One can’t help but admire those among us who still live just a little bit in the past; the rebels who still want to rock, the kings of hair metal who refuse to relinquish the spandex and fringe of yore.

With his ecstatically coiffed and sky-high hair, in Duke Carson, Calgary’s most recognizable drag king, the fabled glory of the gods of the ‘70s and ‘80s is very much restored.

“I haven’t been able to really pin an age on Duke,” says Jordan May, Duke’s real-life alter ego, “but in my ideal world, he’s the weathered rock star; he’s lived through the drug days and the party haze. “As a person, Duke has just lived longer than I have — he’s seen more.”

Fresh out of high school, May attended their very first drag show, presented by Calgary’s Fake Mustache Drag King Troupein 2013 and started performing a few months later.

“I was hooked right away. It was my first encounter ever seeing drag or burlesque or anything of that sort,” they said. “While I was in high school, I knew I was queer to some extent, I just hadn’t quite nailed it down yet. I’d been involved in my high school’s queer community, and I’d seen people in drag or cosplay at conventions, but I didn’t really even have any desire to explore Calgary’s queer scene or queer community. I didn’t really know about it until I went to that first Fake Mustache show.”

It’s laughable now, but Duke Carson almost made his drag debut as Carson Kenworth – a moniker more attributable to the smarmy rich kid down at the yacht club, rather than a hair metal god, but a split-second decision made just before hitting the stage was the serendipitous inception of the Duke Carson we now know and love.

From there, May says a lot of Duke’s crucial character development was heavily influenced by their day job as a heavy equipment mechanic - an often extreme polarity from their life in the queer community.

“I did find that certain nuances I’ve picked up on, a lot of it comes from the heavy metal scene and a lot of it comes from the trades. That’s where the ‘berta boys work,” they laughs. “So I was exposed to a different side of the Calgary culture, and I worked it into Duke as a person. It’s kind of a way to take back some of the toxic aspects of Alberta boys, or reclaiming them and making them queer. I feel like it kind of brings a new light to the stereotype.”

In his relatively short career, Duke has easily become one of the most successful performers in Alberta’s drag scene, being featured on an episode of CBC’s Canada’s a Drag, as well as winning Alberta’s Next Drag Superstar in 2018 – the only drag king to ever do so. This, after not making it past the Calgary round just a year prior. May says it was losing out in 2017 that “really kind of opened my eyes to see what I was doing with drag, and to what I could be doing with drag.”

Since then, May has crafted Duke into a fully realized persona without sacrificing originality, saying they’ll often take “Classic Duke” and try to bring in new and unique interpretations.

“My biggest fear with drag, and with performing, and I guess with life in general, is just becoming stagnant,” says May, laughing as they wonder aloud, “How can I make Madonna Duke Carson?”