If there is a facet of the nightlife world that sometimes are forgotten, it is the all important gogo boys! While these nightlife adonis figures serve as our resident eye candy, Greg McKeon (and the legendary “Gay Pimp” Jonny McGovern) are bringing attention to the boys on the boxes in a way that we’ve never seen before. GoGo for the Gold is a competition show (courtesy of OUT tv) which puts gogo boys from around the country through a battery of challenges, all towards winning the title of ‘America’s #1 Champion GoGo Superstar Star’ (and a $10,000 cash prize)! McKeon serves as a judge on the show (one of the ‘GoGo Gods’ as it were) and McKeon’s own experiences in nightlife is sure to offer some pretty high standards for the contestants to achieve. I sat down with McKeon to talk about GoGo for the Gold, his experiences working with his husband on OnlyFans (where he is a record-breaking content creator), his future as an author, and why it is important for him to offer go-go boys a well-deserved platform and spotlight.
Michael Cook: Greg, you and Jonny McGovern back together is such a natural fit and a treat for longtime fans of you both. How did the show GoGo for the Gold all come together?
Greg McKeon: Me and Jonny have been friends for a long time and about eight years ago we came up with the show concept. At the time, I was training a guy from a different channel, HereTV, and he didn’t bite into it at the time. We tried to see whoever would be interested and then we started working with OUTtv doing Hey Qween with them. They came to him and asked if he wanted to do it, and now where we are.
I actually moved out of Los Angeles about a year ago and I didn’t expect to be doing more stuff in tv right at this moment, but it is fun to be back in the entertainment world.
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MC: Why did you leave Los Angeles?
GM: We thought it would be fun to live in nature outside of the city. My husband had always wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest which we had visited before. We found a house to rent on twenty acres, and we didn’t realize that if you find a place to rent in Oregon and you qualify for it, they don’t do any sort of discrimination, as opposed to Los Angeles where you have to show up in a suit and a story and they can pick who they want. We decided to come up and check out the place and it is on a half mile private driveway, right next to the place we are living in now. It is just so different from where we were in LA and it just seemed like if there was any time to try it out, it would be now, during the pandemic. The strange thing was, the neighbor came over one day and asked if we wanted to buy the farm from him. We weren’t looking, but he offered to sell it to us directly. We ended up buying the farm from him and now we have a Christmas tree farm! It’s a fun fantasy, but it is a lot of work.
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MC: You are so tied to Jonny McGovern, from the podcast Gayest Of All Time to Hey Qween, and now the show GoGo for the Gold. Do you look back at your life so far and say ‘holy shit, this has been my life”!
GM: Yeah, it has all been kind of a blur, I didn’t really have too much of a plan going into my life except I knew that I wanted to have fun and I wanted to do things that made me happy. When I was nineteen, I went on a program called Semester At Sea inn College, it was a boat trip around the world for students, and I saw all of these different people living around the world. I thought that the whole rat race of America is not what I want to do, working a job that I hate for someone that I don’t like, and just trying to survive. I made a decision then that I was always going to do things that I enjoyed, which has been good and bad. Sometimes I wish I would’ve had that stable career, but it is fun when things start working out.
MC: What are some things on the show that have really been surprising or you really think did and will keep viewers engaged? And how clothed do you stay?
GM: Well, all of the judges are always shirtless, in different kinds of outfits. I didn’t realize what the other judges would be wearing, it wasn’t like we had someone styling everyone. It was “bring your own looks”‘ and and I’ve always just danced in boxers. Some of the other guys brought some really fantastic looks, the contestants and the judges. I know for next season we really have to bring it with the looks! I have seen some mediocre go-go dancers over the years, so I wasn’t expecting the level of talent on the show; the way the dancers presented themselves, the talent and the looks. as well as the personalities. I’ve gone to some castings where they are trying you to get “big energy” and with go-go boys, it just comes with the personality really.
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I think some of the challenges were really good, but the challenge with them twerking for senior citizens was great. It was something we had talked about so long ago, and it hadn’t happened. It was so funny, and the people that they got to do it with them were so much fun and full of life. I was excited for everyone to see the finale also, when it comes time to crown the winner. We don’t know who wins, we have two people winning, so no one knows until it is actually over.
MC: What is it like working with someone like Jonny McGovern for so long? He is truly a visionary and an advocate for the community, but also is able to capture that “it-factor” and bring it to the medium that he is working in.
GM: It is really great to work with Jonny because he is really uniquely him. He does what he likes to do, he follows his own dreams. He is not influenced by what he “should” do to make money, he is influenced by what he thinks is right for the community that he belongs to and that he is a part of. I think it is cool when someone is so interested in their own community first and not just trying to sell out. Sometimes it has not been the easiest, as there is not a lot of money in gay entertainment. He has just kept going on and kept following his dream. Now with the show doing well and getting good exposure, I am hopeful that he is going to be able to reap all of the rewards of his succuess.
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MC: So you are working on an autobiography titled GoGo for Love about your life; when will we finally get to read that and read the full Greg McKeon story?
GM: I am hoping by the time we get Season 2 out, or by 2023. I just want to make sure it is written in a way that is thoughtful and not rushed. I was hoping to get it out sooner, but it has really been a labor or love. My mother passed away five years ago and I started working on it then. That was ten years after I had been go-go dancing, but I really wanted to tell the story. I have a lot of it written from the past, and I have been going in and re-reading it and changing some things. Hopefully I can have it out in the near future, I am very excited about it. When I was younger, I read some of these coming of age books and it gave me some ideas of what to do and not to do. Nightlife gave me some ideas also, and some of that would be interesting for people to read also.
MC: You are still filming content for OnlyFans, where you are one of the top earners on the channel. Are you seeing big changes creating content in a post-Covid world, especially to find collaborators?
GM: It’s not been that hard at all. During the pandemic, we’d stopped collaborating and my husband and I were just filming and doing the monogamy approach, which was interesting because we had an open relationship before that. When the pandemic eased, it was like “okay you’re all boosted, go out and have fun” (laughs). Then it was like the summer of ten collaborations, so we went extra hard. We realized recently that it is better to collaborate with people that we really have a connection with and not try to rush or force it. When we have done collaborations with people that we think are popular, the energy sometimes is not right. People can tell in the videos that I might look “scared” and not in a good way (laughs)!
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MC: Have you opened your relationship back up post-pandemic?
GM: Yeah, we opened our relationship back up after everyone was boosted back up.
MC: What do you think the key is to making an open relationship truly work and thrive?
GM: Just keep an open mind. Keep learning new things as you go. I think any kind of relationship, you have to always and continually get to know your partner. Figure out what they are into and what they like; what someone likes one day is not what they are going to like in five years. We’ve learned a lot in the past ten years having an open relationship, that is for sure.
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MC: What is giving you the most Pride right now?
GM: Probably giving go-go boys a platform. I always felt like they were the undervalued parts of the club, they were never really paid, I felt, adequately, for the amount of love and effort that they gave to parties. I always thought it would be cool for go-go boys, like drag queens, to be able to tour around and go to different clubs, work different parties, and build a name for themselves as such. I am hoping with this show, these go go boys will be able to get a little bit more love and energy behind them so that they can spread their message of dance, happiness and love back!
Follow Greg McKeon on all social media platforms here
It’s so hard to find this gay show anywhere, maybe it’s only on OutTV. Seems like there’s several very very sexy gay men on the show wanted to watch for the eye candy <3