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