Rhyker Dye | Issue 12, Fall 2026

CONTENT NOTE: This piece focuses on the drag career of Pierce Pendragon, alter ego of Spencer Campbell. There is a focus on self discovery through music and performance, particularly the band Ghost.

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Pierce Pendragon (Spencer Campbell) was interviewed on July 4, 2026, in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Pierce Pendragon (he/him) debuted in February of 2023 at Club Kinkeads and in the last three years has come to be known as The Goth Prince. He competed in Talent Night and Center Stage, winning an episode of each show with the respective themes of “Bitchcraft” (witchcraft) and “Hot Ghoul Summer.” He has also placed as first alternate in the Mr. Fort Smith Pride 2026 pageant. Recently he has hosted his own show in his hometown of Poteau, Oklahoma called “Making History: A Night of Drag on Dewey,” cohosted by Prince Hamlet. Pierce has also been cast in the “Ghoul’s Ball” in St. Louis, Missouri this July, and you can find his other upcoming shows on instagram (pierce_pendragon) and tiktok (pierce.pendragon).

A low, reverent drone thrums through the speakers before distorted guitars fracture the room. The stage is still empty, but the nightclub has been transported. It’s a cathedral. It’s a crypt. A theater with phantoms lurking in the shadows. Even before Pierce Pendragon steps into view, draped in black lace, silver jewelry, and eyeliner sharper than his fangs, the music has set the stage for the story he’s about to narrate.

Known throughout western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, Pierce Pendragon’s drag king performances weave together theatrical storytelling, occult imagery, burlesque, and alternative music. Alternative drag is known for its monsters and makeup, but music upholds the art at its foundation. Just as the “alt scene” evolved from the soundtracks of counterculture, drag has done the same.

So, I sat down with this Goth Vampire Prince to explore how music and counterculture have influenced the alternative drag scene.

Pendragon’s earliest performances pulsed with the loud, confrontational energy of punk artists. Donning a bright red blazer, plaid pants, spiked hair, and the extroverted confidence borrowed from punk’s long history of rebellion, Pendragon was a self-described “rebel without a cause.” Still a fledgling in Queer spaces at the time, Pierce Pendragon’s evolution reflected Spencer Campbell’s journey to carve out and create his own identity outside of drag.

“Punk is the root,” he explained. “It’s revolutionary fashion. Anti-fascist. Political. Loud. On stage, I was this over-the-top version of myself, but in the dressing room, I was the complete opposite.”

Punk eventually gave way to something quieter, darker, and more introspective as Campbell found a subculture that was still subversive but more aligned with his introverted, romantic personality: goth. Through more theatrical musicians and a lifelong interest in witchcraft, Gothic cinema, and the occult, both Campbell and Pendragon found a voice through a different artistic language. Goth, while still a rebellious counter-movement, was less interested in shouting at the world and instead invited the world into the shadows.

The shift between the two subcultures emerged gradually as Campbell listened to more artists who blurred the lines between music, mythology, and performance. No band influenced Campbell’s refinement of Pierce Pendragon more than Ghost.

Ghost, a Swedish occult rock band, transforms concerts and music videos into something more with elaborate costuming and satanic imagery, using horror and religious symbolism to interrogate structures of power.

“They’re trying to make commentary about religion, and how it has been misused and weaponized,” Pendragon said.

Ghost’s elaborate lore and theatrical worldbuilding inspired Pendragon to imagine a backstory of his own. The Goth Prince became more than Campbell’s drag king stage persona; he became an ancient vampire forced to navigate a world that misunderstands him. Like Ghost’s clergy and anti-pope, Pierce Pendragon exists somewhere between fiction and memoir.

“He doesn’t change who he is fundamentally,” Pendragon said. “He’s often misunderstood. I use the symbol of the vampire to signal Pierce’s Queerness, and I use occult symbols and music from bands like Ghost as a way to be unapologetically different. It speaks to my Transness, Queerness, and my neurodivergence.”

That philosophy guides every performance long before choreography begins. When building a new number, Pendragon starts with music, asking himself a series of simple questions: What mood does this create? What color does this song feel like? What story already exists inside it?

Ghost’s “Peacefield” becomes a romantic gothic burlesque routine where occult symbols coexist with vulnerability. The reveal isn’t simply erotic; the stripping away of clothing becomes an act of emotional exposure. Beneath the monster is a human body asking to be understood.

“My costume will always reflect my take on the mood and message behind a song.”

And this message is often imbued with politics.

Growing up, Campbell attended church with his grandmother while carrying the secret knowledge that his own identity seemed incompatible with his grandmother’s faith. When he came out, he was told that Queerness “wasn’t in god’s plan” and was encouraged to return to church. Years later, random strangers still stop him in stores to pray over the pentacles around his neck.

Rather than retreating from those experiences, Campbell folded them into his art.

Occult imagery became acts of reclamation rather than just rebellion. Songs with religious messaging, like those performed by Ghost, transformed trauma into resistance—and the vampire that Pierce Pendragon had become evolved into a figure of survival and persistence.

“I am not a monster,” Pendragon said with conviction. “I am just misunderstood.”

Other monsters, according to Pendragon, welcome him with open arms. Alternative performers and Drag Things, as well as alternative audiences, are loyal subjects in the Vampire Prince’s court, but Pendragon struggles to find support in mainstream crowds. At nightclubs, where many patrons expect traditional drag characterized by Queens lip-syncing to familiar pop anthems, Pendragon has to navigate his routines strategically.

He starts with dark-pop covers of mainstream music before transitioning into more explicitly occult performances. The messaging and imagery clambers to find purchase with these club audiences since they aren’t as fluent in goth’s artistic language. This issue is even more exacerbated when non-Queer audiences enter Queer spaces.

At regional events like the Steel Horse Rally, a weekend-long takeover of downtown by motorcyclists, straight audiences wander into drag shows out of genuine intrigue or morbid curiosity. With these crowds, Pendragon notes that drag kings, especially those visibly Transmasc, become transgressive. Paired with Pendragon’s darker aesthetics and music, crowds leave feeling shocked, off-put, or confused.

Pendragon hopes they leave feeling haunted.

When I asked Pendragon what haunted meant to him, I hoped to hear about more than simply ghosts, horror, and fear. Pendragon delivered.

“Humanity.”

It was an interesting answer coming from an immortal vampire prince, but with Pendragon’s origin in mind, it seemed fitting. Every story Pendragon shared circled back to the same ideas. The unknown and misunderstood make others uncomfortable, but it is not the monsters that need to change.

In the vampire’s den, surrounded by romantic lace and photos of Campbell with his partner, I felt that I understood the political project of alternative drag. Alternative drag reclaims figures society has taught us to fear and asks us why they frightened us in the first place. The vampire. The demon. The Trans body. The neurodivergent. Alternative drag collapses the distance between monster and person until we realize they are one and the same.

As Pendragon said at the beginning of the interview, that collapse has deep roots in the musical traditions from which the art grew. Punk rejected conformity in favor of resistance, while goth found beauty in mystery and vulnerability. Alternative drag embodies those aesthetics, transforming them into visual vocabulary in which makeup, costuming, and choreography become extensions of the music.

Pierce Pendragon uses that vocabulary to express himself authentically.

As a Transgender man, he spoke to the isolation of existing on the margins, even in Queer spaces where Drag Kings remain underrepresented. Yet, he asserted that he has found profound acceptance among alternative performers, neurodivergent communities, and other artists who celebrate the weird, the spooky, and the misunderstood.

“I hope baby drag performers out there are inspired to be their weird, spooky selves,” he said. “We should never sanitize ourselves to fit into a world that never had us in mind to begin with. Take up space.”

Alternative drag is a niche performance art existing within an already niche art form. Pierce Pendragon hopes that drag overall will become a “more inclusive, more expansive, more expressive place” where all performers can showcase their art and expose all audiences to a variety of cultures, music styles, and traditions.