The Best Americana, Country and Folk Music Publicity
“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.”
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…