Over the last fifteen years, Americana music has become popular among transgender and queer musicians. Bands including Girlyman, Coyote Grace, Rae Spoon, Namoli Brennet, My Gay Banjo, Geo Wyeth, Actor Slash Model, Schmekel, Bethel Steele, Humble Tripe, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Eli Conley, Ryan Cassatta, and Ben Wallace have played acoustic instruments, sung in close harmony, and written autobiographical songs that feature rural spaces, working class characters, and references to religion and journey. But their relationship with Americana is complex – selling trans and/or queer embodiments of North American “folk” personae in musically convincing performances of homespun roots. Further tensions arise as bands attract a womyn’s music audience, highlighting that only some “roots” are acceptable: transgender male singer songwriters may out themselves as former lesbians, but transgender women musicians are unwelcome at The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.  TransAmericana identifies a meaningful development in modern transgender life and contemporary music, using ethnography to explore its cultural politics, musical analysis to unpack its compelling aesthetics, and historical contextualization to understand its complicated dance with gender, genre, and tradition.