Today we’d like to introduce you to Devin Tait.
Devin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been in many bands over the years, but most formatively, I was a founding member of the West Hollywood-based queer electro band Shitting Glitter from 2001-2010. Through that band, and those years in LA right after I had moved there from Western Kansas, I grew to feel like not only a real musician, but a real Angeleno.
I loved almost everything about my life in LA, all the friends I made and all the bars we played at in Shitting Glitter. Eventually, I needed to leave that band and I set out on my own, releasing my first solo album in 2011 and then forming a band, Devin Tait & The Traitors, playing out all around town and beyond.
Some of my favorite memories of the 2010s include performing with the Traitors at the LA Marathon (three years); at the Only in Hollywood Music + Arts Festival, as the house band for Jasten King’s HEADPHONE Hollywood Boylesque, and sharing the stage with none other than Jane Wiedlin when I was playing keytar with the Gay-Gays, an all-gay-male celebration of LA’s own The Go-Gos.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There were many unbelievably cool things that happened while I was in Shitting Glitter, but it was a volatile band from the beginning, mainly because lead singer Amy Crosby was a very extreme personality and things often got very dramatic.
Our relationship had lots of ups and downs and eventually I needed to separate myself from it after almost a decade.
By that time, I was older and a little more set in my ways, and didn’t always find navigating the LA music scene on my own to be the easiest. Eventually, I found confidence in performing with other musicians as part of jams nights, tribute shows, and collaborating with friends.
Around that time, my twenty years of working a day job in Hollywood was coming to an end, and I had to make the decision to leave LA for Sacramento, where I was offered a really great job.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
By day, I’ve worked for years in the Urban Place Management industry, which many people are unaware of. Basically, places (typically called Districts for our purposes), need more help than most cities can offer so there are mechanisms to fund local initiatives such as cleaning and security, marketing, events, and economic development.
That has dovetailed nicely with my work as an artist, as I’m often working with people who are creating events and experiences, building community, and making positive change – all things I strive for in my music.
I’m not the most talented or trained musician, but I love making music and love singing and playing whether by myself or with others. I write songs – I had a four years writer’s block from Covid onward, but rediscovered my voice and have been releasing a lot of new music over the past year. I just started playing out here in Sacramento, but I come back to LA to film music videos, and I also did a holiday show at a theatre on Melrose last December.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Any time I got to do anything with pop music in junior high was a blast. A group of guys from my class did a parody of a New Kids on the Block song at a school concert and I played the keyboards. I also got to choreograph a music video for “Vogue” by Madonna when I was in eighth grade, and that year I got an AP (best ranking possible) on a vocal trio I was part of. All I really wanted to do when I was young was to make music, and now that’s what I’m doing.
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Image Credits
Main piano photo by Lyd and Mo Photography. Additional photos by Von Edwards and Milou & Olin Photography.
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