And what do you think the biggest difference is? Obviously, you grew up in a very different part of North Dakota, but just North Dakota in general compared to Minnesota, what would you say are some of the cultural differences that you've noticed?

Yeah.

I think that, um, there's a lot of similarities.

Um, you know, there's, like, a sort of kindness in this upper Midwestern region that is just so ingrained in all of us that I think is so beautiful.

Um, I think growing up in a rural area, one thing I learned was, um, you know, I, I tend to, like, lean more liberal, um, but I ha- most of my friends leaned conservative.

And so just, like, the ability to sort of, like, separate people from their beliefs and just kind of see, like, everyone's basic goodness is something that I think is really ingrained in a lot of rural culture sometimes, at least when I was coming up.

Um, and I, I found those skills that I acquired through that to be, like, really valuable.

And what sort of inspired it?

Mm-hmm

... and I had both kinda separately been talking about how fun it would be to have, like, a Country Queer event.

And then, um, enter Andy from Lake Davi, um, had reached out to me last year, also interested in having a Country Queer event.

And it all just kind of came together last year, where it was sort of, like, clearly something the queer community in the Twin Cities was interested in if people were kind of all talking about it separately.

And, um, Andy did a lot of work last year to kinda put together what I think is a pretty amazing lineup.

We've got Tomboy, Pine and Fire, Lake Davi, and then me and my band.

Um, and yeah, Turf Club reached out about having me do some sort of headline show, and I knew this event was in the works, and so I pitched it to them.

And I'm glad that there's more of that loud and proud in this particular subset of music where it's going, "Look, we've been here forever, but we're gonna celebrate it and actually put it on stage." At this point, Emmy, is there a sense that you feel that these people who reached out to you to say, "Let's do this show together," that this is starting to be a community that maybe gets on stage, you know, in June, but is aligned and is connected throughout the year and sorta creating a little bit of a, a safer or a happier space for LGBTQ+ people to exist in the folk country space in the Twin Cities?