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Denver’s Biggest Smallest Band: Wheelchair Sports Camp

Denver’s Biggest Smallest Band: Wheelchair Sports Camp

Kalyn Heffernan may be small, but she is quite mighty. A Denver local and queer activist, she is the founder and MC of the band Wheelchair Sports Camp. Along with Gregg Ziemba on drums and Joshua Trinidad on trumpet, the group combines humor, playfulness, radical political perspectives, compassion, and undeniable musical chops into their performances.

Heffernan unknowingly started the band in the summer of 1997 after she moved back to Colorado from California and was invited to attend and corrupt the 14th annual week-long Colorado Jr. Wheelchair Sports Camp. Now, the group is known as Denver’s biggest smallest band.

Wheelchair Sports Camp will be performing at this year’s Denver PrideFest on Saturday, June 15 on the Center Stage at 12:00 p.m. OUT FRONT had the pleasure of chatting with Heffernan about the band and her involvement with Denver’s political scene. Heffernan recently ran for mayor in last month’s local election. Boy, does she have a story to tell.

Hi, Kayln! How exciting is it for you to perform at your hometown’s Pride festival?

I am really excited. I have been going to Pride here since before I came out, and it is definitely a big weekend of the year, so I am looking forward to being able to play. It will be weird to be working and not partying! That will be interesting. We play Saturday, and I usually go party hard on Sunday, so it will be a different experience. I am excited about it.

Is this your first time playing for Denver PrideFest?

Denver Pride, yes. We played World Pride a couple years ago, and we played Boulder Pride, but this is our first Denver Pride.

Tell me a little more about Wheelchair Sports Camp. How did it begin?

I started the group in college, but I was a long-time participant in the actual wheelchair sports camp here. I used to take my able-bodied friends, and we would get in trouble and do bad things, and we kind of started the rap group based on that.

What can audiences expect from a Wheelchair Sports Camp performance?

We kind of switch it up, and we try to be intentional about making every show special. Since this is Pride, it will be special. We also got some new stuff we are working on. You will have to see it to believe it.

What do you look for in a good audience?

That’s kind of a hard question. It is such a weird thing being on stage and watching the audience. It is sometimes hard to see how excited people are and that can be frustrating. You never really know. I just try to play the same for any type of crowd, even if it’s for one person in the audience. They may be having the time of their life, but they are not jumping up and down or screaming their lungs out, but they are enjoying themselves. That is hard to read as a performer. So, the older I get, the better I try to not overanalyze the audience.

Have you always had a passion for performing?

Yes, I have been rapping ever since I can remember.

In addition to Wheelchair Sports Camp, you are also heavily involved with politics and activism, and you even ran in the recent Denver mayoral race. Was this your first time running for office, and how did it go?

I rolled for office, I did not run [laughs]. It was quite the experience. What was at first a joke became a serious thing, and we did our best to kind of reimagine what this campaign could look like. I was very intentional on being creative and not playing the game their way. I wanted to reimagine the game as an artist, so we threw a lot of cute events around people that are commonly left out of the political conversation and left out of the political arena.

We did this one event around queers and it was Politics Are a Drag Show, and we had youth and toddlers and teenagers and drag queens and sex workers. The heart of the campaign was trying to get people from all across the spectrum to feel like they had some kind of participating value in this rigged system. At the end of the day, we proved it is a very rigged, but I feel like we won for sure.

My whole idea was to create a campaign that regardless of votes, we were going to win.

So, we spent all campaign contributions towards events, feeding people, we built a handful of ramps for the disabled, so a lot of the campaign is still here and it’s not going anywhere. Now that the election is over, we are looking into ways to continue building tamps and throwing events and doing action.

If you were elected mayor, what were some of the changes and ideas you would have liked to implement?

I wanted to declare housing as a human right. I would have overturned the camping ban day one, and I would work towards getting everybody into housing and mandating developers to provide for low income housing and housing for people without income. As somebody with a disability, I know how little we get to survive. You can’t make more than $800 on disability and an average one-bedroom apartment is like $1,400. I wanted to work on redistributing the wealth.

Do you have any desire to run for office again?

It’s doubtful, but I told everybody I would never run for office in the first place. So, it’s possible, but at this point, I want nothing to do with it!

What would you say was the biggest challenge about running for office?

The biggest challenge I think was prioritizing my energy. We are like catering to a fraction of fraction of people who actually vote. The more I did that, the less energy I had to engage with people who do not typically vote. This was our highest election turnout since the 90s, but we were still like at only 39 percent of registered voters. So, all this time, energy, money, traditional campaigning and catering to this small group of people wore me out because my goal was to engage to the outsides. The majority of those who do not vote. It was difficult.  

And what would you say was the biggest learning experience?

I think I have a pretty good sense and idea how much money means to politics. I got a much better look how interconnected all the money and deciding forces are, and it also reaffirmed me how disconnected politics are from spirituality. It is easy to say whatever you want, yet do the complete opposite.

As far as learning about myself, I am a performer and an entertainer, but I was never really into the rap battle scene. However, the debates and forums are like rap battles, and I won. I was really good at it which I was surprised about. So, I got pretty good at giving speeches and just talking from my perspective. I was just surprised that I was able to hold my own and I think in a lot of cases, I did the best even though I come with the least political experience.

What’s next for you, Kalyn?

Well, Wheelchair Sports Camp started an album last summer, and I haven’t been able to work on it recently because the election took up so much space and time, so I am definitely getting back to music. We got some shows this summer, and we will be booking tours in Minnesota around St. Paul and Minneapolis. I am also still figuring out a way to keep the spirit of the campaign going and not losing touch with the 4,500 people who voted for me and our ideas. We need to figure out ways to continue to mobilize our efforts and continue moving forward. But I’m definitely going to focus back on music and the album. I am really excited to get back to music.

Photos by Veronica L. Holyfield

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