Why Adam Weiner of Philly’s Low Cut Connie won’t play Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center

In 2014, Low Cut Connie got a career boost with the attention that accompanied President Barack Obama putting the Philly band’s “Boozophilia” on his first-ever Summer Playlist.

Adam Weiner, the Low Cut Connie band leader and unabashed over-the-top showman, kept that D.C. energy going when he headlined a Joe Biden inauguration party in 2021.

And this year, Weiner — who will play a “Connie Club” variety show at Ardmore Music Hall on Thursday, featuring Philly bands Snacktime and the Flying Vees, plus drag performer Diva Divine Monroe — had another sweet D.C. gig lined up.

On March 19, Low Cut Connie was scheduled to play the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the center’s Social Impact series. That series' aim was to “drive societal change” with performances that “empower marginalized artists … aiming to create a more just and equitable society aligning with John F. Kennedy’s commitment to equity and diversity.”

It was a plum, prestige gig. And it was to serve as an anchor for a tour that includes dates in Bethlehem, Pa., and Elkton, Md., as well as an introduction to new band members Danny Black, Kelsey Cork, and Rich Stanley who will make their debut on Thursday.

But Low Cut Connie will not be playing that Kennedy Center show.

This month, Weiner made news in announcing he would be joining actress Issa Rae, folk musician Rhiannon Giddens, TV producer Shonda Rimes, classical soprano Renée Fleming, and musician Ben Folds in distancing themselves from the center after President Donald Trump took over the arts organization. Upon learning that “this institution that has been nonpartisan for 54 years is now chaired by President Trump himself and his regime,” Weiner wrote in a social media post, “I decided I will not perform there.”

“I was pretty stoked,” Weiner said, talking from his South Philly home where he makes the Tough Cookies virtual shows that led the New Yorker to name him Pandemic Person of the Year in 2020. He relaunched the series last month.

“It’s an honor to play there. It was like the Obama thing, and the Biden party. This was another moment of, ‘Oh cool, my little rock and roll group is getting this great honor.’ And then we built a run of shows around it.”

Then, on Feb. 7, President Trump posted on Truth Social about plans to make the Kennedy Center “GREAT AGAIN … with an amazing new chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP.” “Drag Shows that specifically target our youth — THIS WILL STOP,” the president added referring to the drag brunches and last year’s A Drag Salute to Divas hosted by the center.

“I thought that might just be him bloviating,” Weiner said. “People on my team were saying, ‘Just give it a little time. He says a lot of s— and nothing happens and it fades from the headlines.’”

But when the president appointed new board members and installed himself in place of longtime chairman David Rubinstein, Weiner made up his mind.

“Then I realized, he’s going to turn it into the Trump Center. I said to my team, ‘I’m not on the fence. I’m not going to do this show.’”

Weiner, whose song “Shake It Little Tina,” is about a drag Tina Turner impersonator and whose album Art Dealers was inspired by years playing piano at a gay bar in New York, posted a statement saying Low Cut Connie stood for “diversity, inclusion and truth telling.” The band’s extended family, he wrote, includes “black, white, gay, straight, transgender, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist and immigrant individuals — all of whom are wonderful upstanding Americans.”

The decision was easy, Weiner said.

“I’m going to do a show for an institution that Donald Trump is the chairman of?” he asks. “Simple: No. I won’t do it. If I had been asked, with $10 million attached to it, to play the tiniest inaugural party with no cameras allowed — for $100 million — I wouldn’t have done it.”

He felt compelled to register resistance to Trump’s efforts to rapidly reshape American society, from mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, to issuing executive orders declaring diversity, equity, and inclusion programs “illegal,” to sweeping layoffs of government employees.

The Kennedy Center is a public-private partnership that gets 16% of its $268 million budget from the federal government. Honorees for 2025 were Bonnie Raitt, the Grateful Dead, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, and the Apollo Theater.

But changes are underway.

At last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, interim chairman Richard Grenell gave “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas” as an example of the center’s new direction.

On his Air Force One flight to the Super Bowl, President Trump told reporters: “We don’t need woke at the Kennedy Center. Some of the shows were terrible,” while acknowledging he hadn’t attended any. “I get reports they were so bad. There was nothing I wanted to see.”

“He’s destroying our country, and doing it quick,” Weiner said. “A lot of artists would like to think we’re not involved. But we’re involved. And now he’s really made us involved.

“Here’s the thing. Fascism comes for everybody. It will come for every part of life. It will come for education. It will come for health. It will come for the arts. … Go through history. It’s been proven time and time again. It’s the state over everything.”

For Weiner, performing at a Trump-controlled Kennedy Center was not an option.

“If I do my show, it feels like capitulation to me,” he said, “If I get up there and sing my songs to my fans, putting the message out, which has a lot to do with basically all the values he’s trying to destroy, if I do that to get a paycheck: Why am I doing this job?”

For a mid-sized band like Low Cut Connie with a loyal following that records for Weiner’s own Contender Records, pressures to keep quiet and not ruffle feathers are fewer, Weiner said.

“When you’re a little cult act like me, these kind of decisions aren’t as heavy as they are for bigger acts. Blowback is not really a factor. I’m not … speaking to millions of people.

“I don’t have to do this calculus about how are people going to receive it. Is my fan base going to be pissed? I really don’t have to think about that. I have a really small team. Everything is independent. I don’t have to consult with 57 people and take a committee vote about what to do.”

Weiner does wonder where the outspoken opposition to Trump 2.0 is.

“I hate to say it, but very honestly, the people I’m most frustrated with are people in my own industry. … The fact that a little artist like me makes a tiny statement and it goes viral, it shouldn’t be like that. 97 artists much bigger than me should be out there saying what’s what.”

The most heartening reaction the Cherry Hill-raised singer has gotten came from Joan Baez. The folk singer-activist gave LCC props along with Folds, Rae, and Fleming. “Know that your magnificent voice will always remind us of beauty, fairness and strength,” she wrote.

“She’s still got the spirit,” Weiner said. “Music used to have the spirit. Music led the culture, right? And now we’re failing behind. Everybody’s afraid. They’re afraid to lose followers. They’re afraid of their bottom line.”

“The Connie Club” starring Low Cut Connie at Ardmore Music Hall, 23 E. Lancaster Ave. at 8 p.m. Thursday ArdmoreMusicHall.com. The performance will be recorded for future broadcast on nugs.net and used on Weiner’s "Connie Club" radio show on WXPN-FM (88.5).