There was only one place at CMA Fest 2026 to hear an official playback of Miranda Lambert’s new song, “Crisco”: On a Nashville rooftop during Lambert’s Crisco Disco Drag Brunch, delivered in shimmering rhinestones and a high-as-the-heavens red wig by beloved local queen Vidalia Anne Gentry. Though not listed in the official programming, the event, sponsored by Lambert’s new label MCA, was one of a few moments during the annual festival — otherwise dominated by the reunion of Florida Georgia Line — where queer artists and allies were determined to create space and visibility.
Though Lambert herself wasn’t present, her voice, her songs, and her inspirations were all over the morning’s festivities, thanks to a trio of Nashville’s favorite drag queens. Alexia Noelle tackled “Heads Carolina, Tails California” in pink satin, Vidalia performed “Mama’s Broken Heart,” and Heather Sapphire took on “Little Red Wagon” in black leather, glitter, and fringe.
Hosted by Katie Atkin, of the U.K. country podcast Girls in Low Places, it was most certainly a first for CMA Fest, in a year when only three openly queer artists played official showcases — Ty Herndon, Angie K, and Morgxn. GLAAD also hosted a conversation offsite called Pride and Progress featuring Fancy Hagood, Shane McAnally, and Kaitlin Butts while Gretchen Wilson was in conversation with Melissa Etheridge, and Atkin recruited the Cowgays, the trio of Brooke Eden, Chris Housman, and Adam Mac, for a conversation at Music City Center the day prior.
“When I looked out into the crowd, you could see that it meant so much to the people who were watching,” Atkin said of the event with the Cowgays (she wanted to bill the chat as “Gays in Low Places,” but no such luck). “That it meant so much to them that there was a place for them to land in country music.”
As the Crisco Disco brunch kicked off, Atkin polled the audience to see how many people had never before been to a drag show. A handful of people raised their hands and then proceeded to dance away (the queens also schooled them on proper drag etiquette including yelling “Fuck you, bitch!” from the crowd). Drag is currently restricted in Tennessee, after the Adult Entertainment Act prohibited it from being performed where children are present, under the amorphous claim that it is “harmful to minors” (the event was 21+ to comply). And though June is Pride Month nationally, Tennessee govneror Bill Lee declared it “Nuclear Family Month” locally, supporting only “one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted or fostered children” as “God’s design.”
At CMA Fest, subversion through celebration, music, and some fabulous drag performances held strong. Though the events that centered queer voices at the festival were few, they were joyous, and went off without any presence from the vocal minority that likes to place themselves in the social media mentions of artists like Morgxn. He receives a constant bombardment of hateful comments online, but during his Sunday afternoon performance, he heard nothing but cheers. Performing on a stage flanked by photos of straight couples in Wrangler ads, Morgxn is a Nashville native who went to high school a few blocks away from the CMA Fest footprint, and was told constantly that he’d never make it in the Nashville music scene because he was gay. His newest album, Heartland, seeks to reframe the Southern experience in a genre where only straight men are often allowed to claim rural signifiers (fish, hunt, church, etc).
“Tennessee is a really hard place for people who are different,” Morgxn told the crowd at the start of a set that included a cover of the Chicks’ “Cowboy Take Me Away” and a duet with JB Somers, called “Real Man.” “But we’ll make it out alive.” He capped off his performance with a new song, a reclamation of “America the Beautiful” that he reminded the audience was “actually written by a lesbian” as he waved a trans pride flag in his hands.
“I know things are growing, but at every step it feels like we go backwards,” Morgxn told Rolling Stone backstage after his performance, his eyes occasionally welling up with tears. “There are only three openly queer artists playing an official stage here, and I know that matters, but that’s why when I go onstage I want to bring other people with me, and anything I did on that stage was because I was trying to bring the energy of any queer person who’s ever been marginalized. And it felt special.”
Morgxn and his husband own a home on a farm in Sumner County, Tennessee, and they host the local pride celebration because the county wont. He brings a band made up entirely of non-cismale players and applauds when artists like Lambert speak up and advocate for marginalized communities. But the commitment needs to, he insists, go deeper. That morning, Brandon Lake hosted his “Cowboy Church” service to a packed crowd, an event he billed as being for “the misfits, the ones who aren’t sure they belong anywhere.” Jelly Roll, in a surprise performance at CMA’s opening night, spoke similarly of a “God of love.”
Morgxn wants them to mean it, and extended that love and support to everyone.
“Bring us along,” he says. “Can you bring us to the bigger stages? Can you bring us into these moments? Jelly Roll talking to a packed crowd about how it’s not about him, it’s about Jesus? But the teachings of Jesus would be to love your neighbor, and that would look like loving your trans friends and your immigrants. If we’re really going to preach about Jesus, bring the queer people to the table, too. Because we all belong.”
