On the night of Friday, June 6, the Park Theater Hudson became something more than a venue. For this evening, it turned into a listening room in the truest sense. It was quiet, intimate and charged with the kind of tension that only happens when someone onstage dares to tell the whole truth. That someone was Venus De Mars.
Best known as the founder of the pioneering glam-punk band All the Pretty Horses, De Mars arrived in Hudson for a rare solo set.
No frills. No distractions. Simply her voice, guitar and a body of work that felt personal down to the bone. Before the show, she spoke backstage about music, identity and the evolving meaning of Pride.
Thoughtful and quick-witted, she carried the weight of history with a clear-eyed calm and a sharpened memory. In the late 1980s, when she came out, the LGBTQ+ community as it’s known today wasn’t fully formed. “The ‘T’ wasn’t part of the acronym yet,” she said. “I felt like I was sneaking into something that didn’t see me.”
Venus de Mars recalled a time when Trans was still treated as a mental illness. It was pathologized, misunderstood and deeply stigmatized. “If you went through surgery, the expectation was that you’d go stealth and disappear into society and never speak of being Trans again.”
That invisibility shaped her understanding of Pride. “Back then, it was complicated. I admired it. I wanted to be part of it, but I knew it was also dangerous to be fully seen.” She stated. Now, she says, the meaning has changed. “Today, Pride is reclamation. It’s truth-telling. We’re not just allowed to be here, we’re needed here.”
That urgency of presence, of survival, it was all over the performance that followed. De Mars opened her set gently, letting the room ease into her world. It didn’t take long before that quiet turned to something electric. Each song unfolded like a scene: fragments of memory, protest, grief and resilience. It was all delivered with a poetic edge that never once dipped into sentimentality.
Even stripped of band and backing, her songs held their full weight. If anything, the solo format sharpened their impact, with nothing to hide behind and nothing in the way. The set was threaded with stories. Some were humorous while others were jarring. She spoke openly about her journey as a trans artist in the underground punk scene, the early days of All the Pretty Horses and the often brutal cost of authenticity. She never asked for pity.
What she offered instead was clarity with a view from the edge. Hard-earned and unsanitized. “Pride didn’t come from a parade,” she said at one point. “It came from needing to be seen in a world that tries not to look.” Music was how she made herself visible.
The night’s most devastating moment came at the very end. Before her final song of the night, appropriately titled “Even with scars”, she told the story of a young trans teen who had taken their own life after coming out. They were rejected, mocked and left adrift in a world that gave them no place to land. The song that followed wasn’t just heartbreaking, it was haunting. Sparse and direct, it didn’t ask for permission to grieve. You had zero choice, but to sit with it. You could feel the air change in the room. People stopped shifting in their seats. Breathing slowed. Eyes welled.
It wasn’t a tribute, it was the brutal truth of a life lost and for what? Venus De Mars didn’t come to entertain. She came to tell the truth. In doing so, she created one of the most quietly powerful performances this space or anywhere I’ve ever been has seen.
Her voice, at times delicate, at times full of razor-wire resolve, made every word land like a declaration. In a time when trans artists are still fighting for basic visibility, De Mars continues to do what she’s always done: make herself seen and in doing so, make space for others to be seen too.
What happened on that stage wasn’t just art. It was resistance. It was testimony. It was life in real time. Unfiltered. Unapologetic. It took aim, squarely at the soul.
A lesson in equality and a reminder that love, happiness and acceptance aren’t privileges, they’re birthrights. No asterisks. No exceptions. A vital lesson, delivered through songs that broke hearts and healed them in the same breath and not just for Pride Month—for every damn month. If you were there, that lesson will not be forgotten.
Comments are closed.