MAGA Nauseous, Trans Star Ryan Cassata Strikes Back with New Video (with a Little Help from Tom Goss)

If you're left feeling sick and disgusted by the constant anti-queer – and, especially, anti-trans – drumbeat of a government that offers no few solutions to the country's real problems, then you're not alone. Trans recording artist Ryan Cassata summarizes the situation nicely with "i feel like throwing up," the lead single from his new album, "Greetings from Echo Park," which dropped June 6.

Cassata is a youthful artist at 33, but he has been recording for years, releasing songs like "I Met Jesus at the Pride Parade" and "Howl." "Greetings from Echo Park," is his eighth, and it will be his first with a label – namely, Kill Rock Stars. That's a lot of output for someone so young, but judging from "i feel like throwing up," Cassata shows no sign of losing either his righteously pissed off energy or his joie de vivre, even if the song's subject matter seems daunting.

The video for "i feel like throwing up" begins with a black screen and the voice of the current president spouting tired MAGA talking points about gender; these are, after all, the people that invented the fiction of "gender ideology" as a means of sidestepping the realities of gender identity. The video's transgender characters start out tired, too – exhausted, really, from years of legislative bullying – but they are quick to recover their joy in Cassata's rollicking song.

How could they not? The video is directed by Ryan's fellow queer artist Tom Goss, who has been openly gay from the start of a career defined by sexy, sunny, feel-good singles and videos. Their collaboration is the very definition of finding joy during tough times. For Cassata, finding that joy was about more than dealing with the country's latest retrograde turn.

"I wrote it about the past year and a half of my life, most of which I've spent pretty sick with tick-borne infections and autoimmune disease," Cassata told EDGE of "i feel like throwing up." "So, I've spent a lot of time in the hospital and at clinics, feeling super isolated."

January's presidential inauguration and ensuing barrage of legislative attacks, most of them issued via the decree of executive order, intensified Cassata's feelings of isolation and rekindled a sense of estrangement. "I've been out for 17 years as a trans man, so I'm very far out of my early transition at this point, but I still do feel some of that isolation," he muses, "although I think those feelings of isolation are probably bigger for people that are earlier on in their transition journey."

Cassata found creative fire in what he knows: The unbreakable spirit of the queer demimonde. "Being part of the LGBTQ community is something that kept my feet on the ground during this really rough time in my life," he tells EDGE.

Fulfilling the edicts from the label could have been rough as well, once Kill Rock Stars decided to lead the new album with an April release for the single, and to pair the single with a video. Things had to happen fast, and that's when Cassata turned to Goss, a longtime friend and accomplished director.

Goss was on board, and on the same wavelength, from the start. "I've always admired Ryan and the community he builds, and the songs he writes," Goss says. "His perspective is really essential this day and age. And I don't think it's hard to see how the trans community was being portrayed in the election cycle, and the legislation that is being proposed and oftentimes passed in order to hurt the trans community." Creating a video with Cassata "seemed like a great opportunity to rally the community and help them understand that they're not alone.

"I have different experiences than Ryan, and I'm also not trans," Goss goes on to add, "and so I felt just super honored that Ryan would allow me to help tell the story, knowing that I'm passionate about the story, and I want to tell it to the best of my ability."

It wasn't a matter of a gay elder stepping in to lift a younger member of the community, though; for Goss, too, it was an opportunity to make new connections. "I met a whole new community of people," the "Bears" singer recounts of his experience working on the video. "The cast is really diverse, and that's always really important to me, and I know it's important to Ryan. But there's one thing that holds us together, and that's our need for connection and our vision for a better future."

"I had full faith that Tom would be able to deliver," Cassata says, "and I think one of the things that made this video so magical is that we filmed it, like, two weeks after Inauguration Day. At that point there were executive orders saying trans people don't exist, and the whole community was in a panic and feeling really isolated, feeling really unvalued. We were hearing, 'You're delusional,' and, 'Being trans is disgusting,' and, 'It's a sin.' We were hearing this from all directions, including the government, and the online bullying really ramped up as well."

That sea change in America's mood and politics left Cassata unsure about whether anyone would want to participate in the making of the video, but Goss' advice was to post a casting call and "watch what happens," he recalls.

What happened was a tsunami of enthusiasm.

"We literally had people fly in from all over the country to be in the video," Cassata marvels, still clearly in awe of the response. "All of these trans people and queer people coming together from all different backgrounds, from all over the country, to have this night that was totally a celebration. It was all trans joy, and everyone just got to be completely themselves.

"I've heard from at least a dozen people about how incredible and life changing that night was, and from that night on set I made a whole new group of friends that I've been hanging out with. I think it was just what was so needed in that moment."

And in this moment, too.

"I hope that when other queer and trans people watch this video, they feel that that magic as well," Cassata adds, "and they can say, 'Hey, community does exist, and one day I will find it, and one day things will get better.'"

That community is going strong even now and just waiting for those who ache to find it. Goss shares how synergy happened with the video's release party, which turned into a marathon celebration of his own upcoming work as well as Cassata's.

"It was so much fun to be able to bring the Bear community and trans community together to celebrate Ryan," Goss says, adding that that party was a double celebration since he had just completed the video for his recently-released single "Bear Soup." "We all just hung out and had a pool party for, like, 10 hours, viewing these music videos," Goss shares. (Read the Tom Goss interview about "Bear Soup" here.)

That gathering, and the joy it brought, superseded labels and divisions. Goss hopes that sort of pulling together becomes a trend.

"As we become more accepted in society, we tend to segment ourselves into, 'We're bears,' 'We're trans,' 'We're jocks,' 'We're twinks,' whatever," Goss reflects. "I hope this video and the work that we're doing together helps bridge the gap, so that we can see each other as one once again."

Ryan heads out on a 10-date US tour on June 14 that begins in California, then moves to the East Coast. For a complete list of dates, click here.

"Greetings from Echo Park" is available from Kill Rock Stars.

For more on Ryan Cassata, visit his website.