Artist: Katie Dahl
Hometown: Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin
Song: “Sacristy”
Album: Seven Stones
Release Date: June 2, 2023
Label: Leaky Boat Records
In Their Words: “I grew up as a queer kid in a very Baptist family — I am the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of Baptist pastors, seminary professors, and missionaries. I was deeply involved in my church during high school, when I started to feel my queerness more fully. There were so many dissonant moments — like the deep crush I had on my church camp counselor, and the strange longing I felt when I heard her chapel sermon about ‘the evils of homosexuality.’ When I went to college and began to explore who I really was, it dawned on me that I wasn’t the only queer kid in my church youth group. I wished we had known about one another in high school — we might not have felt so alone.
“I wrote ‘Sacristy’ as a fable, imagining what life could have been like if we had been given the grace and the space to help each other along, and celebrating the ‘water from our own well’ that we eventually found anyway. I love what Julie Wolf did in producing this song: how triumphant and grounded the bass and drums are; how Julie’s organ and piano parts soar; the way the mandola, banjo, and fiddle keep the song rolling; and the quirky, unexpected background vocals by Nini Camps and Vicki Randle. Plus, we had a really fun time recording the hand claps!” — Katie Dahl
Photo Credit: Kelly Nicolaisen
