So Brown, Karen & The Sorrows, Justin Vahala

So Brown saunters by on the sidewalk dressed unassumingly in an old suede bomber jacket, dark dungarees, and a fading gray army cap. Guitar in hand, you might mistake So for a rebellious teenage boy. But when So begins to play, sensually engrossed in ethereal song, you quickly realize: This is not child's play—this is a highly developed, fully realized artist. And, in observing the audience, ladies rapt with yearning, there is a seductive magnetism at work that affects everyone present. From out past railway tracks and the forgotten rivers of rural Alabama, So Brown has emerged with haunting songs of love, women, nature, and death.
A gender-bending outcast from an early age, So believed she was a boy spirit trapped in a girl's body, and trying to honor that spiritual reality in the Houston, Texas society she was raised in caused constant friction. While other children passed time playing together and learning their socially ordained gender roles, So was alone wandering in bayous, fishing, or chasing down animals and bugs. Themes of conflict between flesh and spirit and society appear in So's work, yet as So says, it is not the point of the music. Rather, "My first priority is always making beautiful, moving music. I'm not a protest writer and I don't have an agenda, I just love music that moves my being, and I try to be honest in how I deliver it..."


Brooklyn alt-country band Karen & the Sorrows play "soaring tributes to lost love and… gentle and charming ballads" (Neville Elder, No Depression). Their debut EP Ocean-Born Mary is a four-part ghost story of "allusive, attractive but distantly menacing songs… Country keeps evolving, and Karen & the Sorrows are taking it to a place it's never been before, a good and creepy one." (New York Music Daily) The Sorrows are also hard at work helping to create Brooklyn's burgeoning queer country scene by co-producing the annual Gay Ole Opry festival and the Queer Country Monthly series at Branded Saloon.