Chappell Roan’s KC shows inspire hometown pride, queer joy: ‘I feel so safe’
Tiffany McLemore didn’t know she’d become a Chappell Roan fan.
The 45-year-old mom from Nixa, Missouri, outside Springfield, was introduced to the Missouri-born pop star by her 10-year-old daughter, Kristen. The more they learned, the more the McLemores felt connected to Roan, who performed two sold-out shows in Kansas City on Friday and Saturday.
“Kristen’s part of the LGBTQIA community and so that’s kind of how we got into her, and after that we discovered she really is from Willard, and so we just really thought that was awesome,” Tiffany explained.
“And when we found out that she was coming to Kansas City … we had to be here.”
Kristen came out as transgender about a year ago, Tiffany said. And while their family has found a “really inclusive homeschool community in the area we live in,” she said, having an outwardly queer figure her daughter can look up to has been really meaningful.
“It is absolutely fantastic,” Tiffany gushed, wearing matching head-to-toe “Pink Pony Club”-themed outfits with Kristen.
“I love that she’s got role models out there that she can follow and really just kind of emulate.”
Missouri roots
The Star spoke with fans who traveled from everywhere from Minnesota to Mississippi, South Dakota to Oklahoma, all to see the shows at Kansas City’s National World War I Museum and Memorial.
The pop star’s home state of Missouri was one of only three locations for the mini-tour — called Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things — which started in New York City and heads next to Pasadena, California. So for much of the country, KC was the most accessible way to catch the mega-pop star’s show.
Chappell Roan, who released the breakout album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” in 2023, came from humble beginnings in Willard, Missouri — population 6,344. She performed for years before skyrocketing in popularity in 2024. From February to April that year, her Spotify monthly listeners increased 500%. She won the 2025 Grammy for Best New Artist.
A lesbian herself, Roan says she sees her onstage persona as drag. Many of her fans admire her outspoken support of queer and trans organizations.
Roan spoke on stage in Kansas City about her Missouri roots and finding one’s self in communities that aren’t universally accepting of queer people. But, she said, it gets better when you find your people.
“It’s f****** hard being queer or weird in the Midwest, but this is your community,” Roan told the crowd Friday. “This is what it looks like and what it feels like. You are not alone and you are welcome here.”
The pop star reiterated the sentiment during her Saturday show after acknowledging her high school friends and local family in the audience.
“I always dreamed of something like this — that I could dress up however I want to and wear whatever makeup I wanted to and I would be OK and not made fun of,” Roan said.
“Despite everything in the world right now, the only thing that matters to me is literally making queer people feel safe and heard and seen.”
‘I feel so safe’
Two Kansas City area high schoolers say Roan gives them hope for their own futures.
Altan Badmaev was bedecked in a Y2K princess look, complete with legwarmers and a jeweled cone hat. The high school sophomore said that Roan is someone to look up to as a young queer person.
Altan said it’s nice to see “somebody who has made it out of the Midwest able to be themself, from an area that doesn’t really accept that.”
Dressed as a hot pink fairy, Alexa Bowers brought a drawing of Roan to give to the pop star.
In the Kansas City area, Alexa said, “Sometimes when you’re outside of the norm, it’s a bit harder to go about your daily life. But seeing someone who did that, and is succeeding so well, that makes me feel happy.”
The pair felt camaraderie from fellow concert-goers, who passed out stick-on jewels and perler bead crafts.
“I feel so safe,” said Alexa.
Marissa Yonts, 30, echoed the sentiment that Roan’s shows foster a safe, communal space for anyone who feels different — and especially queer folks.
“There’s so much going on right now, so she’s really a safe space and lets me express myself,” said Yonts, who drove down with friends from Nebraska. “It’s just nice to have that in the media, especially so out and center, you know.”
Roan’s exponential rise as a queer artist is unique, Yonts said. They grew up with artists like Tegan and Sara and Hayley Kiyoko, they said, but Roan’s stardom is on a whole other level.
“You listen on the radio and one day I was listening and I heard her and then I heard (Lady) Gaga,” Yonts said, “and it’s like back when I was in high school and stuff you would have never heard that.”
Just a small town girl
Like Roan, 20-year-old Baelin Shannon hails from a small town in Middle America. But Vilonia, Arkansas, is even smaller than Roan’s hometown, with a population of around 4,400 in 2021.
Shannon said Roan’s music has made her feel seen as a young queer person — and “her music has just saved me from a lot of dark places.”
“It just means happiness to me, and joy, in a way that I didn’t feel like I could have,” Shannon explained, sporting a long hair braid-turned-bra that emulates an iconic look from Roan’s “The Subway” music video.
“For me, joy has always been defined as something centered around a Christ-like subject that doesn’t welcome the kind of person I am,” she said. “So it’s just nice to see this representation and this space where you know that’s totally not true.
“Joy can be anything you want it to be.”
Dylin Cline, who grew up in the “teeny tiny small town” of Tipton, Missouri, before moving to KC this year, said Roan “is what really inspired me to start being more authentically myself than ever before.”
“Here, being in the big city, I just feel like I can go out on the town in this,” Cline said, pointing to his sparkly sheer shirt and pink bandana, short denim shorts, rhinestone belt and star-studded cowboy hat.
“I just walked three blocks in booted white boots, and that’s something I’ve never been able to express or experience before, and it’s so utterly refreshing,” he said.
It’s not just that Roan is a visual representation of queerness in the entertainment industry, Cline said.
“She is just so purely and authentically a good person, an ally, an advocate. And I think that’s something we don’t see with a lot of artists,” Cline explained. “Not only does she say all of these things, but she has these actions that you see in her award show speeches, at her shows, at her events.
“She’s constantly like a beaming light of a great example of a human being.”
A family affair
Morgan Boal’s friends were surprised to learn she’s going to Chappell Roan with her mom and sister.
So she responded, “Why not have fun with your family at the show?”
The 22-year-old came back to her hometown of Leavenworth from her college in Pennsylvania to see the show on Saturday.
Morgan and her sister, who arrived in Kansas City hours before she’ll see Roan take the stage, learned about Roan about four years ago, when the Missouri singer was still a pop twinkle, yet to become a pop star.
“When she started going viral, we were like, ‘Oh, finally, it’s about time.’”
Morgan said Roan’s music expressed the emotions of living in a small town. “There’s this person who’s like, from where we’re from, who understands it.”
She listens to “California” on the plane, or whenever she feels homesick. In the song, Roan yearns for “the seasons in Missouri, my dying town.”
On Thursday, Morgan waited to buy Roan-themed merch a few rows away from her mother, Jennifer.
A Chappell Roan fan herself, Jennifer was glad she “bribed the girls home again,” as she put jokingly.
The concert is an “excuse to spend time with them — like I love that they still want to include me in things.”
Her rhinestone peace sign earrings glistened as she spoke with love about her queer daughters.
“I love that they are confident in themselves.”
Morgan said that Chappell Roan brings hope for those queer people far away from a coast.
Roan shows small-town queer people, she said, that “you can be from these places, and you can be yourself and still be OK.”
Traveling Chappell fans
At 3 years old, Kymoni was one of the youngest concertgoers on Friday, decked out in pink sound-canceling headphones with a tiara on top. Her mom, Sarah O’Banion, says she introduces herself as Chappell Roan.
Kymoni took a while to learn to talk, but “when she did start speaking, it was Chappell lyrics.” Her favorite song — right now — is “Red Wine Supernova,” which Kymoni quietly sang to herself on the ride up from Tulsa.
After driving 8 ½ hours to get to the concert, Mary Schove and Jose Ortiz of Oxford, Mississippi, got Chappell Roan tattoos at Black Atlas Tattoo. Schove’s features the lyric “told you so” from Roan’s song “Good Luck, Babe.”
Adriana Boynton flew in from Atlanta with her sister, Anniston, to see Roan on Saturday after they’ve spent the last few years bonding over her music.
“I love Chappell because she’s a girl like me,” Adriana said. “She talks about Lisa Frank and like, growing up with the Disney princesses, but then she’ll go, like, stand in a creek and catch a frog.
“She is just, she’s such an icon for, I think, women of this generation.”
Show Me Chappell
Kansas City co-workers Tierra Taylor and Diana Silva bonded over being Aquariuses and loving Chappell Roan.
Roan “was one of our first conversations and I was like ‘I’m going to like her,’” Taylor said of Silva.
Taylor feels Kansas City’s pride in the pop star: “I think it’s nice that we can claim Chappell.”
Taylor said she still thinks of Kansas City as a small town.
“I think that’s one of the most exciting things, is that she chose her favorite cities, and it’s like, yeah, good old Missouri.”
A Kansas City resident, Silva said having the concert in “good ol’ Missouri” makes her “feel safer.”
Sarah Green discovered Chappell Roan in 2019 on a playlist that Green received from her first girlfriend. Roan’s music was nestled between Caroline Polacheck and Clairo, queer icons in their own right.
Green said Roan is a trailblazer, an icon who is “pop, country, middle of nowhere, unapologetic, maybe bitchy sometimes, maybe not.”
Now Green is showing her hometown of Kansas City to her college friends from Taiwan and St. Louis.
Now more than ever
Before Roan took the stage both nights in Kansas City, she invited six local drag queens to perform first: Minti Varieties, Karmella Uchawi, KiYanna Uchawi, Jaharia, EV Vega and Jadoré Aimee.
It’s no secret that drag has inspired Roan’s on-stage persona — she’s said she saw her first performance at the Hamburger Mary’s in KC. But she’s known for platforming local drag queens at her shows, too, giving them a stage to perform for massive crowds.
Her activism sets her apart from other mainstream artists, fans say. She’s donated to LGBTQ causes, including helping raise money for queer Missourians.
Roan’s Kansas City shows come at a time when the rights of trans folks have been politicized now more than ever — locally and nationally.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that a KC area school district wasn’t in the wrong for denying a transgender student access to bathrooms. Late last year, a Missouri judge upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, allowing the state to continue prohibiting treatments such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers for people under 18.
And those trends aren’t lost on Roan’s fans.
“Things right now, things are really bad,” said Karin Woodbury, who came in from St. Petersburg, Florida, for Roan’s Saturday night show. “I feel like in order to get through this, we kind of need to lock arms and kind of batter down the hatches if we are going to survive this.”
It makes Roan’s openness and advocacy more meaningful than ever, said Woodbury’s friend Sage Wanemacher.
“There’s so much crackdown on queer people and the queer community,” Wanemacher said, “it’s really important to have, like, a lesbian pop star who’s really open about being gay and, like, that’s not something awful.”
Her influence is clear in the Midwest, Cline believes, saying Roan “represents the heart of Kansas City.”
“We’ve made so much growth and so much progress over the years,” he said.
“And I just think she’s starting to kind of represent that growth and that mindset of it’s OK to be queer, it’s OK to be different, it’s OK to be you.”
This story was originally published October 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
