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Dearest queer country friends, can you believe that the Gay Ole Opry and Queer Country Quarterly are ten years old?! Come celebrate with me this Thursday, December 9th, at 7:00 pm ET!

The first Gay Ole Opry festival was back on April 7th, 2011 in Brooklyn. After three hundred people showed up to dance and sing and even cry a little bit together, it was clear we needed a more regular event too, and so the first Queer Country Monthly followed at the newly-opened Branded Saloon on July 23, 2011. In 2015, Eli Conley took us to the Bay Area with Queer Country West Coast. The Opry even hit the road, including a big 2016 Southern tour. And since the pandemic we have headed online! All told, more than 100 artists have performed at over 70 festivals and shows.

Our big anniversary party will be streaming this Thursday, December 9th at 7:00 ET as part of the Country Soul Songbook Summit. There will be performances from longtime Opry stars Lindsey Wilson, Juan & the Pines, and Mylo, tons of clips from the archives, and a conversation with special guests Black Opry’s Holly G and Adobe and Teardrop’s Rachel Cholst about building community. Check the facebook invite for more details and to rsvp

You can watch for free at countrysoulsongbook.com, but I really hope you’ll also register for the whole Country Soul Songbook Summit because omg it is going to be so amazing. Three gorgeous days of music, conversations, and community envisioned and led by BIPOC and LGBTQIA artists! I mean, look at this lineup:

Friends, thank you so much for these last ten years. Thank you for all the singing, two stepping, listening, clapping, laughing, drinking, crying. Thank you for sharing your cash to support the artists and to support fundraisers for grassroots groups like the Trans Justice Funding Project and SONG. For helping out in a million different ways from spreading the word to running the door. For volunteering for Country Music Against White Supremacy and committing to asking hard questions about what transforming country music could look like. For showing up again and again, year after year, with so much love for the music and for each other. Thank you for building this space with me. I hope we can keep working together to make it into what we need. And to make it feel like home.

love,
karen

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The summer Queer Country Quarterly is coming on Saturday, July 10th at 8:00 pm ET! And I’ve got so much gorgeous music for you with longtime Gay Ole Opry favorite Ganessa James, new star Jett Holden, and Mo(u)rning People, a brand new supergroup from Lara Americo, Apollo Flowerchild and Steph Durwin. Plus I have a bunch of new songs to play for you!

We’ll be streaming on the Karen & the Sorrows facebook page and on youtube, so you can watch wherever you like to watch! And RSVP here for all the updates!

The show is free but please contribute if you can! Venmo @karenandthesorrows and all your tips will go straight to the musicians.

And if you’re in Brooklyn, you can still order delivery from Branded! Or order cute Branded merch from wherever you are! Check out www.brandedsaloon.com to support our favorite bar.

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This QCQ is gonna be such a special one! The amazing DeLila Black is joining us all the way from London!!! Plus we have one of my favorite Queer Country Quarterly regulars, Franky and the Momos. And I even wrote a new song to sing you. Come be our queer country date on Saturday, March 6th at 8:00 pm ET! We’ll be streaming on the Karen & the Sorrows facebook page and on youtube, so you can watch wherever you like to watch! And RSVP here for all the updates!

The show is free but please contribute if you can! Venmo @karenandthesorrows and all your tips will go straight to the Franky and DeLila.

And if you’re in Brooklyn, you can still order delivery from Branded! Or order cute Branded merch from wherever you are! Check out brandedsaloon.com to support our favorite bar.

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The Gay Ole Opry is this Friday at 4:00 pm ET! Hen in the Foxhouse, Luisa Lopez, Amina Shareef Ali, and Juan & the Pines will be bringing you so many beautiful songs, I promise your heart will feel a little better after you listen to them sing.

To see the Opry—and so much more!—you can register for the summit at countrysoulsongbook.com.

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The Queer Country Quarterly returns on Saturday, October 3rd at 8:00 pm ET! With Lilli Lewis, Mercy Bell and your faithful host, Karen & the Sorrows!

Watch here or on YouTube Live and we’ll also be streaming on the Karen & the Sorrows page on Facebook Live!

Please contribute if you can! Venmo @karenandthesorrows and your tips will help support the musicians.

And if you’re in Brooklyn, you can still order delivery from Branded! Or order cute Branded merch from wherever you are! Check out www.brandedsaloon.com to support our favorite bar.

More about the musicians:

Mercy Bell
“Mercy Bell’s new self-titled album, released October 18, 2019, finds the queer Filipino-American singer and songwriter claiming her voice in a way that is personal and rapturous. A bicoastal upbringing in California and New England, followed by moves to New York and Arkansas before landing in East Nashville, give her a perspective on life that is broad, deep and uniquely American.” -Jeremy Darrow

Lilli Lewis
Lilli Lewis is an Americana soul artist, activist, and Label Manager and A&R Head of Louisiana Red Hot Records. Trained as opera singer and classical pianist, Lewis has been a composer, producer and performing artist for over two decades. After carving out space for herself as an African-American lesbian of size, Lewis is lending her voice to the music industry’s need to diversify its precepts about looks, sexuality and marketability. Lewis has composed in every tradition that inspires her, including soul, Americana, classical, folk, jazz, rock, gospel, blues, soul and R&B.

“If Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Odetta had had a baby, and that baby had had a baby, and that baby had had another baby… well that baby would probably be me,” she describes. Lewis has two recent critically acclaimed releases on Louisiana Red Hot Records, the 2018 solo piano album “The Henderson Sessions”, and 2019’s Lilli Lewis Project’s “We Belong”. Her highly anticipated third Louisiana Red Hot release “Americana” is due out on 12/4/2020.

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Beloveds, the QCQ is back! With two of our favorite fabulous stars, Secret Emchy Society and Mya Byrne! And, of course, your faithful host, Karen & the Sorrows. Please contribute if you can! Venmo @karenandthesorrows and your tips will help support the musicians. And if you’re in Brooklyn, you can still order delivery from Branded! Or order cute Branded merch from wherever you are! Check out www.brandedsaloon.com to support our favorite bar.

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The Queer Country Quarterly is back on Thursday, June 25th at 8pm ET! With Rahne Alexander from Baltimore, Jobi Riccio from Boston, Catherine the Great from Roanoke, Virginia, and your host Karen & the Sorrows coming to you from Brooklyn! And we’ll be raising money for our local bail funds to support the protests!

Please contribute if you can! Venmo @karenandthesorrows and your tips will help support the musicians and our local bail funds.

And if you’re in Brooklyn, you can still order delivery from Branded! Or order cute Branded merch from wherever you are! Check out www.brandedsaloon.com to support our favorite bar.

More about the musicians:
Rahne Alexander (www.rahne.com) is an intermedia artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. She performs music with several bands, including Santa Librada, 50’♀, White Wing Dove, and Flaming Creatures. She is also an an essayist, contributing to anthologies such as the Lambda Literary Award-winning Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica and the Lammy-nominated Resilience Anthology, and her first book of collected essays, Heretic to Housewife, was published by Neon Hemlock in 2019. Her video art has been screened in galleries and festivals across the country, and she is a former organizer for the Transmodern Festival and the Maryland Film Festival.

Jobi Riccio (www.jobiriccio.com) is a songwriter and performer from Denver, Colorado, currently based in Boston, MA. Inspired by artists ranging from Buck Owens to Joni Mitchell, and the bluegrass community she came of age in, she writes songs that meld classic country sounds with modern sensibilities. She has received acclaim for her writing, including winning the 2019 NewSong Music Competition and being named a finalist in the 2018 Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Songwriter’s Showcase. Her Debut EP “Strawberry Wine” is an ode to the women of country music she grew up singing along to in her bedroom, and is streaming everywhere now.

catherine the great (www.catherinethegreatmusic.com) is the solo project of Catherine Backus, one-half of twinsome duo the Skipperdees. A native East-Tennessean and graduate of the University of Georgia (go dawgs, go b-52’s), Catherine now resides in Virginia, where she splits her musical time between playing bluegrass with old dudes and singing songs she wrote. She won the 2017 Merlefest Chris Austin Songwriting Contest, and her music has drawn comparisons to Kathleen Edwards, Lori McKenna, and Gillian Welch.

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The Queer Country Quarterly is back! I recognize that technically this makes it monthly, but QCQ is more fun to say so I’m sticking with it. Livestreaming with you in April was so lovely, I can’t wait to do it again. And it’s a really special line-up: We’ve got mandolin superstar Maddie Witler! And Nadine Hubbs, author of the secret queer fourth verse of Jolene and everybody’s favorite book, Rednecks, Queers & Country Music, will be playing Cajun accordion! Plus, I’ll be your host as usual and play a few songs for you, too.

Please contribute to the musicians if you can! Venmo @karenandthesorrows and your tips will all go directly to the musicians. And if you’re in Brooklyn, you can still order delivery from Branded! Or order cute Branded merch from wherever you are! Check out www.brandedsaloon.com to support our favorite bar

More about the musicians:

Maddie Witler hails originally from LaCrescenta, CA, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Maddie picked up the mandolin when she was 14 and fell in love with the instrument and bluegrass music. She attended the Berklee College of Music from 2010-2014. Maddie has been a member of the Lonely Heartstring Band since it began in 2012. Over the years she has also performed with folks like Peter Rowan, Darol Anger, Michael Daves, Tony Trischka, Molly Tuttle, and she is currently touring full time with Della Mae.

By day, Nadine “Dean” Hubbs is a musicologist and gender, sexuality, and class scholar whose writings on these subjects include Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, described by NPR’s Jewly Hight as “one of the most important scholarly discourses on country music of this decade” and by PopMatters as “invaluable.” She discussed “Jolene” on last fall’s Dolly Parton’s America podcast and premiered a new fourth verse, letting the straight world in on what queer listeners had long assumed. Dean teaches at University of Michigan and was bassist, vocalist, and accordion player for the Ann Arbor Cajun-zydeco band The Pittsfield Ramblers.

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Friends, I put together a stretch of really special Queer Country Quarterly/Monthlies this spring because there are so many amazing musicians from around the country I can’t wait to introduce you to. So we’re gonna livestream them all!

Please contribute to the musicians if you can! Venmo @karenandthesorrows and your tips will all go directly to the bands. And if you’re in Brooklyn, you can still order delivery from Branded! Head over to www.brandedsaloon.com to support our favorite bar.

Now let’s talk about this kickass line-up:

First of all, we’ve got the band Mery Steel from Columbus, OH. I got to play with them on tour this fall and omg they are so, so good. They just released a live video album and this song is my favorite—it’s been in my head since November: https://youtu.be/vCveC4HeW18.

Second of all, we have country crooner Andrew Sa from Chicago and omg his voice! People throw the term “voice of an angel” around a lot, but sometimes that’s the only correct description. He’s got a new album coming out soon that I can’t share with you yet, but trust me it is really special. Here’s a preview of one of the songs from the fabulous cosmic country shows he curates in Chicago! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9kKHjvQn5s

Third of all, we’ve got our hometown hero Viva, who is going to share some new songs from the musical western she’s been writing called called Beautiful, Evil, Lost. If you don’t already know what a guitar goddess Viva is, then please watch this asap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_YNKtpfvA.

And of course, I’ll be your faithful host, as usual! And also do an opening set to kick things off. A little more about Karen & the Sorrows: www.karenandthesorrows.com

See you soon!

love,
karen

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Hi friends! Don’t forget that this Friday is the Queer Country Quarterly! I know you may be thinking, wasn’t there just one in April? Does Karen know what quarterly means? But we had to make a special extra addition because Tina & Her Pony are coming in from from Asheville, NC!  

You probably heard about how Tina & Her Pony melted everyone’s hearts last time they were here, so you might as well get ready to go all melty again. Plus, Paisley Fields will be our fabulous guest host! And Mylo Choy will get things started with their gorgeous songs. It’s gonna be a super magical night, so don’t miss it.
WHEN: Friday, May 17th, 8:00pm
WHERE: Branded Saloon, 603 Vanderbilt Ave at the corner of Bergen St, Brooklyn
DOOR: $8 but no one ever turned away for lack of cash
ACCESS: Accessible entrance and bathroom, please email me if you need reserved seating or have any other questions 
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/2415729315322235/

Tina & Her Pony VIDEO:
https://youtu.be/6RPn9EamRoU
“Tina & Her Pony deliver a gentle folk music that inexorably swells into a powerful wave. The songs themselves carry a gentle wisdom that invigorates the listener. Tina & Her Pony truly commit to a kind of chamber folk that feels as timeless as it does timely.”
– Rachel Cholst, NO DEPRESSION

Paisley Fields
www.thepaisleyfields.com

Mylo Choy
www.mylochoy.com
Mylo Choy has spent much of their life between contrasting environments. Growing up in Wisconsin, they also maintained a strong connection to Hawai’i where their mother is from; for years they worked in outdoor education, living between the woods and Brooklyn where they currently live. Finding consistency has been an ongoing journey. Drawing inspiration from nature’s ability to offer peace and perspective, Mylo creates songs that reflect without dwelling and soothe without escaping. Their bedroom-folk sound, influenced by ‘60s folk, ‘70s Hawaiian music and ‘90s indie rock, can be described as Joni Mitchell meets Death Cab for Cutie or Yo La Tengo. Embracing chaos and quiet, Mylo cultivates a landscape that feels like home no matter where they are.