Now, months later, Gaby is making good on this postponement as part of a Queer Country showcase with Cooper, Short Stack and our own X Dirty Finger at Stardust Video on Sunday, Feb. 16, at 7 p.m.
Below is an interview from last year (that never made its way to the internet because of the show cancellation) between Gaby and our own Lucy Dillon. We asked Gaby to catch us up with where his head is at and how he’s feeling by way of introduction, and he quickly obliged.
“Being on the road with other queer artists and touring Florida feels very hopeful, energizing and palate-cleansing after weeks of being inundated with the current administration’s chaos and cruelty. The show lineup has something for everyone: singer-songwriter sad songs, Gram Parsons-flavored country with Short Stack and Cooper’s electrifying and energy-filled country punk. And more importantly, queer representation,” said Gaby. “2025 feels very scary. But I just hope we can bring some light and be able to hold folks who are hurting with the music and art we make.”
A wise man once said that country music “ain’t nothing but three chords and the truth.”
For Wiley Gaby, who has spent as long as he can remember with an acoustic guitar in hand, country music is a bit more than chord progressions. The queer New York-based artist is on a mission to tell his own stories through a rough-hewn Americana lens.
“Country music is about everyday experiences,” Gaby says. “A lot of my songs are about heartbreak and sadness, and generally I think most people can relate to that. What makes it [my music] uniquely queer is that when I write the truth about my life, it is automatically from a queer experience.”
Gaby added that “sometimes people are caught off-guard because they are moved by a song that’s got some queer issues and themes to it.” He says there’s nothing as “subversive” or “punk” as telling your story through the sounds that resonate most with you personally. For Gaby, that’s through music informed by his love of Dolly Parton and George Jones.
Bridges, Gaby’s 2015 debut album released under the name Goldenchild, tells twanging tales of heartbreak and fighting for love you believe in. Now, nearly a decade later, Gaby is releasing his first solo album under his own name. He spent the summer recording in Tennessee, and is gearing up to perform songs from the unreleased album on his upcoming tour.
It’s live shows where Gaby feels his music can resonate most with audiences. “If somebody can come to one of these shows and walk away and feel for a moment they’ve been held or understood or heard, I think that would be the greatest thing ever,” Gaby says.
The Wakulla County-born artist, who grew up singing gospel tunes on his local church’s stage, is on a tour taking him back to his home state of Florida. And though Gaby says he wouldn’t want to change much of his experience growing up as a gay man near the Panhandle, he also acknowledged it wasn’t easy.
“In terms of the queer community, sometimes we feel like we don’t belong places and we run from them, and sometimes we have to for survival, but sometimes we just do because it’s a better thing,” says Gaby. “But the older I get, the more I think to myself, ‘Wait a second, this is my home. I’m not going to run away from my home.’”
Coming to your home state to play music becomes even more profound when you have a crowd of recognizable faces watching you play. Last year, after one of his cousins connected him with Taylor Bulloch, a member of Orlando industrial duo Pressure Kitten, Gaby ended up in contact with Pete Olen, the man behind Endoxa Booking. Gaby says by booking him and fellow queer country artist Paisley Fields to play Conduit last year, Olen took a gamble. But for Gaby, playing to an audience made up of Central Florida-area friends and people he hadn’t gotten the chance to see in years was “magical.”
“The older I get, the more I find myself falling in love with Florida,” says Gaby. “There is so much beauty there. And I think it’s great to have queer artists come through.” By putting a personal twist on a familiar genre, Gaby says we can convey the notion that music — especially country — is for everyone. No matter who you love, tears fall just the same when your heart breaks.
Gaby says considering “queer youth in Florida are going through so many things,” he believes in living and creating art by example forhis community. “You can be queer and do something different,” says Gaby. “You can be queer and be a country musician.”
Stardust Video and Coffee
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2025.