Alex Boerner/INDY Week
Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace burns her birth certificate at the start of the band's concert Sunday night at Motorco.
When Against Me! hit the stage at Motorco in Durham last night, frontwoman Laura Jane Grace had a few words regarding HB 2.
"I, for one, have come here to be reborn. How about you?" she said. "So let's start this off right. I brought my birth certificate with me."
Then she took out a lighter and lit it on fire. The band kicked into its opening song, "I Was A Teenage Anarchist," off of 2010's White Crosses.
Later, Grace, who came out as transgender in 2012 and wrote the band's critically acclaimed 2014 record Transgender Dysphoria Blues about coming to terms with her identity, said that when her promoter gave her the option to join the boycott, her response was, "Fuck no, we're going to North Carolina ... I may not be a citizen of this state, but we've played in this state at least once a year for the past twenty years, and we pay taxes in this state."
Grace also said that the people we should be afraid of in public restrooms are the ones who scribble and graffiti hate. "Until I have some assurance that I won't be attacked by someone like that in a public restroom," she said, "I will be pissing and shitting outside like a dog."
The INDY talked to Laura Jane Grace at length before the show. Look for that tomorrow, and watch the video of her burning her birth certificate below.
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