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Hey y’all, it’s time for the Spring Queer Country West Coast this Friday night! We have the wonderful Annah Anti-Palindrome, who uses her looper to make rough and beautiful sounds using kitchen utensils, gas-masks, raw eggs, blood pressure cuffs, found objects, and her body (mostly her throat). For many years Mya Byrne performed with roots-rock band, The Ramblers, a festival Americana act, opening up for such bands as Levon Helm starting in the late aughts. Recently relocated to the Bay Area from NYC, she comes to the Queer Country stage this month with her new band, and that’s something you don’t want to miss! Your host Eli Conley is back from a songwriting residency in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, and will be opening the show sharing some new songs, accompanied by Danny Morris.

WHEN: Friday, May 27th, 7:30 pm Doors, 8 pm Show
WHERE: El Rio, 3158 Mission St, San Francisco, CA
DOOR: Free! Secret Password: Miss Major
ACCESS: Wheelchair accessible, 21+

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Mark your calendar now, cause Queer Country West Coast is coming back for show number two on Friday, February 26th, 2016! We’re at a new venue this time around, the wonderful El Rio bar in San Francisco’s Mission District.

The show will feature the sweet porch music and three-part harmony of The P’s & Q’s, prolific and hilarious songwriter Denise Dill AKA Dillbilly in a new collaboration with Dempsey Wolf, and your host, Eli Conley, with new band members backing him up.

WHEN: Friday, February 26th, 7:30 pm Doors, 8 pm Show
WHERE: El Rio, 3158 Mission St, San Francisco, CA
DOOR: Free!
ACCESS: Wheelchair accessible, 21+

Can’t wait till February? Come see Eli play Friday, January 28th at Dolores Park Cafe in San Francisco with award-winning songwriter and fellow queer and trans country artist Mya Byrne. Lukas Papenfusscline headlines the night with his contemporary folk take on traditional mountain melodies.

See you soon, queer country fans!

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Winter Queer Country Quarterly_TwitterFriends, it’s time for the Winter Queer Country Quarterly this Saturday! With the wonderful Joshua Marcus on tour from Providence, dreamy cosmic-country goodness from Wiley Gaby’s Goldenchild, and your faithful Sorrows, who have been working hard on our new Jew-country, James-Baldwin-influenced song cycle.

WHEN: Saturday, December 5th, 8:00 pm
WHERE: Branded Saloon, 603 Vanderbilt Ave, at the corner of Bergen St, Brooklyn
DOOR: $5 but no one ever turned away for lack of funds
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/517247595091677/

Branded has a wheelchair accessible entrance and bathroom. Also, there is always a bucket of free candy for people who enjoy candy. Read more about the bands below and hope to see you on Saturday!

xoxo,
karen

More about the bands:
Joshua Marcus
Joshua Marcus loves cooking, all things musical, and to both orchestrate & be part of tangibly authentic experiences in the actual world. Joshua’s current musical interests are writing and performing our perceived shared truths, as well as syllabic syncopation and off time rhyming à la rap, r&b, hip hop, math rock. JM has been writing & performing for two decades. Current goal: 3new eps and poem chapbook in 2016!

Goldenchild
Influenced by classic country storytelling, melancholy pop melodies, and pretty things, Brooklyn-based, Florida-born songwriters Wiley Gaby & Jeffrey Doker set out to carve a space where their seemingly disparate influences could meet, mingle, and ultimately blur genre lines to create beautiful new music. On their debut album, Goldenchild merges elements of classic country and ambient soundscapes with a respectable hint of pop sensibility. The result is “gorgeous, cosmic country” that NYC’s Next magazine calls “damn beautiful.”

Karen & The Sorrows
Queer country pioneers Karen & the Sorrows “write loss and heartbreak, and goddamn are they good at it.” (F**k Yeah, Queer Music) Their album The Names of Things is full of “haunting pedal steel work and unvarnished heartbreak” (Bust Magazine) and was voted one of the Freeform American Roots chart’s best debut albums of 2014.

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Queer Country West Poster
Hey y’all, big news! This summer we’re proud to welcome to the family Queer Country West, hosted by Eli Conley in the Bay Area! Eli is an Americana singer-songwriter originally from Virginia, now living in Berkeley, California. He performed at Queer Country Monthly and had such a good time he decided to bring the fun back to the west coast.

We’ve got some great queer country music for you at this kickoff show that you won’t want to miss. Julian Brolaski’s band The Western Skyline will bring their queer country western goodness. Julian’s previous band Juan & the Pines played at the very first Gay Ole Opry, so we are so pleased to have them with us for the first Queer Country West! Country singer-songwriter Shane Fairchild of The Goat and the Feather will grace us with her beautiful songs, and Americana trio Sugar in the Salt are playing their last show with banjo/accordion/fiddler extrordinaire Koralie Hill. Please come help us send her off with love!

WHEN: Thursday, June 25th. 7:30 pm Doors, 8 pm Show
WHERE: La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA
DOOR: $8 in advance, $10 at the door, No one ever turned away for lack of funds
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/373229736202491/
TICKETS: http://lapena.org/event/queer-country-quarterly-kickoff-with-sugar-in-the-salt/
ACCESS: All ages, kids welcome! Wheelchair accessible.

Please come *scent-free* so everyone can come and stay! More info on how and why to be scent-free at http://eastbaymeditation.org/accessibility/scentfree.html.

For other access needs, questions, or requests, please contact Eli at eli<at>eliconley.com.

Read more about the bands below. We can’t wait to see you!

-Eli

Country singer-songwriter Shane Fairchild of The Goat and the Feather. A bit of the dustbowl, the surreal, and the countryside with a smattering of power, sex and wilderness for good measure.

The Western Skyline is a San Francisco-based country western honky tonk band, featuring Julian Talamantez Brolaski (lead vocals, guitar), Mei Jardstrom (harmony vocals), DJ Gray (upright bass), Marco Baroz (electric guitar), Rob Davis (drums), and Andy Waegel (pedal steel).

Sugar in the Salt is an indie folk trio featuring songwriters Eli Conley (guitar, vocals), Koralie “K Sugar” Hill (accordion, banjo, fiddle, vocals) and Maia Papaya Wiitala (upright bass, guitar, vocals). With their luscious three-part harmonies and swelling strings, these three friends serve up songs that will touch your salty heart and sugar up your funny bone. Members of Sugar in the Salt have graced stages across the Bay Area including the Freight and Salvage, Cafe du Nord, and the San Francisco Trans March, not to mention countless livings rooms and protest rallies. Now they are joining forces as a queer folk band that just wants to have fun! When Sugar in the Salt gets together to play, you can always count on a sweet time.