Orville Peck was in the middle of a soundcheck when he found out that his idol Dolly Parton had died. It was late August and the masked, pseudonymous country singer was due to perform an intimate set at London’s Rough Trade East in half an hour. The news hit him like a truck.
With no chance to process it, he decided to grieve in real time, on stage, before a roomful of fans. It made me feel like I had a friend there.” He then launched into a rendition of Parton’s iconic hit I Will Always Love You. We all got to sort of mourn together.
I definitely think everyone there will remember that forever.” Mortality has been on Peck’s mind a lot lately. Mule is a brutally honest chronological account of what he describes as “the most important year of my life”, a period marred by profound heartache and self-destruction during which he split up with his partner of four years, overdosed and nearly died. Its opening track envisions his own memorial – what would have happened if he hadn’t come back from the brink.
Prologue (Eulogy of a Man Turned Mule) is an a cappella hymn sung not by Peck, but by Emmylou Harris, Allison Russell and Noah Cyrus, a trio of country muses from different generations whom he compares to the witches of Macbeth or a Greek chorus. His face obscured, Peck kept his true identity a mystery, but he was open about his sexuality, and undeniably sexy, out of the gate (he recently posed for Playgirl). That he had a baritone croon that evoked Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley made his arrival all the sweeter.
Over the next few years, Peck would duet with Elton John, Kylie Minogue and another one of his major inspirations, Willie Nelson, who dueted with him on a cover of the gay country classic Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other, score a No 1 album on the UK country charts and scoop up Glaad’s Vito Russo award for elevating LGBTQ acceptance and visibility. In 2025, he made his Broadway theater debut as the Emcee in the vibrant revival of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. The 38-year-old musician’s previous records – 2019’s Pony, 2022’s Bronco and 2024’s Stampede – were laced with metaphor, at times unspooling like the dusty tales of an omniscient, enigmatic gunslinger.
While the bluegrass-inflected Mule is more literal, like an unvarnished memoir, he couldn’t abandon the high drama completely. Today, he wears a white tank, chunky Wrangler x Cherry knit jacket, faded jeans, cowboy boots and a cream-colored Stetson. His penetrating blue eyes peek through a simple suede mask, but his trademark disguise, a black leather upper with a fringed veil, sits behind him on the bed, its golden tassels cascading over the edge of it.
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