INTERVIEW: Paisley Fields Presents Their Cowboy Christmas

Brooklyn's Paisley Fields is rounding up some of the best queer country artists in the biz for a Cowboy Christmas – right in Brooklyn New York! Join Paisley, Dale Hollow, and She Returns From War on Friday, 12/13 at Littlefield in Brooklyn. The party will include line dancing lessons as well as surprise guests, holiday gifts, and Christmas cocktails. Paisley tell us more about what to expect – and the possible queer secret history of line dancing – below.

What should we be looking forward to for this show?

Well, we have some surprises that I can't really tell you about now, but it's going to be a really fun live music event. We're gonna have line dancing lessons at the beginning, so get there early to get your line dancing instruction in! After that, I'm performing, Dale Hollow, and She Returns From War are all doing our own sets.

We're also making these cute little Christmas ornaments, which are the cover of the Limp Wrist album, so those will be available just at the, just at the event.

So if you want a Christmas ornament with Paisley's titties on them...

Yeah, exactly. It's the perfect gift! So we'll have those and it's at Littlefield in Brooklyn. I love that place. It's just going to be a really fun holiday event that doesn't have all the nonsense that you have to put up with it, like family holiday events.

Dale Hollow is also from New York, but how do you know She Returns From War?

So we first met playing a festival together in Wisconsin. I think we had known about each other, but hadn't met in person. We both played Mile of Music a couple of years ago and met there and just hung out a bunch at the festival, and then we've seen each other a few other times since then. We met up at Americanafest in Nashville this year and I just really love her and I love her music. I'm really excited that she's coming up to New York for this.

I think people will be in for a treat.

A lot of queer bars are offering queer line dancing events lately. What do you make of that?

I think it's great. I mean, I fell in love with country music through line dancing when I was a kid, and I felt really free to prance around and dance around. And you're just sort of in your own world in a way, but it's still this group activity. It's not really a paired-up couples thing. Anybody can do it, you know and it's just, it feels welcoming.

But I heard this story – I don't know if it's true – but apparently line dancing was first started in fire Island to get around the like no-touching laws in the 1800s. That could be made up.

Anyway, it's so much fun to learn a whole dance and then do it with everybody and there's no pressure. You can make mistakes, people bump into each other, you can let yourself go a little bit. I think it's really a fun hang.

Your song "Shuffling Fool" is obviously about line dancing. I was wondering if you've written any songs specifically to be line danced to, or if you're starting to, like, help your audience choreograph, like, those kinds of things, or you're just not thinking about it that way?

I don't necessarily write for that, but our, our bass player is going to be teaching the lessons. So I'm sure he'll teach some moves to some of the songs we're going to be doing live. There'll be the opportunity to learn and then dance to it during the sets.

Why did you choose Dale Hollow and She Returns to perform with you for this celebration?

I just thought that it would be a really fun group. I love both of their music. We're all pretty different artists and it just felt like areally fun community event to have them. We also have some, some special guests coming up too that I can't announce for sure yet!

People are anticipating a lot of angst and frustration around the holidays this year. So what are you hoping the Queer Country Christmas show can do to help?

I just hope everybody can come and be themselves. Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, it's not for people who just celebrate Christmas. It's really for everybody. It's a community event for people here in New York who just love country music. We want it to be a an inclusive and safe space for everyone.

So just come get loose and dance and sing. We're having some themed Christmas cocktails. Maybe Santa will show up!

Littlefield is located at 635 Sackett Street Brooklyn NY 11217. Pre-order your tickets $15. Doors open at 6:45 and lessons start at 7:15.