The “difficult and daunting” decision by singer-songwriter Cidny Bullens to transition from female to male in 2011 is an important personal story. A documentary short, The Gender Line, and a 2023 memoir, TransElectric: My Life as a Cosmic Rock Star, spotlighted the transition, and Bullens has now released a new album Little Pieces on Kill Rock Stars Records. The album was originally released in 2020 as Walkin’ Through This World on Bullens’s Blue Lobster Records before he added a song with Beth Nielsen Chapman and rereleased it as Little Pieces.
The lyrics also reflect his years in transition, but, foremost, the album rocks, is filled with creative, sophisticated musicianship and should be recognized as a top-flight rock and roll CD that showcases Bullens’s vast musical talents. Those talents were evident when Bullens, as Cindy, toured as a singer in Elton John’s band in the 1970s, sang on records of Elton, Gene Clark and others, and released solo albums.
Bullens wrote nine of the 11 songs on Little Pieces and co-wrote the other two with Beth Nielsen Chapman and Ray Kennedy, who co-produced the album with Bullens. Chapman sings on the album, and various Nashville musicians, including George Marinelli, Bonnie Raitt’s long-time guitar player, play on it.
“Ray Kennedy is an incredible producer, having produced Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and many other great artists and bands,” Bullens tells me. “Little Pieces is my third album with Ray.” Ray and I have very similar sensibilities and ears when it comes to music, though he, of course, is the genius in the studio, technically as well as artistically.”
Ten of the 11 songs were written after 2011, when Bullens started to transition from Cindy to Cidny, and the album was recorded at Nashville’s Room & Board Studios.
“The songs did not come all at once,” Bullens says. “I wrote only a few in the early years while I was out of the public eye living in Maine. It wasn’t until 2018, after I had written and performed my one-person show Somewhere Between: Not an Ordinary Life around the country, and been filmed for a biopic documentary short, The Gender Line, when I realized I needed to make my first record as Cidny. At that point, I started writing the rest of the songs. The songs are themed or loosely themed around my experiences in transition, including a couple of love songs to my wife, whom I met in 2014. She directed my one-person show.”
Bullens considers the song “The Gender Line” on Little Pieces a departure from the songs on other albums in his catalog. The song specifically addresses being transgender.
“I do not write topical songs, protest songs or specifically culturally relevant songs,” he explains. “I write love songs for the most part — personal songs that have to do with whatever is going on in my life at the time. The term ‘the gender line’ is in my one-person show. It was expressed by my daughter after I decided to transition, basically saying that I’d always been on one side of the gender line and was crossing over that line to the other side. The song basically wrote itself one day as I was driving from Maine to New Mexico, where Tanya, my wife now, was living.”
I ask Bullens if the music of Cidny Bullens differs from the music of Cindy Bullens.
“I don’t feel there is much difference between the music of Cindy and Cidny,” he responds. “There is a difference in my voice — some because of age and experience and some because of my transition. I have always, and still do, write, sing, play and perform from the heart. My songs are the story of me — individual sketches of moments or experiences in my life. My physical appearance may have changed, but I’m still who I have always been. If anything has changed, it could be that I feel freer in my expression.”
How does Bullens compare his voice today with his solo albums and singing with Elton John and other artists in the 1970s?
“This is a sore subject for me,” he responds. “As I describe in my new memoir TransElectric, I was encouraged to sing in a very high voice when I was recording my first few albums. Because I was young and believed I was doing the right thing, I changed my voice from the lower-alto naturally resonant voice I had to a high girl voice. Gradually, over time, I began to sing more naturally, but it wasn’t until I transitioned — and after the changes, due to testosterone, in my vocal chords settled — that I really started to play and have fun with my voice. I definitely like it much better now than I ever have.”
I ask Bullens which artists he sang with in the 1970s most impressed him.
“I have to say Elton John, of course, with no disrespect to any of the incredible artists I’ve gotten the chance to work with,” he answers. “Elton is and always has been a singular talent. There will never be another like him. He had and has it all. Of course, we all know what an incredible performer, singer and songwriter he is. But I’m not sure people realize how brilliant of a musician he is! He also happens to be one of the most generous people I’ve ever known. He has taught me a lot over the years about what it is to be a professional in the music business — both on and off stage. We’ve remained friends for almost 50 years. I adore him.”
Bullens also worked with another great, though far less heralded, musician — Gene Clark of the Byrds. Clark was an incredible, prolific songwriter whose solo album No Other is a classic. Bullens sang on five of the album’s eight songs: “Life’s Greatest Fool,” “Silver Raven,” “No Other,” “Strength of Strings” and “Some Misunderstanding.”
“It really was one of the best things I did in my very early career,” Bullens recalls. “Back in the day, No Other was not well received. Who knew it would become a classic in more recent times? I don’t really have any anecdotes from the sessions with Gene. I will only share that Gene was a sweet and gentle soul — very kind. The sessions were incredibly inspiring for me, because of Gene, the quality of the songs and I was a part of this superstar — to me — group of people who were recording with him. I will always hold that experience very close to my heart. I am so grateful that No Other is now receiving the accolades that it has always deserved.”
No Other was released in 1974, a year in which Bullens almost worked with another great songwriter. Living in Los Angeles, he received a phone call from Bob Dylan’s friend, Bobby Neuwirth, who said he was sending Bullens a plane ticket to New York City to participate in a week of gigs at The Other End. Neuwirth explained that Dylan would be in town, and he was gathering friends to play shows every night while Bob was in town.
“I was part of the ‘house band’ with Neuwirth, T Bone Burnett, David Mansfield, Steven Soles, Rob Stoner and Howie Wyeth,” Bullens says. “What transpired was an eclectic and magical week of music and musicians. Everyone who was in town, from Patti Smith to John Belushi to Mick Ronson and a host of other notables, showed up. It was the talk of the town. It was also the seed for what was to become the Rolling Thunder Revue.”
Did Dylan invite you to join his legendary 1974-75 Rolling Thunder Revue tour?
“Bobby Neuwirth did,” Bullens says. “Neuwirth was the originator of the whole idea and its ringleader. So, yes, I was planning on doing the whole tour with Rolling Thunder, but then, by happenstance, after I arrived back in Los Angeles from New York, I crashed a Rocket Records press party and met Elton John. That night, Elton asked me to go on tour with him. The party was on Wednesday night, September 17, 1975, and Elton’s tour rehearsals were starting two days later. Both Elton’s Rock of The Westies tour and Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour were happening at the same time. I had one day to choose between Elton John and Bob Dylan. It was not easy. Ultimately, I chose Elton, because, at the time, he was the biggest rock star on the planet. I was a rocker — though I loved singing my own songs and playing with Neuwirth and friends — and knew that performing with Elton John around the country and eventually the United Kingdom in front of hundreds of thousands of people would be an experience I would never have had otherwise. I couldn’t pass it up. I have always regretted that both tours were happening at the same time, but I don’t regret my decision.”
Bullens did three tours with John in 1975-76 and sang background vocals on the Blue Moves album and the hit single “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart.”
“My best memories,” Bullens says, “are split between best public moments — Dodger Stadium in October 1975 and Schaeffer Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1976 — and the personal, private times I shared with Elton. He basically took me under his wing. He was kind and generous always to me — a true friend. My worst memory was in 1976 when I stepped out of line with Elton backstage, and it caused a ruckus. I write about it in my memoir TransElectric: My Life as a Cosmic Rock Star. It blew over, and Elton and I have had a wonderful friendship for nearly 50 years. I am very grateful for him in my life.”
What concert was the best one Bullens performed in?
“It has to be the second night at Dodger Stadium with Elton on October 26, 1975,” he says. “It was just magical. Elton was particularly inspired, and it seemed like 60,000 people were at one with him and the band. I remember singing ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.’ Everyone, it seemed, had Bic lighters that lit up as the sun was setting over the stadium. It still gives me chills as I think about it now.”
I ask Bullens which concert he attended as a spectator was the best one he has seen.
“I don’t have one answer,” he replies. “I saw the original Rolling Stones in 1966, and that had a huge impact on me. I saw Led Zeppelin on their first American tour in 1969. I have seen dozens and dozens of incredible concerts over the years, including many Elton John concerts after my time with him. Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young, Joe Cocker, Paul McCartney, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, BB King, Leon Russell, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Sting, The Clash, Patti Smith, Queen, Pink Floyd, Lucinda Williams, the list goes on. Rock artists, folk artists, blues artists, jazz artists, country artists, Americana and bluegrass artists, old and young, superstars and unknowns, in small venues and stadiums. If an artist or band can draw me out of myself and into their world through their music, that is the best concert at that moment.”
Can Bullens pinpoint the best album he ever listened to?
“My taste in music is broad,” he says. “It depends on how the music affects me emotionally — or physically, if it’s pure rock ‘n’ roll — at any given time. I would say that the albums I loved from 1965-1983: all Beatles, all early Stones, all Led Zeppelin, CSN and CSNY, Neil Young’s Harvest, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, For the Roses and Court and Spark, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the Police’s Synchronicity. Plus, Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time, Steve Earle’s El Corazon, Lucinda Williams’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Julie Miller’s Broken Things.”
The inspirations behind the songs on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and Williams’s many ups and downs are chronicled in her new book Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You. Similarly, Bullens’s book TransElectric: My Life as a Cosmic Rock Star, which has a foreword by Elton John, reveals his many personal hills and valleys.
“After my transition, I felt I needed to tell my story,” Bullens says. “First, I wrote a one person show Somewhere Between: Not an Ordinary Life, which I performed around the country from 2016-2018. That established a kind of template for the book: my early brushes with rock ‘n’ roll stardom, getting married, having kids and then my transition from female to male as an older person. Then, the pandemic happened. I guess it was good for something in my case. I had a lot of time on my hands, like most everyone else. So, in the fall of 2020, I started to write. I got an agent in the spring and a book deal in the summer of 2021. My memoir is, as I say in the prologue, ‘the story of a rock ‘n’ roller, a mother and a transgender man, all at the same time. Parallel lives that all just happen to be mine.’”
Bullens believes his story is important, “because it tells the story of one human life — a parent, like many others, who has had successes and failures and felt deep grief and pain.” But his story also has “a twist,” he says, and is “a little different — someone who through it all felt like he was living in the wrong body.”
Bullens asks society for acceptance.
“The demonizing and targeting of trans people right now is abhorrent and just plain wrong,” he says. “I get that people don’t understand what being transgender is. I don’t expect people to understand something that is outside the realm of their own reality. However, I do ask that people merely accept us as a part of humanity, or even just allow us to exist. It may be radical acceptance for some. We can disagree on many things, everything even, but I am a human being. I have lived a long life now. I have given birth to new life, watched one of my children take her last breath and contributed in my own way to society. I am the grandparent of four. This is the story I tell in my memoir. Every word is true. Every word is mine. And every word is human.”