What "Queer Joy" Looks Like: Gays and Faes 2026

If no one funds local news, your community is just rumors. Help Decorah News bring facts home. DECORAH — The phrase "Queer Joy Is Resistance" appeared on merchandise throughout this year's Gays and Faes festival. Curious how performers interpreted that idea, I spent two days asking bands a variation of the same question: "What does queer joy look like?" I tucked the question between more routine interview topics because it wasn't always easy to answer directly. Some musicians spoke about visibility. Others talked about friendship, safety or the ability to express frustration openly. A few paused for a long time before responding. As the interviews continued, the answers began to overlap, revealing common themes shared across different artists and experiences. The lineup included bands from across Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, many of whom are part of overlapping musical communities. Some returned to South Bear School's campus for a second or third year. One act was invited roughly 24 hours before the festival as a replacement performer. Over the weekend, audiences moved between stages, camp chairs and conversations throughout the wooded campground outside Decorah. The Thing That Makes You Feel Like You're You I find Early Girl's camp in the late afternoon after the band's set has ended. Sunlight filters through a copse of trees from the neighboring grove, where lead vocalist Aaron Longoria and guitarist Maxwell LeaVesseur sit in camp chairs. They offer me a seat and a cold drink before the conversation finds its rhythm. "As queer people, from a very young age, if not birth, you're taught that what makes you happy is actually 'the wrong thing to do'," Longoria says. "A lot of times, it's not even a thing that makes you 'happy.' It's just the thing that makes you feel like you're you. Unfortunately, the bar is so 'in hell,' that just feeling and acting authentic to yourself and acting in a way that feels true to you brings joy... That's what it means to me." The band connects that idea to Always Here, a compilation project featuring trans and nonbinary Iowa artists that also raises funds for Iowa Trans Mutual Aid. The project comes up multiple times over the weekend, as artists describe challenges around visibility and, in some cases, note that they no longer feel safe sharing their work publicly. Some say they have stopped altogether. The compilation's title is direct: Always Here. Longoria describes it as both archive and response, a way of documenting presence in a time when visibility can feel precarious. "Trans art is actively happening constantly in Iowa," Longoria says. "It's important that people know we're still making music. If there's trans people who want to submit a track, they can reach out to us at earlygirlband@gmail.com." Being Seen in a Genre That Doesn't Expect You Full Spectrum Bluegrass leaves the "Boneyard" stage gear-in-hand with the familiarity of people who have done this many times before. As they finish loading up, they set their sights on the creek just across from the stage area, looking to cool off from the summer sun. I meet up with them just before they head toward the water. The Chicago-based band plays bluegrass, a genre often associated with strict tradition. Their presence at Gays and Faes stood out against that backdrop. "We get somebody who comes up to us every set," banjoist Amelia Mason says. "Either, 'I didn't know I liked bluegrass,' or, 'I didn't know queer people could be into bluegrass.'" The band laughs when Mason shares the anecdotes, but they say the interactions are consistent across shows. "The bluegrass space is perceived as kind of a bro-y vibe," upright bassist Bea Riley adds. "A lot of white dudes with suspenders and button-up shirts and everything." "But people come up to us and say, 'I love bluegrass. I'm from North Carolina [...] and I didn't ever think I'd see people like me playing it.' Being ourselves is a big part of the ethos of the band. Just being visibly queer is real political work." The band says each show often means performing for audiences who did not expect to see them onstage. They say that can challenge assumptions about what bluegrass looks like and who performs it, as well as how queer artists are represented in the genre. I later came across the band sitting outside their tents playing an impromptu jam session. I spoke with them about my coverage of the event last year and my desire to take a different approach this time. Mason asked if I played any instruments and whether I wanted to join them. I said I play guitar, but I ultimately reached for my recorder instead, choosing to document the moment for readers rather than participate. Sallyforth and Autumnal: Building Familiarity Where None ExistedSallyforth's Hattie Peach, Emma Jeanne Rothwell, and Daisy Forester are inspecting an impeccably decorated tent filled with pirate costume pieces when I introduce myself and ask if they'd be willing to speak after their set. All three are wearing flowy dresses straight out of a dreamlike fairy prom. Peach and Rothwell describe community less as an abstract idea and more as a practice. They point to making things together—music, puppetry, installation art, and shared creative spaces—and how those activities shape relationships over time.Rothwell, who recently completed a year teaching a high school art program, says, "Community is queer joy.""It's encouraging expression as a form of holding your truth. An outward display of intention while thinking of others as you make the things you make," Rothwell says. Rothwell adds that community is not an outcome but an ongoing process, built through repetition, attention, and showing up for others. Autumnal, a band out of Colorado that has been making music together since childhood, huddle around me at the edge of the stage wearing iridescent, slightly crumpled fairy wings. Before the interview settles into any formal shape, they are already deep in conversation about fairy aesthetics and the visual language they have brought to past performances. The connection to Gays and Faes does not feel like discovery for them. It feels like recognition. When asked what queer joy means, vocalist and synth player Geneva Hein says, "Even though I don't know anybody here, really, I know we'll all have something in common." After a pause, she adds, "I bet we could be good friends with anyone here." She speaks casually, but the sentiment reflects an ease and connection among festivalgoers. Joy Does Not Cancel Out Anger I didn't make it in time to ask Heet Deth whether I could interview them before their performance began. Lead vocalist Laila Eskin, adorned with kumadori-esque red eye makeup, was in full theatrical mode onstage. Minutes later, after the band exited the "Southie" stage, Eskin was laughing and inviting me to sit on their picnic blanket. Eskin spoke about the festival's "Goblin Mode" theme. "I perform goblin mode, that's my 'Yin.' The 'Yang,' the other half of my goblin mode, is like a trail of clothes leading up to me on the couch, eating Hot Cheetos and watching Moonshiners, Antz, and Finding Sasquatch," they said. On Queer joy, Eskin had this to say: "Queer joy is looking into the face of everything that scares you. Looking at your friends and your family and the person that you love intimately and just saying 'fuck it. I'm going to love you all and celebrate you all anyway [...] I have you, and you make life worth living." I speak to the members of Vial later in the evening, when the light has effectively disappeared and the temperature finally dropped enough to feel like relief. They are near the "Southie" stage, sitting at their merch table fielding questions about the long-necked Furbie from their set, named "Beelzebub." Minneapolis band Vial's recent album Hellhound channels anger, frustration, and exasperation into songwriting. On stage and in conversation, the band describes those emotions as sitting alongside joy rather than separate from it. "For Vial, it's a lot of catharsis," guitarist and vocalist KT Branscom says after a pause. "That's what queer joy looks like in our musical expression." Bassist Taylor Kraemer adds: "Queer joy to me is people being exactly who they are, with no apologies." Their framing resists a common impulse in coverage of Queer communities: to treat joy as the opposite of pain. Vial doesn't. Instead, they describe joy as something that can exist alongside anger without erasing it, joy not as the absence of difficulty or struggle, but as what makes difficulty something that can be shared rather than carried alone. In their definition, joy is not separate from difficulty, but something that can exist within it—alongside anger, catharsis, and release—rather than replacing them. Sugar Lads/Lavender Project, Mary Jam, Keep for Cheap, Kiernan and the Language of Ease Not every band reaches for philosophical language, and not every conversation takes place in a quiet corner of the campground. I catch members of both Sugar Lads and Lavender Project wearing bright safety vests after what can be described as a psychedelic funk and hip-hop hootenanny. We speak standing near a parked old-school Volkswagen van. Their answers reflect the pace of their performance: focused on energy, collaboration, and inclusivity. Their sets, they explain, are built around shared enjoyment rather than thematic weight. "We just want to have fun and bring people joy," vocalist "Big Boy" says. Mary Jam, a Minneapolis punk band that records independently and is working toward a full-length album, settles in after tearing into the audiences' ears at the edge of the "Boneyard" stage. For them, queer-led environments are an important part of the music scene they operate within. "For me, playing music, especially in the Twin Cities, there's so many queer and trans people that spearhead the scene there," guitarist and vocalist Alli KB says. "I feel like the art I'm surrounded by…that's queer joy." KB adds that the band recently released an EP in April and records independently in their basement. "We record everything ourselves. It's a lot of fun—we have a great time!" Keep for Cheap's answer is arguably the most accessible of the bunch: "It's about having fun and doing what feels right and best to you." Laura Kiernan of the band Kiernan stopped me out in the parking lot of the festival. I had missed my opportunity to speak with the band after their set Friday evening, and we eventually crossed paths again Saturday morning as they packed up to leave. Kiernan, who had been asked to fill in 24 hours before the festival, described instead what queer joy looks like. "I think it looks like having an amazing time being yourself and just getting to put that makeup on that you didn't feel comfortable wearing before, but like, you can in a space full of people that just fully see you." What the Answers Begin to Form Every musician offers a different definition of queer joy, but none describes it as purely individual or disconnected from others. Across conversations, it is consistently tied to the conditions that make it possible. The answers return to a small constellation of recurring ideas: being seen, being safe, being able to create, and being around people who understand without explanation. The contradictions within that constellation fit together rather than cancel each other out. At Gays and Faes, joy is not framed only as an escape from the world outside the woods of northeast Iowa, though some participants say it functions as that to some degree. It is also described as something built inside it carefully, collectively, and through ongoing participation in shared spaces. Queer joy, as reflected in these conversations, does not resolve the conditions that make it necessary. But across two days of performances and interviews—in camp chairs, backstage areas, and patches of grass warmed by afternoon sun—it appears as something that has no intention of waiting for those conditions to change. Be in the know, always! 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