Rainbow Rodeo

Howdy, cowpokes! Thanks to an audio snafu, this month's interview did not go as planned but that means I get to LARP as an NPR DJ! This month's episode reviews the fantastic queer country releases from February, as well as a preview of what's to come this spring. Sunny War, Anarchist Gospel, "Swear to Gawd" John-Allison Weiss, The Long Way, "Different Now" Terry Blade, Ethos: Son of a Sharecropper...

I interviewed Canadian alt-country singer Mariel Buckley back in August. And you can tell this was a few months ago because we talked a little baseball -- little did we know how badly the Blue Jays would implode. Buckley's album Everywhere I Used To Be is a distinct departure from Buckley's acclaimed Driving in the Dark. The sound is more spare, more melancholy. We dig into that as well as Mariel'...

Hey, there, cowpokes. It's episode 8 of Rainbow Rodeo and I'm speaking with Adeem the Artist. We spoke two days after the release of their breakout album White Trash Revelry. This episode is a little odd because we were both in kind of weird headspaces and spent a looong time talking about the music industry and how Adeem feels about hitting their stride. Adeem really lays out, step-by-step, how t...

Hi, everyone. I'm popping in with a sort of mini-sode here. Patrick Haggerty, the lead singer and songwritier of Lavender Country, passed away on Halloween. I meant to post this shortly after his death, but between my midterms and the holidays, I just didn't get around to it. The real reason, though, is once I post this, well...then it means he's really gone. We recorded this interview in 2018 whe...

Hey there, cowpokes! I just got hitched, which meant I got a liiiittle behind working on the podcast. But, I think this interview with Violet Bell is well worth the white. The North Carolina duo, consisting of Lizzy Ross and Omar Ruiz-Lopez, just released their gorgeous new album, Shapeshifter. The album retells the ancient story of the selkie from many perspectives. Not only is the album beautifu...

This month, we're going to hear from Whitney Fenimore as she tells us about her EP, Leaving Ashwood , which came out on September 23rd. Whitney's story starts out familiar: she grew up in Oklahoma, devoted to church life in spite of the psychic pain it caused her. But not everyone in that situation moves on to sing in The Voice, or to marry an Olympic athlete they met through casual "likes" on Ins...

Sylvia Rose Novak hates expecations. That's why they've torn down their Americana image and set stakes in the alt-rock world with their blistering album A Miss/A Masterpiece -- not coincidentally, breaking out of the Americana genre has coincided with Novak coming out as non-binary. We talk about the album, Novak's coming out experience, and how they've trained their audience to adjust to a differ...

Heya, cowpokes! I got a little off-schedule thanks to vacation, so we'll have two episode this month! (Yeehaw!) This time around, I interview Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, author of the book Queer Country . It's the first scholarly work about the genre and it gets into the history of queer country -- as well as what it all actually means . You can get almost 50% off the book Queer Country using this...

Alex (formerly known as al) Riggs and I spoke in early June about their latest album, themselves , right when it was released. We discussed the current situation in the queer country scene, the anxieties of releasing a record and receiving little press, and how coming into herself has changed her approach to music. Two days later, themselves got a review in Pitchfork and rocketed to the top of Ban...

Howdy and welcome to the very first episode of Rainbow Rodeo! I'm your host, Rachel Cholst. In this episode, we talk with Jessye deSilva about their debut album Landscapes , growing up non-binary in a Christian household, discovering Elton John, Jessye's work teaching vocal pedagogy at Berklee College of Music, and so much more! Learn more about Rainbow Rodeo here . Subscribe to the Patreon here ....