The Forward Roll
BGS Celebrates Pride 2018
It’s June! The most rainbowy time of the year! BGS is proud to celebrate Pride this month while the world marks the anniversary of the riots that began the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, nearly 50 years ago at The Stonewall Inn in New York City, with parades, parties, protests, and loads of glitter.
Queer voices are an integral part of the roots music communities we all love — and they always have been. Let’s revisit some of our favorite pieces and stories that focus on LGBTQ+ identities, music, and perspectives as we raise up this incredibly strong, vibrant, open, and loving community.
Featuring Della Mae
Besides being one of the only current all-female internationally touring roots music acts, they are also clearly a band with a strong devotion to making the world more peaceful and accepting through roots music. So when the opportunity arose for them to play on this year's Bluegrass Pride float, it was a natural fit.
Shout and Shine -- Fink, Marxer, and Gleaves Debut Album Release
Today, Grammy-award winning legends Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer join noted multi-instrumentalist Sam Gleaves to release their debut album, SHOUT AND SHINE, as the trio Fink, Marxer & Gleaves. SHOUT AND SHINE merges a variety of traditional instrumentation with modern messages about the power of love, acceptance, and the importance of diversity.
Welcome to Father's Day 2018!
Well, today is the first day of the 2018 CBA Father's Day Festival, and we couldn't be more excited to be back! We thought that now would be a great time to look back on our wonderful experience at the festival last year. We'll be sharing regular updates during the weekend, so you can see how far this little ragtag team has come in a year.
So here's where we were at the end of the festival last year. Hope you enjoy the nostalgia -- I know I have.
My People
The power and strength of an ironclad support system for LGBTQ+ identified people cannot be overstated. It’s something that I’ve struggled with since coming out. We queers who happen to adore vernacular musics and their offshoot genres find ourselves on the margins of more than one community. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we’re viewed as interlopers or imposters by roots music at large; most other LGBTQ+ folk can’t relate to or understand our love for “hillbilly music” or “redneck music,” especially given the broadly applied negative stereotypes that are projected upon rural communities, Appalachia, the south, and the culture and traditions of the above. It’s often a very lonely, infinitesimal Venn diagram overlap.