Micki Strickland (left, with her then toddler daughter Dani) and as her stage persona Stephen Matthews. Credit: Courtesy photos
Micki Strickland is a renaissance woman. She’s mostly known for her work as a drag king and performance artist. She’s also been recognized and respected for her career as a bar and club owner, manager, and sometimes a bartender. Among those she worked closely with, Illusions and Rainbow House in Myrtle Beach (she eventually owned the latter) and The Hideaway in Rock Hill. A native of South Carolina, her career spans from Myrtle Beach to Charlotte and points in between.
Recently Strickland has talked about putting together a reunion event for the South Carolina community who have been a part of the clubs she has been involved with, and for those who followed her performance career. While a solid date has yet to be scheduled, we’ll confirm that info in Qnotes as soon as it’s made available to us.
For now, Strickland’s schedule is a good deal less hectic, so she’s more than happy to talk with us about her life. years with the LGBTQ+ community and working in the club business.
David Aaron Moore: So, a native of South Carolina with points of residence and career between Myrtle Beach, Charlotte and back again. Tell us a a bit about that.
Micki Strickland: I’m actually from Hemingway, South Carolina. I first got to Charlotte and the South Carolina upstate in 1989. I went to work for a little bar in Rock Hill called The Hideaway where I met Billy and Margie and Mac and everybody from The Hideaway. That’s also where I got my foot in the door as an entertainer.
DAM: I’m familiar with The Hideaway. Pretty much right across the state line.
MS: It’s where everybody went back then, because you could stay open after two o’clock in the morning in South Carolina. Back in the day, you had to close at two in Charlotte so everybody hit the state line because you can drink beer and wine all night in South Carolina. Don’t ask me why. All night? Crazy, crazy. And people make up crazy rules.
DAM: Let’s go back earlier. I know you’re living in South Carolina now, and you’re a native. Tell us about your life
MS: So I was in Myrtle Beach. It was September, 1989, when Hurricane Hugo hit. I evacuated to Rock Hill. After Hugo, there was no work to come back home to. So I ended up getting a job up there, and that’s kind of what started the whole concept of where my career went from “I was going to be an English school teacher,” to “I became a bartender and entertainer” instead. I stayed in Rock Hill very briefly. I met my wife, got married and we lived in Charlotte at that point in time.
DAM: Tell us about your drag king character, Stephen Matthews.
MS: Stephen started out as a bet. I used to get so irritated with the drag concept in gay bars [only men dressed as women] and I just never got the concept of why you didn’t have both sides. When I very first started, I talked to the show director at the Hideaway. I had done a show in 1981 as a backup performer for a friend of mine that wanted to do the talent show at the White House here in Myrtle Beach. We did the Village people, and I was the cowboy. I didn’t think anything more about it, until 1989 when I was sitting in the bar and Dylan and I were talking, and he said something about the show, and I suggested I “Male drag, let’s do it. I don’t see what the big deal is.” And he’s like, “Oh, whatever.” Back in the day, the concept of male drag was really nothing more than a female that wore bleak jeans and a flannel shirt and she would get up, do a song and her friends would tip her. I wanted to do something more, and I knew I could. So that’s when Stephen came along. If you took, if you had Rhett Butler,had a modern day Rhett Butler, you would have Steven Matthews. He’s a rogue, but he is a Southern gentleman. He has incredible character, and he is a die hard romantic, to be perfectly honest.
DAM: Sounds like there’s another story behind that.
MS: The only reason the character developed is the very first time I did the show in Rock Hill to prove that I could do drag and the only one there that could impersonate the other sex. Now, there was a young lady there shooting pool. And it was very much known in the bar that Vickie, who is now my wife, hated drag shows because she liked to continue shooting pool even when they had drag shows. You know the queens wanted you to stop shooting. So, she didn’t care for the drag shows. And most lesbians didn’t really care for the drag shows. But when I came out on stage and I had been told, “don’t be offended, that person over there is not going to stop shooting pool.” So we don’t say anything. But I did my number, and she came up to the stage and tipped me, which she had never done before! She was one of those [serious] pool players and she had her own pool cue stick, so she walked up to the stage with that stick in her hand. It’s been a joke from day one that I always thought that I was about to get it with the pool stick, not a tip (laughs).
DAM: This is a lot! This is the woman who is now your wife, right? I just want to make sure I’m keeping up properly.
MS: (Laughs) Yes. Once I met her [after] doing the show, I was intrigued by her. But she just didn’t seem interested. The rumor was she was bisexual, so I didn’t think she was attracted to me, which made it even more of a challenge, because if my male persona can attract you. I can’t understand why my female couldn’t, because I’m still the same person. It became like a challenge, so I did more shows, and basically that’s how I romanced her. And then my entire career, our wedding and everything, stayed involved with my character, because that’s how he developed.
DAM: Can you describe the shows you did?
MS: I don’t ever tell anybody about this, so if it gets out, I’ll know it came from you! (heavy laughter) I never repeat a number, with the exception of ones that won titles that I did in other places. But if I’ve done a song, it’s usually done and gone out of my inventory. It just goes back into the collection of “if you didn’t see it, you missed it.” And I didn’t just go out and lip sync. I did performances. Pageant performances. Every number. I’d have stage props built for every song. And backup dancers. That’s what I like do. My very first song that I ever did started out with Sam Harris’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” because in 1994 he was a very, very popular gay man. And, you know, he was just a hot ticket.
DAM: Tell us about this amazing individual you managed to distract from pool playing and ended up marrying.
MS: Vickie and I got married in 1990. In 1993, I wanted to be a gay bar owner, and she wanted to be a mom. So our lives kind of took a separate track, but we stayed together separately. You know, I was single, she was single, but we didn’t. We weren’t together because we actually had the ceremony. It wasn’t legal back then. Wasn’t allowed. But we had the notary public, and we got married at the Hideaway, and she ended up getting pregnant while I was out doing some of my stuff, and then we got back together, and I actually was with her, and I was … I mean, I cut the umbilical cord. That is my daughter. We had wanted this child, we were going to try to put it together, and then society started making it extremely hard for a little girl to have two moms. So when [our daughter] was two, Vickie and I made a conscious choice that we were going to separate our lives, because Vickie’s parents – her stepmom and father – made waves about taking [our daughter] from Vickie because [she was] a lesbian. So we separated our lives, and for 26 years, I never saw my family again. During the COVID pandemic, Dani, that’s her name, reached out to me and texted me a message, and just said, “Hey, I just thought, if ever there was a time you might do a show, I’d love to meet who I was named after, because we named our daughter after my character’s name – Steven Daniel Matthews. Our little girl’s name is Stephanie Danielle Bailey. I mean, this was something that Vickie and I had planned from the get go, but for 26 years, I never saw them. Dani reached out to me, and then I didn’t hear from her again for two more years. She reached out one more time and said, “If you ever do a show, I’d love to meet you.” Of course, I really wanted to meet my daughter, and since then, I have gotten in touch with them. Vickie and I are back together, and Dani understands everything that went on because Vickie never married. Vickie never dated anyone else. She stayed by herself with our daughter for 26 years. I was married to my business. So now we’re back together, and it’s only been four months, so it’s still new. But it feels like quite the love story.