Presented by:
Triple D's, Dude City
Paisley Fields
Paisley Fields
Active since 2013, Paisley Fields is a singer, songwriter, and bandleader splitting time between Brooklyn, New York and Nashville, Tennessee.A touring member of the newly reformed queer-country icons Lavender Country, Paisley also played keyboard on their 2022 album Blackberry Rose.On Limp Wrist, Paisley draws inspiration from queer icon Andy Warhol and a myriad of drag artists with whom he’s collaborated. His years of experience in Manhattan piano bars did not diminish his love for country music, and he has already released two albums that pay homage to the music of his youth.Limp Wrist is an exploration of where rural queerness intersects religion. Paisley’s family were devout Catholics, and he served as the official church pianist in his parish throughout his teens, playing every Sunday.The songs on Limp Wrist are deeply personal, and often touch on what it was like to grow up closeted and queer in rural Iowa in the early 2000s. “Black Hawk County Line” tells the story of Paisley being outed by a former friend his senior year in high school, “Dial Up Lover” is about logging on to gay AOL chat rooms to find other queers in the area, and “Plastic Rosary” recounts the experience of being told he’ll never get into heaven while praying the rosary.The most personal and biographical moment comes during “Iowa”, which recounts the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard, and the visceral fear he had to wrestle with since he was already aware of how different he was.The album ends on an uplifting note, sharing a message of friendship and hope with "Tomorrow Finds a Way".The stories are his, but the feelings they convey – love, loneliness, lust, fear – are still universal.
Mali Obomsawin
MALI OBOMSAWIN is an award winning songwriter, bassist and composer from the W8banaki (Abenaki) First Nation at Odanak. With an eclectic background in American roots, jazz, and indie rock, Obomsawin carries several music traditions. A Smithsonian Folkways Recordings artist, Mali has received acclaim from NPR and RollingStone and toured internationally with her band Lula Wiles. She received the International Folk Music Association's “Rising Tide Award” in 2022, which recognizes new generation artists who embody the values and ideals of the folk community through their creative work, community role, and public voice. She frequents the folk music circuit as both frontwoman and sidewoman, appearing at festivals like Newport and Philly Folk with Jake Blount and Lula Wiles, and also performs in the creative music scene with the likes of Peter Apfelbaum, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble. She is a proud member of Welcome To Indian Country, an Indigenous Performance Production started in 2020 to highlight five leading Native voices in jazz and roots music. As a composer-arranger, she recently scored the upcoming film We Are Warriors, collaborated with Red Sky Performance and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Palaver Strings. Her latest project, Sweet Tooth, explores concepts of Indigenous identity, colonization, and resistance using original compositions for sextet and archival material from the Wabanaki community. Beyond the stage Mali is a community organizer and advocate for Indigenous rights, environmental justice and landback. She works as a writer and educator with Sunlight Media Collective, a Wabanaki-driven media team, to document and promote stories at the intersection of environmental justice and Tribal Sovereignty. Her journalism has been published recently in Smithsonian, National Performance Network, and the Boston Globe. In 2020, Mali co-founded Bomazeen Land Trust, the first ever Wabanaki land trust, where she currently serves as executive director.
Evan Stepp