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Rolling Stone Says You Need to Know Karen & The Sorrows

Sounds Like: Seventies-era folk rock, accented by generous amounts of pedal steel and a steady social conscience

For Fans of: Emmylou Harris, Lilly Hiatt, the idea of Dolly Parton fronting Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers

Why You Should Pay Attention: Led by singer-songwriter Karen Pittelman, Brooklyn-based Karen and the Sorrows are central figures in New York’s burgeoning queer country scene, a sprawling group of performers that includes My Gay Banjo and the Paisley Fields. New York native Pittelman founded the inclusive performance round-ups the Gay Ole Opry and the Queer Country Quarterly, and organized the 2017 Another Country festival in July to support and promote fellow country-loving musicians identified as queer or trans.

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Billboard Interviews Karen and the Sorrows

“If you had to choose one song to send to aliens in space who were going to destroy the earth — so it has to be something that proves the inherent good of humanity — which song would you pick?”

This question was posed last week by Karen Pittelman, singer/songwriter and leader of Karen & the Sorrows, who are preparing to release their second album, The Narrow Place, on Aug. 25. “Lately I’m thinking ‘As’ by Stevie Wonder,” she muses. “It shows a possibility for the redemption of human beings.”

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Karen and the Sorrows Featured in The Village Voice

In early 2011, Karen Pittelman recalls, she was having a hard time finding a place for her new country band, Karen & the Sorrows, to play that “felt like home.” Her previous band, the punk quartet Royal Pink, had encountered plenty of queer-welcoming venues. But though their music fit in the alt-country mainstream — narrative songwriting with touches of pedal steel and twang — there was not yet a space in the New York country music scene that centered on queer performers.

Pittelman, co-founder of the Trans Justice Funding Project and author of Classified: How to Stop Hiding Your Privilege and Use It for Social Change, decided to take matters into her own hands…

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