Rainbow Ruckus 6/3: Bryan Ruby, the Kentucky Gentlemen, Little Mazarn, and More!
This week's rainbow ruckus features farmers, mourners, lovers on the brink of ending things, sinners, and cosmic forces -- like all good country songs!
Every week, Rainbow Rodeo brings you the best new queer country music! Listen to this playlist on Spotify and Tidal! Thanks to Elliott for making a parallel list on Apple Music! Listen to the parallel list on Tidal. Missed a week? TA Inskeep is generously keeping an archive of all music featured on this Spotify playlist.
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- Nobody is working as hard to single-handedly bringing back '90s country like Bryan Ruby. "Diggin' ('Til the Corn Comes Up)" is a Southern rock salute to family farmers. The song's got plenty of attitude, even as it focuses on gratitude and humility.
- The Kentucky Gentlemen bring along Britney Spencer to do their best take on Boyz II Men with their moving breakup ballad "To the Moon." The Kentucky Gentlemen's debut album Rhinestone Revolution comes out this Friday, and this song is one of the most sublime on there. You can read my interview with the twins in the Nashville Scene.
- "Your Picture" finds the hard-rocking Vandoliers mourning for a dear loved one. It seems impossible that life can go on, and yet it does. The Vandoliers face that grief down with dogged determination – like everything else.
- Little Mazarn take us on a cosmic journey to "Mustang Island." The Austin-based trio get delightfully experimental, illustrating the sublime dissolution of merging one's consciousness with nature.
- River Westin takes us to "Sunday School," a gauzy and seductive invitation to shed one's Catholic guilt – among other things.
