For Grace Baldridge, better known as Semler, performing in concerts evokes feelings of both church-camp worship services and hazy house parties. Audience members harmonizing feels like the choirs of their youth and the outcast peers of their present. 

Much of the musician’s work mingles the sacred with the profane, the holy with the damned. As a queer Christian artist, these themes are hardly unfamiliar to Semler; they were explored in the melancholy 2021 EP “Preacher’s Kid (unholy demos)” and on a flurry of releases in the years following. They were raised Episcopalian, and their father acted as a reverend at their local church. Despite it being a comparatively more accepting denomination, part of the artist’s coming-of-age involved deconstructing and re-evaluating their own perception of religion and how it could manifest in their work.

“I’ve listened to so many sermons on sexuality and the Bible from various points of view since I was like 14, and I’ve done so many courses from affirming and non-affirming points of view,” Semler said. “I want more people to know that there are resources and that there are other perspectives and interpretations … It’s so important for people to understand that there are other ways to maintain your faith.”

The demo of Semler’s most popular song, “Jesus From Texas,” has almost 2 million listens and the version re-recorded to be released on their recent debut album “Revival In My Mind” has already crossed 600,000. In spite of their successes and offers to buy rights to some of their songs, Semler has maintained ownership of their music. They have remained an independent artist, managing their releases alongside a small team.

In an interview with WSN, Semler spoke about deconstructing their Christian faith and the highs and lows of being an independent musician — all amongst the background of growing Christian nationalism.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSN: Did it feel particularly radical or powerful for you to release ‘Revival in My Mind’ right now, considering the rise of fascism and Christian nationalism in this country?

Semler: ‘Preacher’s Kid’ was very early in my deconstruction. I didn’t know what I was doing, and we were so isolated at the time that I was able to have this free flow of thoughts and then put it out on ‘Preacher’s Kid.’ At that point it felt like putting something out into the void — like, ‘Is anyone else experiencing this?’ — because it felt like this big taboo within the church communities I grew up in to talk about what many of us were experiencing. If you were going through deconstruction, it was a private, whispered thing. With TikTok and social media and lockdowns, I felt like people were a bit more open to expressing this vulnerability of being in a crisis of faith given the political climate. With the new album, there was more proof for me that there were other people – listeners and artists and creatives – out there that were experiencing something really similar. 

WSN: You’ve talked about the struggles of being an independent artist, and I know you previously turned down an offer to buy [the rights to] “Jesus from Texas.” Is remaining independent a goal or a value of yours, or would you like to be signed at some point?

Semler: I would! I’m so reluctantly independent, but I would love for a great deal to come across. When you’re independent, there’s so much admin required for doing the job well, and it’s not my strength. I think that it’s important to retain ownership of my art until a deal comes across that’s undeniable. 

There were offers to buy ‘Jesus from Texas’ as the one song, and I felt strongly that it should live within a body of work on my album. If I sold it then it wouldn’t open the record, and it just felt like I was compromising my artistic vision. 

WSN: Also, I imagine you have your artistic vision of who ‘Semler’ is, and a label might compromise that in some sense. 

Semler: I’ve had weird pitch meetings with labels before where they’ve said, ‘We think you’re like this artist,’ and I’ve just kind of in my head been like, ‘I don’t think I’m like that artist at all.’ And so even if the deal was incredible, they’ve already shared with me that they don’t see me for who I aspire to be artistically, so it just doesn’t make sense to collaborate — not in any mean way, but we’re just not compatible. 

There was a very small [label] meeting, where they made [my team] a PowerPoint slide of gay pop artists and it was Girl in Red and Lil Nas X and then they’re like, ‘We think that you could be like that.’ I was like, ‘That sentence doesn’t make sense to me.’ I just don’t understand the three of us in the lineup, like what is the thread, you know? Gay?

WSN: There’s a sense of pigeonholing that can happen with queer artists. I’m reminded of Julien Baker saying that she was tired of people calling her the gay Christian sober artist instead of simply an artist. Does that feel like something that comes up for you, in terms of marketing yourself?

Semler: It’s definitely something that feels tenuous within me, but I do understand that it’s part of what I’ve signed up for, so I will continue to do it in ways that don’t feel like selling myself out. But as far as being a queer Christian artist, I think for a while that felt a little gimmicky. I was self-conscious that people thought it was a gimmick. I’ve grown to feel more easy about it recently because I think that representation is so important and I understand that I do sit at that crossroads and it’s just the hand I was dealt, you know? It’s just the home I was born into … I think claiming it is kind of important to me now, one, because of the representation, and two, because I don’t like it when people just say, ‘Oh, you can’t be that.’ There’s a little bit of defiance in it. 

I learned that from Lizzie, my wife, because I can be really really sensitive, and she has much thicker skin than I do. A lot of the time, she would say, ‘You know, someone else’s opinion of me or of us is just none of our business.’ It was really kind of revelatory for me. 

WSN: What does the phrase ‘Revival in my Mind’ mean to you? Why did you pick that for the album title?

Semler: We always heard about these big tent revivals and stuff growing up, and you’d go on mission trips, and be like, ‘This is the revival of this generation.’ But when I look back on the real valley of deconstruction that I was in and where I’ve landed, I think that that’s sort of the beauty of revival — that it’s contemplative. It’s being in the backyard with my mom and [my child] Frances and having like a glass of wine, and just recognizing that this is the good stuff. The question of heaven and hell, that doesn’t keep me up at night, and it doesn’t linger with me anymore. Because I have found peace that I can only attribute to a divine faith and power that is beyond my understanding, but I’m kind of okay with it. Adjusting and expanding my framework on faith and spirituality — that is my revival.

Contact Monique Ezeh at [email protected].