Brooklyn, NY · country

Paisley Fields

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Queer honky-tonk out of Brooklyn — pedal steel, piano and plainspoken songwriting that puts gay life at the center of country tradition.

Paisley Fields is the project of James Wilson, a songwriter and pianist raised on farms in rural Iowa who is now based in New York. The music sits in traditional country and honky-tonk, with pedal steel, fiddle and barroom piano, and the songwriting deals openly with queer experience, a subject long underrepresented in the genre.

Wilson has built a presence in New York's queer country community through a residency called the East Village Cxntry Club, held at a honky-tonk and dive bar co-founded by Lucinda Williams, and through mentorship work with the Recording Academy. He has played both country venues and rock and punk-adjacent rooms.

His fourth LP, Are U Mad At Me, moves across country, pop, disco, grunge and classical touches within a single record, from the dance track "parTy girl" to the two-stepping "Hands Off The Hat" and the tragicomic ballad "You Should Tell Your Wife."

Wilson has described the aim of the record simply: to make people feel a little lighter, as if they are healing, whether they are dancing, honouring elders, flirting, or ordering a second mimosa at brunch.

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country