We were lucky to catch up with Cheyanne Kurth recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cheyanne, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

When I first started drag, I was working full time at a casino. If you don’t know what life is like working for a casino, it’s nonexistent. Casino’s work you every weekend and every holiday so it’s incredibly hard to have any sort of fulfilling performer career while working for one. So when I started Drag I could pretty much only go to weekday open stages to get my name out. Which was great and was working well…until venues wanted to book me for a weekend gig and I had to continually turn them down due to not being able to get time off. I loved performing with my whole heart but was terrified it wouldn’t pay the bills like the casino did so I continued to only do open stages. After doing that for…years I finally decided to try the “starving artist” life and quit the casino to work at an upscale bar that would allow me to also pursue my performer dreams. That flipped my world completely! I started getting out of state bookings and traveling to perform all over the country. My confidence and happiness grew with every booking I received. I just wonder how different my life would be if I had quit the casino sooner. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to work our life away. I’m not saying drag is paying all my bills, but I am living happily and comfortably.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

So my name is Cheyanne but most people know me by Chey Boi. I’m a drag king from Iowa. If you don’t know what a drag king is, think of a drag queen but switch the gender. I am a female who dresses male presenting to lip sync and dance for any venue that allows me. That is the form of drag I do but not the only form of drag king. We’re everywhere but not as known due to a lack of opportunities for exposure. I started doing drag at the age of 20 but didn’t start doing drag well until the age of 25. It was a long journey for someone who knew absolutely nothing about makeup and just wanted to dance. That’s actually how I ended up starting. I started as a backup dancer for some local drag queens who got the crazy idea to put me in drag too. I showed little to no interest but then I did a duet with one of them and all of a sudden that no was an absolute yes, let’s do it! 5 years later I finally learned a little about makeup and set my look. Now I aim to be a well known name just like any of the Ru Girls. Along this drag journey, I picked up many side hobbies. Started training as a ninja warrior and doing competitions. I’ve now down over 15 comps and have placed in all of them. Working my way towards hopefully being on the show someday. I learned how to craft bartend and now create videos for my drink recipes. It’s a job that’s given me a big sense of pride. I started doing CrossFit which helped me decide what I want my future career to be…fitness. So I started studying to be a personal trainer and as of last year, I’m now certified. All of this roots back to starting as a dancer, which I still do to. I backup dance for this phenomenal singer named Alisabeth Von Presley and get to travel around to all her gigs to continue my first love of dancing. I never knew Drag would open up this huge world of opportunities and interests for me.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The best feeling I get with being a performer is when people tell me that I’ve inspired them. I never thought of myself as an inspiration, and now it’s exactly what I want to be. I want to inspire people to take a risk, to be happy, and to be themselves.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Honestly, I’m not a fan of social media, but when you’re trying to make it as a performer, it’s beyond important. At no point in my life did I want a TikTok, but then Covid hit and I had nothing to do. So I started sharing all my drag videos and somehow, they took off. Once I started seeing my followers growing, I knew I had to keep posting. My advice for social media is: don’t get discouraged by numbers. Post for you. But post often. Make your posts something you’d want to watch.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @cheyboi23
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/people/Chey-Boi-Drag-Entertainer/100066936875878/
• Youtube: @cheyboi
• Other: https://linktr.ee/CheyBoi?fbclid=PAAaZh0FJ6CTSRCDvomeoCIgf1dga6jsJEN1dSN3hl3o47Wa3wErzuij7xFLg TikTok: @cheyboi

Image Credits
I need to track down all the photographers but most of them are watermarked and open for my use. One I know isn’t marked is by LJ Mersch