In the fickle world of Peterborough’s local music and punk scene, it’s not uncommon to see bands come and go with relatively little fanfare.

It’s rare for a band to have a seemingly strong identity and following right off the bat, even less so for them to be on the bill for a sold-out show sponsored by some of the most influential community and arts organizations in the city we call home. 

And yet, that’s the boat in which My Fair Lady seems to have found themselves. The band have spent the better part of the summer building up to last Saturday’s concert-plus-drag show “Heartbreakers, Dreammakers” at Sadleir House, which wound up selling out hours before the show. 

Part of this is no doubt owed to the band’s incredible marketing—as well as the co-sign from local drag legends Betty Baker, Magnolia Knox, and Sahira Q of the latter’s own Haus of Q, who headlined HBDM with a stunning drag number.

Since their Instagram soft-launch in early July, My Fair Lady have consistently posted glitzy, attention-grabbing, and provocative graphics depicting their various members in fishnets, glam makeup, and high heels.

This is all part of their “Slut Punk,” aesthetic My Fair Lady singer and architect, Liam Parker, tells me.

“It’s a genre I kind of made up,” Parker admits. 

Even the notoriously pedantic community of RateYourMusic doesn’t list the genre. Music cataloguing service Last.fm does, albeit with one caveat—the top artist listed is none other than notorious transphobe and disgraced children’s author Joanne “J.K.” Rowling.

Rowling’s politics are a far cry from Parker’s vision of slut punk, however. According to them, the genre is “an emphasis on ‘You’re here. Make yourself known. Be a bad bitch.’”

“I grew up in a really small town, and I never got to be as queer as I wanted to be,” Parker says. 

“I walk on stage and that's when I feel like I own that show right here. I can do it. And I'm proud of who I am.”

Slut punk, then, is about self-expression not just through music, but also through style and theatrics.

“When you look at everybody on stage, I try to coordinate that a little bit,” Parker says. “But also it's like ‘Be who you are.’ What does ‘slut’ mean to you?” 

This theatricality is perhaps a holdover from the band’s origins. Parker first started My Fair Lady while directing a production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch as a one-off for a production fundraiser.

“We were like: ‘We all play instruments like why don't we just, like, cover some musical theater?’” Parker reveals. The only thing the band was missing was a name. “I just kind of threw out ‘My Fair Lady’ and we all laughed.”

After that first show, both the pandemic and the members’ various solo endeavours put pause to My Fair Lady. “We kind of all drifted apart,” Parker confirms. My Fair Lady eventually re-emerged after Parker got involved with a production of Wicked Little Town at the Gordon Best Theatre in 2023.

“Now we've kind of shifted gears,” they add. “We’ve got new members and all that kind of stuff. We're more focused on girly-pop, old school punk, but we kept the name to honour that history.”

As for the band’s repertoire, Parker isn’t interested in making original music the focus of My Fair Lady. Though they pull from various eras and artists, the band’s setlists are all covers.

“I was a singer-songwriter for a long time and I found I never really enjoyed it,” Parker explains. “I always would play the shows and try to show my new material, but what I always loved was playing other people's music and playing with others.”

“Coming from a theater background, it's almost like playing a role where I’m taking this person's material but I get to do it how I want to do it,” they muse. “I can make it gayer, make it hornier, make it more exciting, all that kind of stuff.”

Part of Parker’s curatorial impulse stems from wanting to play the music they grew up listening to.

“My parents were pretty conventional,” they tell me. “It was the classic story like, ‘my parents listened to Tom Jones and I found Bikini Kill, and I found Joan Jett, and I found all these things on my own’.”

Saturday’s show saw the band shredding classics like The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” and Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” right alongside more contemporary and poppy fare like an amped-up rendition of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me.”

“I never loved writing my own stuff,” they reassert. “I always loved living in other people's music.”

Parker envisions My Fair Lady being more of an amorphous collective, rather than a fixed lineup. This collaborative, DIY attitude lends the band a great deal of flexibility they tell me. If you can give them a date, My Fair Lady can make it happen; though whether that’s as a three-piece Green Day tribute or a seven-person Peterborough supergroup, that’s for them to determine.

“Everybody else in My Fair Lady has their own solo projects and stuff,” Parker notes.

Saturday night’s lineup brought together a number of prolific Peterborough musicians, including Caitlin “Motherfucking” Currie, Emily McCann, Vancamp’s Calvin Bakelaar, and Night Danger bassist, Connor Stinson.

These names weren’t the only thing lending the band some serious local art scene cred though. Beside the aforementioned drag queens—each big name gets in their own right—Saturday’s show was sponsored both by Peterborough Pride and by Public Energy Performing Arts.

“It’s so awesome,” they laugh. “Public Energy makes some of the best avant-garde theatre in the city, and Peterborough Pride is making it okay to be authentic and queer in a city that was usually recognized for being quite homophobic before it started pushing forward.”

“It's been so refreshing and makes me feel like this is, you know, like this is wanted.” 

There were a lot of times during this process that if I didn't have the support of bigger people being like ‘No, this is fun. This is exciting. People will want to see this.’ I would have kept thinking ‘Is this cringey? Are we gonna be protested against? Like all these kinds of things,” Parker says. “To have that not be the case, and to sell out, it’s just been such a gratifying thing.”

As for the advice they’d give anyone wanting to be in their place?

“If you’re thinking of doing something and you think ‘this is this stupid,’ fucking do it,” Parker concludes. “I never would have dreamed last year that I would have done what I did tonight.”

“If it makes you feel good, just make it happen. That's all.”