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Music

Austin's Music Scene Should Get Less Hetero

Am I saying that your average rock club here would refuse to book a gay artist? Absolutely not. Would it be cool if every couple of weeks some of the dozens of venues in Austin would take it upon themselves to exclusively feature and lift up our LGBT...

Drag queen, rapper, and performance artist Christeene at 2012's SXSW

I recently received an email from Neil Diaz, an LGBT organizer in Austin, Texas, who was putting together a summer-long string of concerts at Rain, one of the city’s most prominent gay bars. He was sourcing acts from everywhere—gay and straight, local and national—and it was serving as one of Austin’s first queer-focused music series. Diaz hopes that his work will be successful enough that Rain will start booking bands on a year-round basis. “It would be a first time we’d have recurring live music in an LGBT venue,” Diaz wrote. "This made me happy but it also sparked my curiosity. In a city so known for its liberalism and its stages, why has it taken this long for LGBT artists to get a venue they can count on?"

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There are some spaces, sure. Barbarella’s TuezGayz stands as one of the most popular nights in the city, but look at Mohawk, or Beerland, you’d never call these clubs prejudiced, but why haven’t we seen dedicated queer events at some of the spaces closest to the heart of the scene? Diaz is quick to point out that he’d never call the Red River stretch of clubs homophobic in any way, but to me, it still seems like we could be trying harder.

“When I first started going out in Austin and seeing the social side of gay Austin it was different,” says Chase Martin, who runs the Central Texas LGBT lifestyle website, The Republiq, “for one we’re the 'live music capital of the world,' but we didn’t have much going on for gay artists. For Fourth Street—which is where the majority of the gays go out—it’s unique that we have something at Rain. It’s been a while coming.”

Of course, Martin is quick to point out that for a lot of gay bars, live music just isn’t there clientele. Austin is a smaller city. We don’t have the physical density to produce something like the queer hip-hop movement in New York. Austin’s demographics aren’t too different from your average mid-size city, and that will always come with limitations. But we are the “live music capital of the world,” and we have a reputation to uphold.

Martin has organized LGBT music festivals before. His next will be occurring during SXSW next year, and those have always come with their share of complications. “You’re more likely to find out lesbians artists in Austin than out men, and some of those men are more studio artists and don’t play live too often,” he says.

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“We always had a hard time filling the festivals out. We’d have a lot of straight artists who were very passionate about marriage equality, so we always let them play, but eventually you’d have so many allies playing that it doesn’t make sense for a queer music fest. It was always an uphill struggle.”

Sixth Street in Austin. Photo via WikiCommons

In some ways, blending everything together isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’s better that Austin treats its music as a whole, instead of regimented niches. “I don’t really identify bands as who’s singer is gay or who’s drummer is gay,” says Devin Usher, who writes songs in The Blonding Dandelions. “If you’re playing indie rock or dance music or drunk bar music, sure, I might know which member is gay or trans or queer. But I certainly don’t lump them together in a scene.”

But Devin, who identifies as pansexual, is excited to play the Rain concert series, because he does find something special about having the LGBT community respond directly to his art.

“I’ve been in relationships with men and women, but a lot of the songs are geared towards men—love songs that I’ve written about men,” he continues. “We’ve had a good response with regular crowds, but I can only imagine that songs about being in love with another man is going to appeal more to that audience. I’m both curious and excited to see how that turns out.”

Right now the only opportunity for moments like that is at Rain, a gay bar that until very recently never had a reputation for live music. It’s separated from the rest of the scene in Austin, and the city could stand to get a little less hetero. Am I saying that your average rock club here would refuse to book a gay artist? Absolutely not. Would it be cool if every couple of weeks some of the dozens of venues in Austin would take it upon themselves to exclusively feature and lift up our LGBT musicians? Is it a little embarrassing that we had to wait for a gay bar to look after their own? I think so.