RuPaul's Drag Race global superstars Violet Chachki and Gottmik are hitting the road with The Knockout Tour, a three-month joint tour, starting on September 12 in Atlanta, GA and running through December 12 in Nashville, TN. To announce these dates and set expectations for the tour which is reaching 50 cities across the U.S. and Canada the No Gorge cohosts released a new song, "TKO," and a music video showcasing a grittier, wilder, and sweatier side to two of the most polished queens to ever appear in the Drag Race franchise. What gives?"We've spent this past year working on this tour, and then this song, and it's just gone through so many hands," Gottmik tells Out. "We are very specific divas, so it took a long time to figure out what the perfect mix a vintage jock-jam boxing song [would be] with our goth/glam style."Sign up for the Out Newsletter to keep up with what's new in LGBTQ+ culture and entertainment delivered three times a week straight (well) to your inbox!Violet agrees, "There were a lot of layers and references we were trying to pack into one thing. I think both of us are so fierce with visuals. But, for me at least, it's harder with music. I can hear when something isn't correct, but it's hard for me to communicate exactly what should be changed. So it was difficult, and we worked with a couple different producers."The songwriting process also "got to a point where I was like, 'I don't like this.' I felt like I was forcing the notes," Violet explains. "We were really trying to get it to a place where we both felt very happy which is really hard to do, if you could imagine such a thing, for the two of us," she teases.It can be easy for outsiders to dismiss how much work it takes for creative choices to feel right and earned. Thankfully, Gottmik and Violet's artistic direction pays off as we venture into this new environment (a boxing gym) and narrative (combat sports) assisted by visual cues that ground our understanding of these drag personas.Drag is a contact sport.Gottmik praises the cast members in the "TKO" music video for being "the chillest, most amazing people to work with," highlighting how collaborative and committed they were to make this vision come to life. "We wanted to create a slightly over characteristic campy vibe for everyone else."Beyond casting bodybuilders and muscle hunks among them, Pit Crew member Jesse Pattison who made sense in this environment and looked striking alongside the No Gorge queens, finding "the perfect ring girl" for this queer fantasia was at the tip of one's tongue. "I knew it was Fantasia [Royale Gaga]," Gottmik asserts. "She's the caricature of the perfect woman to me. She had to be the ring card girl. That just felt natural. And Fantasia was just like, 'Of course. Hopping on a plane.'""She's so sweet, and just always down to do the work," Violet says. "It was a hundred degrees that day, I'm not even kidding you. The warehouse had no air conditioning, and there was nowhere to really sit, so it was just a difficult shoot day, to be honest."Violet points out that they shot the music video "the Monday after Pride, so some people dropped out last minute, and a lot of friends were coming in late. Just trying to coordinate and getting everyone there was very difficult, but the people that did show up are true ride-or-die divas."Ozzy Osbourne's recent passing inspired pop culture aficionados to revisit the Black Sabbath discography and rewatch The Osbournes a little more closely this time paying special attention to the paternal figure in the MTV series often credited as the blueprint for celebrity-driven lifestyle reality shows."We were rewatching The Osbournes the other day and I realized how the kids are literally just siblings on TV And that's just how it is with us," Gottmik says, motioning toward Violet.Violet adds, "We love each other, and we're there for each other, and we uplift each other all at the same time. But we also fight like actual sisters, because we are actual family. It's all very nuanced and layered."Gottmik, the generator.Gottmik recalls that the idea for The Knockout Tour came while driving and seeing a billboard for a boxing fight. "I took a photo of it and put it on a Pinterest board. I thought it would be crazy for us to do something like that, so I started building this insane mood board for months and months."As Gottmik found and fell in love with all kinds of "vintage boxing aesthetic" ideas, the time felt right to loop in Violet. "I was like, 'There's something here that could be insane for us.'"In fact, this new era is described as "the opposite of what the drag zeitgeist is right now" by Gottmik. The drag trailblazer adds, "Everything is about wearing the biggest outfits, and the biggest mermaid gowns, and all that stuff. So for us to be like, 'Let's do funny little ponytails, while sweating, and box it out.' That's just something that we've never done, and we'll never probably do again.""Right. Basically, we're not like other girls," Violet teases.Gottmik laughs, "We're athletic pick-me girls."Having identifiable "eras" is a great marketing tool for musicians. Madonna proved how this approach can sustain many decades of a career establishing it as the new normal for pop stars like Beyonc, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga.When I bring up Mother Monster's stripped-down, cowboy era for the Joanne album one that the gays love to kiki about Violet begs to differ and underscores that they're "not giving Joanne era." They're aiming for a more "athletic pick-me girls" moment while "still giving extremely high glam." She adds, "But the thought of being athletes is there.""Yeah," Gottmik joins in. "Do you want to call Swarovski crystal boxing gloves 'jeans'? Sure, you there you go, an Out magazine quote for the interview."Before I'm able to stop laughing in order to respond, Gottmik smiles and mouths that she's just kidding.A versatile, and more vulnerable, Violet.While Gottmik continued to mood-board for her life on Pinterest, the process of putting together The Knockout Tour was a different experience for Violet: It pushed the season 7 winner to reflect on how long she's been doing drag, how she had "never really tapped into sports, because it's so not my thing," and even more recent memories of seeing TikTok videos of herself "from 2011 or 2012, where I'm at the grocery store or some shit. And I'm just like, 'Wow, I have worn so much drag, and outfits, and characters.'"Our interview takes a surprising, sharp, and lovely turn as Violet looks back at the journey she's had since winning Drag Race season 7 in 2015 a full decade ago and becoming America's Next Drag Superstar. That Pride Month, set in a pre-MAGA world, included Violet's crowning on June 1, same-sex marriage being legalized on June 26, and Violet dropping her first and only body of work in music (an EP titled Gagged) on June 30."When I was first starting to put music out, I really wanted to brand myself as fetish-y, dark; really getting into that aspect of my drag. That was also 10 years ago, and I've even forgotten about a lot of that stuff," Violet recalls. "Sometimes, my old music pops up and I'm like, 'Whoa, maybe I should take that one down from Spotify.'"I protest that Violet should absolutely not do that. "That's what I said!" Gottmik shouts.While most of the classic Chachki-isms are still there, it isn't hard to see where Violet is coming from. The drag entertainer that she is today is not limited to the freak-in-the-sheets "Bettie," is no longer "addicted to being depicted / As the bitch with the whip and the Dior tights" from "Mistress Violet," and is actually a lot more Violet than what she envisioned in "A Lot More Me" from 2018."The truth is that I really have a eclectic taste. Even when I'm DJing, there's people like, 'Oh, what's your style of DJ?' And I'm like, 'Fierce.' I can't really pinpoint an exact genre," Violet says. "Sometimes it's goth clubs. Sometimes it's jock jams. Sometimes it's house, techno, trance, a little bit of Shania Twain in there, and a little pop diva. It's just all over the place."Nonetheless, it's been a minute since Violet committed to a big tour like The Knockout Tour 50 cities for three months. "It's a lot. It's definitely a lot of dates," she confesses. "I had announced my solo show in North America, which was something comparable to this, but then the [lockdown] happened and shit just got weird.""The last time I did something like this was in 2016, I think. I did a tour called Battle of the Seasons, which was a group tour," Violet says. Longtime Drag Race fans absolutely remember BOTS, which used to be the only world-reaching tour for drag performers, and even featured Michelle Visage as one of the girls traveling on the tour bus and doing the concerts, often serving as the emcee of each show. "It was a group tour, and I'm literally traumatized by the videos that are still on the internet. It was so, so long ago. I used to have entire years that were just gone."These divas are determined to knock you out.Despite the weird memories surrounding that period in her life, Violet feels more than ready and well-trained for this joint tour with Gottmik, noting: "BOTS was like a three-hour show. It was so crazy. I'm traumatized by it. I feel like if I can get through that, I can get through this."The Knockout Tour will maintain the boxing theme in "TKO," while also including a wide range of performance styles and talents. "We're structuring it as a normal show, but doing different segments as rounds," Violet explains. "We're going to do live singing. We've got aerial. We've got burlesque. We've got dance solos. There's even audience participation."The tour's overall concept is "glamour versus punk rock, along with a loose narrative throughout the entire show," Violet says. On that note, she teases that "there will probably be actual fighting going on behind the scenes." Gottmik nods and agrees."We're also bringing it to the runway, if you will, as well as the stage," Violet remarks. "Gottmik does more punk rock, whereas I do more classic glam. But there is this crossover that overlaps fetish and we're going to be battling it out. It's interesting that we get to play with that, and also play against that.""TKO" was co-written and co-produced by Violet Chachki and Gottmik.The record was a collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer NOVODOR (Troye Sivan, ODESZA, Adam Lambert) and producer Nick Weiss a.k.a. Nightfeelings (Kim Petras, Lazza, Ghali).The song was a collaboration with songwriters Jesse Saint John (Britney Spears, Dorian Electra, Charli XCX) and Alex Chapman (Jade, Zara Larsson, Paris Hilton).The Knockout Tour starts September 12 in Atlanta, Georgia and runs through December 12 in Nashville, Tennessee.For tickets and more information about Violet Chachki and Gottmik's The Knockout Tour, visit Seated.com.