holding myself to a certain integrity. For a long time in my life I didn't really tell the whole story, and as a songwriter that's kind of my job. So what else can I say, music is everything, read the lyrics, come to a show, sing along. That’s all I can ask of anybody.

Mack Lamoureux is a writer living in Edmonton - @MackLamoureux