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Queer Country West Coast Sept 2016 Flyer

Queer Country West Coast returns to El Rio is San Francisco with our Fall Edition on October 21st. We’re pleased to feature Low Sky Echo, an Oakland-based indie Americana band comprised of veterans of the Bay Area music scene. Jackie Strano once fronted The Hail Marys and The Passengers, Hilary Reed produced Twang for several years, and Kevin and Kerry Stamps hail from Mobius Donut and The Passengers.

Addie and the Subtrax combine folk, blues and bluegrass to create a show that will have you clapping, swaying, and ruminating over their honest and exposed lyrics. Expect layered harmonies and tugs on your heart strings from songwriter Addie Liechty and her band of compatriots. Plus, your host Eli Conley is getting ready to go into the studio to record his second full-length album, and will have some musical treats to share with you!

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Queer Country QuarterlyAmythyst Kiah will be here all the way from Johnson City, TN, and trust me, you will be kicking yourself if you miss your chance to see her. We played a show with her on the Gay Ole Opry tour this spring and she is about to break BIG. Seriously, listen to this song. Plus, we’ll also have AJ Lewis & Friends! We couldn’t let Professor Banjo come home for the summer without demanding he play his special mix of old timey banjo songs, reflections on the queer genealogies of old time music, and covers from the 1990s. And your faithful host Karen & the Sorrows can’t wait to sing some brand new songs for you!

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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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Tour_Dates_Facebook_Post

The Gay Ole Opry is hitting the road with The Paisley Fields and Karen & the Sorrows for a Southern tour! More about the shows:

Saturday, 4/23: Harrisonburg, VA
Sunday, 4/24: Durham, NC
Monday, 4/25 Asheville, NC
Tuesday, 4/26 Atlanta, GA
Wednesday, 4/27 Nashville, TN
Thursday, 4/28 Lexington, KY
Friday, 4/29 Johnson City, TN
Saturday, 4/30 Charlottesville, VA

Blue Tailed Skinks
www.bluetailedskinks.com
“Skinky” might best word to describe us Blue Tailed Skinks. We’ve been together for almost 15 years and pretty much relate to each other like a family of reptiles. We really love Durm and love doing our part to keep it dirty. We play old time, rock-a-billy, blue grassy blues, and some “where did they get that” (like, for instance, Cajun). And in terms of instrumentation, we’re wild with it: electric bass ukulele, fiddle, kazoo, banjo, mandolin, accordion, acoustic geetar, electric guitar, blues harp, etc. We are Christine Westfall, David Hamill, Ninian Beale, Tony Matthews, Martha Dyer and Sandee Washington.

Lilli Jean
www.lillijeanmusic.com
Lilli Jean is an American Roots, Rock ‘n’ Roll musician with a rainbow skew. She’s like a psychedelic Bonnie Raitt. Combining the forces of Blues and Groove into her own framework of intricate original songwriting, Lilli Jean breathes life into her songs with soul and spirit. Her music has been described as “Dolly Parton meets garage rock” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll for people who know what Rock ‘n’ Roll is… but completely original.”

Mawk Chunk
Mawk Chunk originated in 2015 when Amy Fisher and Caroline Stoltzfus got together to sing through the cold winter months. Both are Pennsylvania natives who met in Asheville, NC and who shared a dream of playing alt-country covers and creating a sound of their own. You may catch them singing sweet harmonies and brushing a snare drum on an Asheville street corner downtown.

Emily Backus
music.theskipperdees.com
Emily Backus is one-half of The Skipperdees, an Americana duo known for their twinsightful songwriting and heartbreaking harmonies. Bandmate/wombmate Catherine is now living her best life in the hills of Virginia, while Emily has made her home in Atlanta. In addition to being mother to the cutest and strangest cat in the world, she teaches music to almost 800 elementary schoolers each week, which brings a constant stream of puzzles and delights! Hear songs at music.theskipperdees.com

Indiana Queen
www.indianaqueen.com
Indiana Queen is an alt country band that resides in Nashville, TN. Fronted by openly queer Kevin Thornton, the band is blazing a new path in a traditionally conservative genre.

Sam Gleaves
www.samgleaves.com
Born and raised in Wythe County in southwest Virginia, Appalachian singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Sam Gleaves performs innovative mountain music with a sense of history. In Ain’t We Brothers, his recently released debut record produced by Cathy Fink, Sam writes new songs in the Appalachian tradition, telling stories about love, the home place, working people, and present social issues in the mountains. Peggy Seeger calls Ain’t We Brothers “a stunning first album. I keep very few albums that I am given. This one’s a keeper.” He has toured extensively both as a solo artist and with the Berea College Bluegrass Ensemble, performing at U.S. venues such as Mountain Stage and the Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour, and abroad in Ireland, England, Canada and Japan. His music has been featured by National Public Radio, Kentucky Educational Television, West Virginia Public Radio, Appalshop’s WMMT FM, KEXP, Exclaim!, The Windy City Times, The Bitter Southerner and Still Journal.

Amythyst Kiah & Her Chest of Glass
www.amythystkiah.com
Amythyst Kiah & Her Chest of Glass is a blues dance rock project based in Johnson City, TN. This group is comprised of some of the best musicians out of the Tri­Cities area, including Amythyst Kiah, Southern Gothic singer/guitarist/songwriter, and Matthew Martin, Patrick Taylor, Taylor Green, and Andrew Gibbens from the progressive rock band this mountain.

Debra Guy
http://helpmehelenmusic.com/
From Washington DC’s 9:30 Club to the nightclubs and bars of Los Angeles, native Virginian Debra Guy has been sharing her homegrown, authentic songs with listeners from coast to coast. Guy turns heads with her growly voice, and gritty, honest tunes. As a solo artist, Debra Guy won the 2000 Washington Area Music Award Best Alternative Rock album for her self-produced debut album. Guy spent ten years honing her live performance skills with DC’s alternative rock outfit Honeychuck. Recently, Guy has emerged into her hometown singer-songwriter scene of Charlottesville, Virginia, fronting the acoustic rock quartet, Help Me Helen. Drawing inspiration from her life, Guy’s lyrics often provide an element of catharsis for listeners, reaching them on a deeply personal level. Her passion for writing and singing shine through her energetic and captivating performances

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California country fans, mark your calendars for Friday, May 27th! Queer Country West Coast returns to El Rio with a spring show in San Francisco.

We are excited to feature the optical sound-smithing of queer/femme antagonist Annah Anti-Palindrome, and the blues and rock-flavored Americana of poet, award-winning songwriter, and proud trans activist Mya Byrne.

 

Your host Eli Conley will be returning to the Bay Area fresh off of a songwriting residency in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, so you can expect some new songs. Please save the date and we’ll see you soon!

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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httpv://youtu.be/BAMPre3KjgQ

Dear cowpeople, don’t forget to mark your calendars for Saturday, December 5th. We’ll be back at the Branded Saloon for the winter edition of the Queer Country Quarterly with the wonderful Joshua Marcus on tour from Providence, RI. Plus Wiley Gaby’s band Goldenchild will be celebrating their brand new gorgeous cosmic country album Bridges.

And of course your host Karen & the Sorrows will have some new songs for you. And maybe a seasonal surprise or two!

In the meantime, c’mon out and see The Sorrows on November 6th at Rock Shop with our friends Tatters & Rags! It wont’ be a queer country show, but it will be rockin’!

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Queer Country Quarterly_twitterHello dear cowpeople! Hope you can join us at C’mon Everybody for some queer country magic! Justin Vahala, honey-voiced queer country unicorn, will open, starting at 7:30 sharp. Transgender love pioneer So Brown will steal your heart and then break it. And your hosts The Sorrows have some brand new songs we can’t wait to play for you!

WHEN: Thursday, October 8th, 7:30 sharp
WHERE: C’mon Everybody, 325 Franklin Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11238
RSVP: facebook.com/events/773925929402525/
DOOR: $10, but if you’d like to come and can’t swing that, email me at karenandthesorrows@gmail.com

xoxo,
karen

p.s. You might have noticed that I switched us over from monthly to quarterly. If only it didn’t look weird to spell country with a q, we could be the Triple Q! All that to say, there will be a little more time in between shows so I can keep up better. Next up: Winter Edition, December 5th, back at Branded!

More about the bands:

So Brown is a critically acclaimed transgender musician, actor and model from Texas and Alabama. So’s debut album Point Legere, released in April 2014, was heralded as “Debut Album of the Year” by Innocent Words magazine, and So’s songs have been covered by such luminaries as Norah Jones. A rebellious pioneer of new gender possibilities, So embodies the belief that honesty in art can reveal the humanity that unites us all.

The Names of Things, the debut album from Brooklyn queer country band Karen & the Sorrows, is full of “haunting pedal steel work and unvarnished heartbreak.” (Bust Magazine) Voted one of the Freeform American Roots Chart’s best debut albums of 2014, the record is “some of the best alt-country being made.” (Billings Gazette) F**k Yeah, Queer Music says, “They write loss and heartbreak, and goddamn are they good at it.” The Sorrows also host queer country shows like the Queer Country Quarterly, helping to build new community for people who love country music even if country music doesn’t always love them back.

Justin Vahala Justin Vahala is a singing, song/writing, yoga teaching, tarot reading fool from Dallas, the shimmering turquoise inset of the Bible Belt. Justin uses his roots in southern folk and gay old musical theater to produce lyrical songs of heartbreak and hope for queers to hear. Past projects include his original musical, What Leaves the Wind Has Laid, which took place in a magical bathhouse ruled over by a witch. He is currently working on a new folk musical, The Ones I’ll Find, in which two boys with guitars break up only to realize that they can’t part with the tickets they’d bought to the same music festival. Can you imagine?!