The musician gets real bout sobriety and how snorkeling in Greece helped shape her rawest album yet

Early in my interview with legendary trans rocker Laura Jane Grace, I can't help but fawn over her 2016 memoir "Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout," which details Grace's struggles with addiction and her very public transition.

"'Tranny' is really junkie-prose adjacent," I tell her, explaining I cut my literary teeth on the late punk poet Jim Carroll and other drug-fueled autobiographies. Unexpectedly, my heart drops to my gut, hoping she catches the reference. "Oh yeah, right on," she says, laughing. I'm instantly relieved.

Knowing her rocky relationship with journalists, I tell her I don't want to fuck it up. I reference this excerpt of her memoir: "I hate interviews. They feel like homework and I'm just trying to guess the right answers so the journalist will write an article that will help us sell records."

Again, Grace laughs, and my heart settles somewhere comfortable for the next 30 minutes. I quickly confess, and tell her I started my own transition as a solo trek and personally relate to Grace's gender journey, including her revelation that the path to sobriety is often complicated and non-linear.

Grace lives on the bleeding edge of honesty. She's raw and has made a career out of living, and screaming out loud, in that space. She first gained prominence as the founder and frontwoman of Against Me! and came out as transgender in 2012 at the height of the band's success. Her transition, documented in the acclaimed 2014 album "Transgender Dysphoria Blues," marked a watershed moment for transgender visibility in mainstream rock music. Since then, Grace has become one of the most prominent transgender musicians in the industry, balancing her artistic career with outspoken advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights.

So leave it her to record an unapologetically unorthodox, X-rated anthemic song that could make even the most hardened punk rocker blush. "Your God (God's Dick)" is the first single from "Adventure Club," a project, due in July, she worked on with her four-piece band Laura Jane Grace In The Trauma Tropes, which includes her wife Paris Campbell. The project is Grace's fourth full-length album with the band.

Like many tracks on the new album, "Your God (God's Dick)" was written during her time in Greece as part of the prestigious Onassis Air Program, an artistic research and residency initiative. Speaking during an evening chat after sound-check for a concert in Portland, Oregon, she described the program as "the most magical experience ever," which became the creative backdrop for "Adventure Club."

"Every day we would wake up and drive up and down the coast, and find a new spot on the beach to go snorkeling. Literally like swimming with sea turtles and eels. It was just majestically beautiful, and then we would record all evening," Grace told me.

The fellowship provided Grace with structure and accountability, challenging her to explain her creative process and inspiration. "I had to be like 'OK, so this week I wrote this song called 'God's Dick,'" said Grace, who arrived for the fellowship with four songs in pocket, and left with 12.

Michigan fans will have two opportunities to experience the new material live, as Laura Jane Grace In The Trauma Tropes plans upcoming shows on June 20 at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit and July 15 at the Pyramid Scheme in Grand Rapids. Both performances will support the band Murder by Death.

During our conversation, Grace spoke about life as a transgender punk anarchist, the relationship between addiction and dysphoria, and what advice "World Wrestling Entertainment" superstar wrestler CM Punk offered up when she was rebuilding her life.

When I was listening to "Adventure Club," it read like a love letter to addiction and using.

I think that's accurate. What's been interesting to me is that those songs that I've had kind of kicking around for a while -- like the song "New Year's Day" (The hardest part of getting sober/Is pouring yourself out of the bottle) and the song "Active Trauma" (Gonna wake up tomorrow morning/And burn this house to the fucking ground/Only when it's ashes will the fire go out) -- those were two of the songs I went over to Greece with. So, it was really about finding the time and place for the right magic. With whatever is happening in the world now, it's crazy how much they've lined up and how relevant they are.

Where are you at with your sobriety journey right now? I know personally that it can be a long, winding road.

Understatement of the century, right? I haven't had a drink since August 31 of 2018.

When I was younger, I drank to disassociate from my body in an effort to kill the "me" I couldn't really access -- my transness. Do you have any sort of relationship to dysphoria that came into clarity when you got sober?

I think I already realized all that from a really young age, the way that substance has affected my dysphoria. Alcohol would numb it and make me forget about it in ways, which was appealing. But some other things would enhance it in good ways, if that makes sense. Cocaine would just completely annihilate it, but smoking weed would kind of calm it in a way that made it not as panicky or frantic.

So, from a young age that was what drew me to drugs, almost. I was experimenting with the way that substances would make my dysphoria feel, and that kind of spirals. I think touring is what kind of made it all a problem in a lot of ways. When you tour months end, you can just be drunk that whole time and it's not abnormal in the scene. It was kind of a necessary thing to stop.

It's wild because trans people are such a focus -- the scapegoat of why things are bad. So, on the one hand, it's almost empowering, where you're like, "Damn, trans people scare people shitless." We can literally unravel society just by being visible.

In your book "Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout," there's this part discussing your transition where you muse, "Will I ever pass? I don't really care anymore." That struggle between internal change and outward change -- how did you work through that?

I had some eye-opening realizations within the last couple years. Specifically, I had FFS [facial feminization surgery] in 2018, which is part of what would help me kick drinking. I stopped drinking three months before I went in for surgery, but after FFS I realized I can't see myself right. I would see my face after FFS and not really notice a change at all, but then I would see pictures from months prior and realize, "Oh wait. I do look really feminine there." I see the change now but in the immediate of looking in the mirror, that's dysphoria. I can't see myself and it's like body dysmorphia; whatever someone else sees of me, the way I look, that is not what I see. And that was really driven home by having FFS, then realizing I can't even see my face is obviously changed. Like, it's not apparent to me.

I know hormone use was a thing that you struggled with. For transitioning or living authentically, do you think hormones need to be part of that equation?

It's something that I've thought about an abnormal amount and something that I still think about. There are so many angles to it. On the one hand, I recognize the good that hormones have done for me, not just physical changes but mental changes and emotional changes from them. Then there's the part of me that is a realist where I look at what's happening in the world now and I'm just as fearful as every other trans person. What happens if they take away hormones from everybody? I don't want to be in a position mentally where my whole identity hinges on that, so I have to make sure that I'm solid.

As you transition, there's a shift in identity -- or shift to identity. Have you found anything that stayed constant in you or anything that surprised you?

Yeah, I guess music has been that, right? I don't think that I'm a musician or that I like doing what I do because I was a closeted trans kid who had no other outlet and that just worked. I'd like to think that even if I weren't trans, this is still exactly what I'd be doing just because I really love it. So that's been affirming to really feel that, for sure.

After leaving Against Me!, how did your trans identity change?

Growing as an artist and then coming into my identity were working in tandem with each other. I realized I can't grow as a songwriter or as an artist if I'm not actually being honest with myself or being honest with everyone around me. Because there's a block there. There's something I'm not addressing, or there's something I'm not talking about, so it was less about physically appearing some different way on stage and more about just mentally accessing parts of myself that I compartmentalized or denied.

Anarchy has been a really big part of your life in philosophy and in action. How does that intersect with gender for you?

Part of what drew me to anarchy politics back in the day was the idea of it being a safe space. Seeing punk-rock posters that would say "all people are welcome" regardless of gender-based sexuality and feeling like this is a place where maybe I could be myself. There were times where I felt like that scene was kind of just a recreation of high school or whatever other microcosm and I've been disappointed by it, but I feel like, at best, punk is supposed to be about those things. About creating space for everybody and welcoming everybody.

How are you processing the current times and a shift in the world as we knew it?

It's wild because trans people are such a focus -- the scapegoat of why things are bad. So, on the one hand, it's almost empowering, where you're like, "Damn, trans people scare people shitless." We can literally unravel society just by being visible.

Part of transition for me was undergoing a real ego death. If you're trans female, you don't even realize the amount of privilege you have in the world until you abandon that. I think most average males don't realize that. This is kind of a joke, but I think it would be beneficial if every single cisgender male in the world was just pumped full of estrogen for a year of their life. To experience that kind of ego death, I feel like they would come out a better person on the other end.

I have a wild card question. I saw that you are friends with "WWE" pro-wrestler CM Punk. What's the backstory?

It's fucking weird. Somehow Against Me! ended up having a lot of pro-wrestler fans. I have no clue how it happened, but from really early on there used to be these two wrestlers, Josh Prohibition and M-Dogg 20, who would come out to our shows when we were playing basements. We would be terrified because they were obviously these two huge big wrestling dudes, so we're like, "What the fuck are they doing here?" But then they were the nicest people ever.

CM Punk ended up being a fan and he would come to shows and we had a couple mutual friends and so we hung out with him. I've never watched wrestling. I just knew, "Oh this guy is a famous wrestler," but he could not be a nicer person. When I was working on getting sober and I was really unhealthy at the time, I reached out to him at one point and asked if he could recommend a personal trainer. I'm trying to get in shape, trying to get sober and stuff like that, and he just really bluntly was like, "No, fuck that. You don't need that if you're serious. You'll just do it." Ouch, that's fucking harsh. But he was 100% right and it was completely the motivation I needed, so I'm forever indebted to CM Punk.