Honey Davenport burns up the dance floor with a legendary collab with Alaska – News JoJo

One of our favorite musical queens, Honey Davenport, is back to treat your ears to another fierce track. After her premature elimination on Drag Race season 11 (IMHO), Honey continued entertaining audiences with new music and has worked with many of her fellow Drag Race performers, including Aja, Manila Luzon, Tammie Brown, LaLa Ri and Jackie Cox, and her latest collaboration is sure to get you sprinting to the dance floor.

Honey has teamed up with Race Chaser co-host and All Star Alaska on the remix for the aptly-titled track, “Mighty Legendary (Legends Only Remix feat. Alaska)”. The visually lush video, directed by Ron Katagiri was filmed in some of Palm Springs’s most stylish locales, including the newly renovated Trixie Motel.

Honey took time out of her insanely busy schedule (she took a break from rehearsals for her ongoing Dialed Up shows to chat with us) to give us some insight into the song’s origins and some behind-the-scenes dish on the video shoot.

“Mighty Legendary” is amazing. What is the story behind the song?

So, the story behind that song is that…so it’s funny. I had made the decision that this year, I was going to go back to compete for Miss Continental again, which is something that I hadn’t done since 2016. And so, I had gotten all of my plans together and my dancers and my gowns and everything. And then I booked a big gig, like paying like more than I normally ever get paid for things, but it was on the other side of the country, just the night before. And I turned to my best friend – because I thought about calling off competing for my prelim – and she was like, “Just fly in and win the pageant.” And I was like, “You want me to get off a plane and win the pageant?” And I was like, “Alright. So, if I get off the plane and you meet me at the airport with my tuxedo and the suit for my interview. And then you take me to the pageant, and I do the interview right there. I can make it. If I win the pageant, this is going to be the most legendary thing I’ve ever done. It’s gonna be mighty legendary.” And I did that, and I won my prelim for Southern California.

I just had the idea [for the song] with my friend. I was like, you know, they say I’m very legendary. And so, it just kind of sprung off that and I wanted to create something. One of my goals has always been to create an anthem of some sort for somebody, like somebody’s anthem, if that makes any sense you know, whether this is my like pride anthem or my let your freak flag fly anthem. But I was like, if they’re going to call me legendary, maybe I need to make a legends anthem.

And so, I wrote the song, and I sent it out to a couple of my close friends, and one of them was Alaska, and she was so happy with it, so impressed with it, and I was like, “Would you ever think about joining me in on this track?” And she was like, “Are you kidding? Yeah, absolutely.” I wrote a roast verse for her as well and we went like right in [to the studio]. I was about to release the original and we were already going into the studio to make the remix. We recorded the remix before I even released the original. So, I was like, alright, we’re gonna do a music video for this one and that’s how it all came about.

The video looked like so much fun. What was that experience like filming that video?

Okay, so it was really cool. I DJed this party for Bob the Drag Queen in LA this year, and I did a really good job DJing and Trixie (Mattel) and her partner came up to me afterwards and they were like, “You’re such an awesome DJ. We want you to be a resident DJ at the motel and anything you ever want to do there, you can.” I told them I’d like to shoot a music video. And then also this new club open in Palm Springs that I do a brunch at called Reforma Nightclub – they had just opened and I was like, how legendary would it be to record a music video at Palm Springs’ two most legendary spots, you know?

And so it was a ton of fun. Also, every single time I’ve been to the Trixie Motel, I cannot leave half sober. So like, even on the music video set, I was like, Oh my God, I’m actually a little bit lit. Oh, and those men, oh my God, that Mistr provided us with…Mistr really has been supporting the queer community in so many ways, not just health wise, but also like our art, you know, and they gave us a bunch of money to make the video happen and everything.

You’re working with Alaska and I know you’ve worked with some of the other queens who are on your wish list that you still would like to work with?
Okay, on my wish list musically that I’d like to work with…hmm…it’s funny because I’d like to write for even more people than I’d like to maybe even be on a song with. I think it would be really cool to write for Adore Delano, Courtney Act, or Jan. I really like Jan. Actually, I would say Jan, because I had plans to make a song with her that fell through back in the day, and I really would love to work with her.

But also, there’s some queens from newer seasons too who I really appreciate. Like, Robin Fierce has been releasing some bomb music. I’d love to work with her. Olivia Lux has the voice of an angel. I’d be honored to work with Olivia Lux, you know? So, there’s quite a bit of people who I’d like to rock out with. And, oh wait, I think my number one and number two, and I won’t tell you in which order, would be the one day do a song with Bob and Monét

You’ve put out a lot of really good music and so have a lot of other queens. Do you think drag performers are being taken more seriously as recording artists now?

I think it’s been a slow progression. It’s happening. I think that it’s cool that we find queer music being accepted in queer spaces, and that’s not just drag, but that’s even down to, you know, who’s the guy who eliminated me from Drag Race? I forgot your name, sorry, but your song’s good. Oh, Troye Sivan. It’s really cool to see us celebrating music by us, you know, and I think that drag is such a huge part of nightlife. It’s such a huge part of the dance floor. It’s really cool to see drag music become even more and more appreciated.

I think a lot of the reason for that is like dope drag artists who have been releasing some solid projects, like Alaska or even like Jaremi Carey, you know, just solid musical projects that it would make no sense for us to blast, you know, just Rihanna and Beyoncé  and Britney in the club when our people are making these great pieces of music as well.

I think that’s slowly happening over time. And I’m seeing that, especially with things like, you know, Trixie breaking into DJing and how much new music she’s bringing to the dance floor all over the world. You know, I think that that all of those things are part of the reason why it’s progressing.

Okay. Now, you’ve seen, the headlines. Drag is under attack right now. What do you think about the current state of drag and how it’s being received in this country?

Well, I think the pendulum is swinging. And I think that drag for a long time wasn’t seen as a legitimate platform for art – and then that changed. Drag Race gave drag artists a certain amount of validity that they didn’t have before in this world. And I think that a lot of people, when you have a really bright light, it attracts people and I don’t think that that light is being diminished in any way, shape or form.

I do think it’s being attacked. But I think that when a pendulum is swinging, it’s an opportunity for it to swing even farther in our direction. And I think that right now what we’re experiencing is… It’s the battle. It’s the, when it gets darkest before the dawn, it’s like the challenge you had to overcome before y’all finally see it.

I do fully see the day where there will be a drag recording artist on the top of the billboard charts on the top of the Hot 100 and played on the radio right in between a Beyoncé and a Rihanna song. I don’t think there’s any reason why our pieces couldn’t be enjoyed in that same manner alongside those same greats, you know, and I think that moments like this where we come under attack for everybody else to stand up and be like, wait, this is dumb to attack them, which is literally what’s happening. I think it’s a necessary part of the progress.

I wanted to ask you about working with Mistr because I know that they worked with Morgan McMichaels on her latest video (“Urdum Urdum”.) How did you end up working with them?

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I ended up working with them because of my incredible director, Ron Katagiri. Mistr has kind of sunk its claws into the queer community in such a really beautiful way. I am a patient at Mistr as well. I receive my PReP services from them, and they’ve made it so convenient for LGBTQ+, sexually active people to stay healthy. Their way of getting their message out has been even more inclusive because they’re going out and sponsoring our projects and our videos and things like that to get the word out to our fan bases, which is wild to me. They’re like literally saving us our art and our bodies at the same time.

That’s awesome. Now, I have a personal question. What happened to Da Fuq? Are there going to be more episodes?

Oh, yes. So Da Fuq? moved to OutTV and there’s going to be so much more. We wrapped our fourth season, which was a huge success, and I had a meeting a week ago about what season five could look like and the plans for that. But you know, the whole world of drag revolves around when RuPaul’s making her next move. So, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what future seasons of that show have in store and you know, which girls would be good to add to the cast of upcoming seasons of Da Fuq?

I love your web series “Trade”. Are you going to be doing more of that as well?

Absolutely. That’s very closely on the horizon in that we have a second half to this season that is going to start airing after the music video for “Mighty Legendary.”

The Mighty Legendary remix is available wherever you get your music. Keep up with all things Honey by following her on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter and her web site . Check out her music on Spotify and her web series “Da Fuq?” on OUTtv.

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