How the Detroit Disco Daddies Turn Queer Joy Into a Live Disco Spectacle
The duo behind a viral ‘The Voice’ audition found new fame in Detroit with a dazzling mix of disco, comedy and queer celebration
If you’ve ever gone out clubbing around Detroit and stumbled across two men dressed to the nines in disco attire, singing their hearts out to covers of hit songs like “It’s Raining Men” or “I Feel Love,” then you’ve probably met AJ and Bookie, better known as the Detroit Disco Daddies.
The Daddies, a staple at the cocktail bar Lowkey in Detroit, are couple Adam (AJ) and Jerome (Bookie) Bell-Bastien, and together they dress up, dance and sing all around Michigan. “It’s a live disco fantasy,” Adam tells Pride Source, “where we step into our alter-egos and invite everyone to celebrate with us.” Next month, the Disco Daddies will perform during the Arts, Beats & Eats festival at 6:45 p.m. Sept. 6 at Pronto! in Royal Oak.
When the Daddies perform, the night is filled with not just disco, but also disco remixes, and even a few original songs (yes, the Daddies sing live and are so good they even brought Kelly Clarkson to tears when they competed on “The Voice” in 2018). The Disco Daddies incorporate camp and comedy into their performances, dressing up like vintage disco stars and even partying with the crowd after their shows are finished. “Our motto is come sexy, leave sweaty,” Jerome says.
But their surreal fantasy goes beyond their shows. Adam and Jerome’s romance feels like a real-life fairytale. Despite both originally living in New York City, the two didn’t meet until they were flown out to a film shoot in Minnesota. “I was Adam’s love interest in a music video he was working on,” Jerome says, before recalling their immediate chemistry that turned into a whirlwind weekend romance. “It was immediate, the second I saw him. I went back to New York and told my best friend that I met the person I’m gonna marry.”
After returning home, the duo started dating and collaborating on music. That’s when they got a call from the producers of “The Voice,” who had heard their recordings. During season 15, Adam and Jerome competed as the duo OneUp. During their blind audition, three of the four judges turned their chairs around and a battle broke out between Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson, who both wanted them on their teams. Ultimately, the Daddies went with Clarkson.
Exposure from the show was massive, and Adam and Jerome suddenly found themselves being written about in publications like People, Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide. “That put us in a whole new bracket,” Adam says. Their performance on “The Voice” also landed them an agent, who quickly placed them in a disco tribute band called Disco Nights.
Everything seemed to be going perfectly for the duo. Adam even felt so secure in their careers that, in January 2020, he decided to buy a house in Michigan, where he’s originally from. With all the touring they were doing with their band, they assumed their new Detroit home would simply be a retreat between gigs. But just a few months later, the pandemic shut down the world and brought their careers to a halt.
Still, they had each other. “When you finally find your person in life, and you get married,” Adam says, “one of the most amazing things about it is that you can be as weird as you are with that person, and they celebrate that with you.”
The silver lining, too, was that the couple now had all the time they needed for their own artistic pursuits. “The pandemic really gave us time to find our own sound and discover who we wanted to be with our music,” Adam says, revealing that the answer was a style “heavily rooted in disco.”
As the pandemic started to fade, Adam and Jerome had a friend opening up a new disco club nearby called Apartment Disco. “They asked if we’d be interested in doing music for the club,” Adam says, “and that’s really where the Detroit Disco Daddies were born.”
But it wasn’t just the nightlife keeping the Daddies in the Motor City. They ended up finding a community they loved. “We met an amazing queer scene here,” Jerome says, “and people were just so friendly and reached out and introduced us to their friends.” That community also helped the duo develop their new personas as the Disco Daddies. “As artists, it felt like we could be really authentic here.”
To fully lose themselves in their characters, Adam and Jerome started going by their childhood nicknames, AJ and Bookie, while performing. Born in Louisiana, Jerome admits that even he isn’t entirely sure where his nickname came from, though he thinks it might originate from the Japanese word kabuki. “You know Southern people,” he says. “Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason on how you get a nickname.”
If you see the Daddies performing these days, you’ll be met with a dazzling spectacle of music, fashion and dancing — something that Jerome says is heavily inspired by the drag community. “When we put on our wigs and our outfits, it’s like anything goes,” he says. “I feel that same sense of freedom. Our shows are super camp, and we’re unapologetically ourselves.”
Adam adds that the connection between disco and queerness isn’t new either. It’s been rooted in the genre since its inception. “Disco, and even all the remixes of disco, like house and techno, were all birthed in the queer community,” he says. “So queerness and a sense of freedom are really baked into the music already.”
Detroit’s history is also ingrained in the Daddies’ style. “Motown birthed a lot of different sounds,” Adam says about the genre being an early building block for disco. “Anytime someone hears a sound, they put their own spin on it and it creates something new.” Decades later, Detroit became the epicenter of music yet again, which the duo says further influenced their performance style. “Detroit is also the birthplace of techno music,” Adam continues, “and in the ’80s and ’90s, the dance scene here was insane.”
This year has been a big one for the duo. On top of numerous shows during Pride Month, the couple is also working on releasing an original Christmas song called “Let Me Come Home,” which is dedicated to members of the LGBTQ+ community who have been estranged from their families. The song features the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.
Since their inception, the Disco Daddies continue to gain popularity. Adam says he thinks they keep finding success because their shows are leaning into fun and a sense of community as a form of protest. “With the state of our country right now, I think it’s important to do anything to combat the negativity that’s taking over,” he says. “It reminds us there’s still a reason to be joyful and have hope.”
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