Amiss Tori

Amiss Tori is a piano playing Drag Queen Country Singer/Songwriter hailing from the U.K by way of Ireland and Italy. From an early age, Amiss became obsessed with some of the all time Queens of Country music. Captivated by the rhinestones and fringes, the heartfelt soul baring, the guitar and banjo plucking and the big, big hair, Amiss would sit spell bound at the likes of Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline and the heartbreak within their songs.

Growing up in a working class Irish-Italian family in North London, Amiss would often be brought along to the local working men's clubs and Irish pubs to watch the adults drink themselves into a stupor. It was there that this little gay boy would hear country music for the first time, performed by the pub covers band. What he didn’t know then, as the covers band belted out ‘Crazy’ and ‘Jolene’, was that one day he would create his own country music diva and be wearing the rhinestones, fringes and big hair himself.

But before that, Amiss would spend years developing their musical chops studying classical and jazz piano, flute, guitar and bass as well as studying a music production degree from Leeds Conservatoire (then Leeds College of Music).

“One of the things I always loved most about Dolly Parton was, she could do it all herself. Just her and her guitar”.

The ability to “do it yourself” would pay dividends years later when the alter ego of Amiss Tori was born.

As Amiss Tori says… “Drag Queens do everything ourselves. We’re our own hairstylists, our own costume designers and our own makeup artists. So I thought, why not be my own keyboard player, banjo player and guitarist and my own recording engineer and producer too? Drag Queens are the ultimate DIY artists.”

True to the DIY ethos of drag, Amiss Tori’s entire debut album ‘Sequins & Steel’ was self produced, recorded, mixed and mastered, and released on her label Glamaphone Records, the world's only Drag Queen run record label. She also plays wurlitzer, pianos, guitars and banjos on the recording.

Amiss Tori’s love of country music divas would expand to folk and bluegrass, devouring albums by Gillian Welch, The Be Good Tanyas, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchel, Martina McBride and Alison Krauss.

Amiss’s Tori’s debut album ‘Sequins & Steel’ is out now!