Your Unofficial Queer Country Guide to the 2026 Folk Alliance International Conference
If you're lucky enough to be in New Orleans for Folk Alliance International, you're lucky enough to be surrounded by queer country music! Read our guide of queer country artists to check out this weekend!
Folk Alliance is one of the professional organizations in our roots music family that provides resources to artists across the world. FAI has spent years intentionally cultivating support for marginalized artists – and this year's conference sees Crys Matthews, Flamy Grant, Cathy Fink, and Yasmin Williams up for awards. Personally, FAI is a bucket list event for me and should be the gold standard for roots music festivals.
This year's festival is in New Orleans (an intriguing alternative to Kansas City) and starts today, January 21st and runs through Sunday, January 25th. If you're lucky enough to be down there, here are the queer country artists you should catch!
(And if you don't see yourself here – please send me a DM!)
Official Showcasing Artists
- Bandits on the Run
- Calvin Arsenia
- Chastity Brown
- Crys Matthews
- From China to Appalachia: Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, Chao Tian
- Joy Clark
- Kelly Love Jones
- River Shook
- Spencer LaJoye
- Sweet Petunia
- Yasmin Williams
Unofficial Showcases
- Katie Dahl hits a bunch of late-night shows
- Flamy Grant has a whole slew of shows...
- ...including The Gayest Show on Earth which truly can't be missed
- Brittany Ann Tranbaugh brings her Meet Cute showcase from Philly to New Orleans
- Paisley Fields hits FAI for the very fist time – click through to see their schedule
- Naomi Westwater
- Marian Runk
- Righteous Babe Records features its artists, including queer artists Ani DiFranco (heard of her?), Joy Clark, Lilli Lewis, and Sweet Petunia
View on Threads
- Cindy Emchy brings us Bay Area queer country
- And then there's the Rainbow Room all week long!
