Don't wait to love her: Toronto drag staple Regina Gently is ready for her pop music spotlight

Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Last month, Regina Gently celebrated her 10 year drag-iversary. The alter ego of Hidden Cameras alum Gentlemen Reg, Regina has been a mainstay not only on stages in her hometown Toronto but across North America and Europe, where her band Light Fires opened for the likes of Peaches, Austra, Big Freedia and Hercules The Love Affair. And now, Regina is ready for a new kind of spotlight: her very own.

Don't Wait To Love Me is Regina's first album released without Light Fires, and it encompasses a different sound than fans may be used to. 

"It was going to actually be a second Light Fires record. Partway through writing, I just realized I wanted I didn't want to make another indie dance record," Gently says. "I wanted to make, like, a true dance record — one that had 90s club sounds and 80s dance sounds and I all these things that I grew up on."

That initial thought came quite a few years ago, before what Gently calls a "long, drawn-out process of making this album." It actually wasn't until the pandemic forced Gently off her busy schedule that the record finally fully came together.

"The music has actually been done for quite a while," she says. "And then it was really through COVID that I was like, 'Ok, I have to just put this together.' There was no sequence, the songs weren't mastered, there was no artwork, there was no album title. I just had a bunch of songs on my laptop. I hadn't been focused in such a long time, you know? I've been doing so many things over the past years, like working in makeup and lots of other things. But strangely, through everything shutting down, I was like, 'Ok, I can just take all day.' In early March, I lost all my work. So I had all my days open. And then I was like, 'I really need to to figure this. What is this album?' So it's been a very interesting, strange process."

Figuring out whether to release a dance record in the middle of a pandemic that hasn't exactly been friendly to people who like to dance wasn't Gently's favourite part of that process, but she came around to it.

"It's a dance record and there are no dance clubs," she says. "So I struggled with whether I wanted to put it out or if it was a good idea. But I think that it was a good idea. I think there's so much heaviness in the day-to-day world on so many levels. I think escapism is really needed, and dance music is a great resource for that. Someone just texted me last night and they said they were riding around on their bike listening to this record and they loved it. I think it can fit in a lot of a lot of places outside a dance club, like driving or working out or having a little party at home on your own."

Gently isn't alone in providing that resource. The pandemic has seen a slew of escapist dance music come out to aid us through the times (see: Kylie Minogue, Charli XCX, Jessie Ware, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, etc.), and Gently is happy to be joining their company.

"I love that Charli XCX record and the Gaga record," she says. "I mean, all kinds of people are putting stuff out, but I personally am not gravitating toward melancholic, morose, emotional songwriting right now. I'm wanting that fun, vibrant, life-affirming sound. Like, what are we going to do when this is over?"

In the meantime, Gently will be promoting the album as much as possible.

"And then hopefully next year I will be performing it live," she says. "I hope by putting it out now, it really can get into people's consciousness and lives. And hopefully they'll still be feeling it next year when we wake up from the winter."

Listen to Don't Wait To Love Me here.