BUCK C. COOKE | 7.2.2008
AFTER THRILLING THE crowd last year with her crystal-clear vocals and impressive skills with the saxophone, Kristine W. returns to WETbar's weekend-long Pride party for more excitement, and this time she’s bringing new music to her fans.
Kristine joins superstar DJ Hex Hector on Friday July 4, just like they did in the studio for her new album, “Power of Music,” due in September. Hector has remixed several tracks for the dance diva, but this is the first time he has collaborated with her on an album.
“I am so excited!” Kristine says. “We are going to perform a song or two that Hex produced for my new album as an exclusive for the Atlanta crowd. One of them will be the new single from ‘Power of Music,’ and we are going to debut it in Atlanta, so you will be the first to hear it.
“We’ll be performing the album version, and he is an amazing producer,” she adds. “So he really knocked it out of the park with this one.”
Hector holds Kristine in the same great esteem, telling David she is “a one-woman dynamo of a show!”
“She doesn't need me to help her cook up things,” he says. “She’s a musical gourmet kitchen!”
KRISTINE IS ALSO PUTTING THE finishing touches on “Straight Up with a Twist,” a chill, jazz album tentatively scheduled for release in early 2009.
A longtime ally to the gays, Kristine feels it is important to pass the lessons of tolerance along to the next generation, and she believes that lesson begins at home.
“When I was 9, I had a crush on this boy in my class,” she says. “He was so cute. He knew I liked him, and he just turned to me and started crying and said, ‘You’re my best friend, but I don’t like you like that.’
“It was really strange, because I didn’t know about ‘gay,’ but you know he did grow up to be gay,” Christine says. “It tortured him because he couldn’t tell me about it.
“We don’t have to do that anymore," she continues. "We’ve certainly evolved and people know that they are gay or straight or whatever at a very young age. Even if you don’t talk about it, families need to be so conscious about diversity and supportive of their kids no matter what. Genitalia do not make a person, and sexual preference does not make a person. ‘Open heart, open mind’ — if people just lived like that, we’d have a better world, wouldn’t we?”
KRISTINE EXTENDS THAT HOPE for a better world to the White House, saying Pride in 2008 is “huge.”
“I don’t want to sound all dramatic,” she says, “but how we set the pace for this year is going to affect the future drastically. We’ve got to get somebody on board who is thinking about the planet because the rest of this stuff we’re doing doesn’t mean anything if we don’t have a planet, you know?”
Kristine brings her worldview to her music, citing current events as part of the inspiration for her last hit, a cover of Diana Ross’ “The Boss.”
“With everything going on in the world, we need that message right now — ‘love is the boss,’” she says.
She is also appreciative of her fans for that single’s success.
“My fans are my friends — they’re my musical family — and their support makes me do things and try things that I’d never do on my own, and for ['The Boss'] to be such a screaming success, it was great.”
Looking back over the years, Kristine can see ways Pride has evolved over time.
“I did my first pride 10 years ago, and I tell you, people were looking over their shoulders,” she says. “You could tell they were very nervous. They didn’t want people to see them. It’s a whole different ballgame now. People are out. They’re having fun. You don’t see all that fear — I mean I smelled it back then.”
Kristine W. performs with Hex Hector at WETbar on July 4. www.kristinew.com and www.wetbaratlanta.com.
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