By Stacey Gualandi // Photography courtesy of Project Publicity

Kristine W.’s dance card is always full.

Nearly two decades into her stellar career, the singer, songwriter, and musician can’t stop burning up dance floors with her signature jazz-funk infused mix of bouncing beats.

Not only has she earned 17 #1 singles and a Billboard ranking of #8 Greatest Dance Artist of All Time (#3 Greatest from the last decade, trailing only Madonna and Beyoncé), but she’s also achieved gay icon status.

“I love my LGBTQIA+ tribe,” says Kristine.

Kristine is a tireless advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, a feverish fan base who has been along for the ride since Day One. To this day, her tribe continues to stand by their star.

Photo of Kristine W. by Mike Ruiz

“We’ve had so much fun together. It just continues to grow and I’m so thankful and happy for all the freedoms,” says Kristine. “I feel like everyone is free to be themselves with less judgment.”

To celebrate, Kristine’s just-released single pays homage to one of her favorite artists with a soulful dance reimagining of the Sade classic “Smooth Operator,” the third track on her soon-to-be-released tenth album.

But as Kristine reflects on her musical journey thus far, she admits it hasn’t always been smooth.

“It’s been a journey for sure,” admits Kristine. “I never knew it would be this hard, or I never would’ve done it.”

Born Kristine Weitz, she is a farm girl at heart from Pasco, Washington, far from the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip.

She was a national javelin champion at 16, but this Donna Summer devotee preferred singing to throwing.

“Donna Summer was everything to me,” says Kristine (while wearing a t-shirt of her music idol!). “I loved singing, but I didn’t know how to be heard on a national level.”

She came by her talent naturally. Her grandmother was a classical violinist, her mom a working musician who played the 12-string guitar and sang. Her dad was a rancher/rodeo star and country singer.

But her childhood was marked by both inspiration and heartbreak.

Kristine says her dad passed away tragically when she was three. At an early age, her grandmother, Mauriel, was struck by lightening and survived.

“She taught me how to play the guitar on her lap, like [blind guitar player] Jeff Healy,” says Kristine. “She couldn’t lift her arms very high, but still played piano. Her survival instincts were insane.”

“It was a rough upbringing,” says Kristine, “but we were survivors. My mother was a widow with 4 kids under the age of 6 years old. We watched her become a fighter.”

Her mother also led by example when it came to supporting the gay community.

“I have been a long-time advocate because my mom’s best friend was gay. It was really hard for him,” says Kristine. “He was also helping with my voice lessons…and was a mentor for me. He was our church choir director and didn’t feel safe to be out. My mom would pretend to be his girlfriend to protect him and his legacy as an educator. In fact, our community named a school after him.”

Kristine says her life began to shift when a representative from the Miss America pageant approached her.

“She said, ‘I think you could end up on the stage in Miss America. You’re that talented,’” says Kristine. “Dorothy Schoeppach definitely changed my life.”

Kristine went on to win Miss Tri-Cities, Miss Washington, and first place in the Miss America talent competition. Then, she boldly took her scholarship money and enrolled at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Growing up, I was winning all the talent shows and the pageants, being an outstanding jazz vocalist, studying improv, playing my saxophone, and just trying to get better all the time,” says Kristine. “Then you get to Vegas and you are just surrounded by the best.”

While working as a teenage hostess at The Tillerman, a famous 5-star restaurant where all the entertainment directors would go, Kristine says she overheard talk of a Battle of the Bands competition in the works. So she decided to form a college band—“Kristine W. and the Sting”—and audition.

“Maynard [the manager] said, ‘Whoever wins, I’m gonna book them for two weeks. People are gonna talk about who wins the band, so don’t try out unless you’re really good, because it’ll be a waste of your time,’” remembers Kristine.

No time wasted. Kristine won, which soon led to more gigs in a very competitive music scene.

“The one thing that was groundbreaking,” says Kristine, “was when I got a shot to do two weeks at the Palace Station at the Loading Dock Lounge.”

At that time, Kristine says she got her first taste of smooth operators—who she referred to as “Johnnie Colognes.”

“Various older male headliners were always in the restaurants hitting on young staff,” jokes Kristine. “When my mom came into town, she would laugh about it and say that most of them can’t do anything about it anyway.”

Kristine became a Las Vegas Hilton headliner, winning several ‘Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year’ awards, and performed more live shows at the Las Vegas Hilton than any other performer in its history, including Elvis. She even has her own “Kristine W. Day” in the state of Nevada on June 28th.

“My kids were so impressed that I met U2 back in the day and that they put me in their music video ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’” says Kristine. “They shot that video at the Mint where [my band] was performing.”

In the late 80s, she started collecting Hollywood credits. Kristine wrote a song for the film “Roadhouse” with Patrick Swayze, and performed her own music in 1993’s “Indecent Proposal.”

But a three-year recording trip to London for her first album, Land of the Living, would mold her into the dance music diva she is today.

“House music, dance music were really big there and that whole European sound,” says Kristine. “I was always obsessed with that from the first time I heard it. The Land of the Living album was about coming to Vegas, performing all over the country while still not getting recognition for your original music. I had to go across the pond to be heard and seen as a credible artist.

Her first single, “Feel What You Want,” in 1994, became the first of 17 #1 singles on Billboard. She credits popular DJ Junior Vasquez for getting her jazzy dance music played in the U.S.

“He just loved the messages; he loved the melodies,” says Kristine. “He said, ‘Your voice was so emotional; I could feel that you had lived all your songs.’ He also said he was obsessed with my voice and wanted to remix every one of my songs that he could.”

Kristine never anticipated, but wholeheartedly embraced, her debut album’s enormous gay following.

Ironically, when she first performed at New York City’s famed Sound Factory in front of a thousand “Feel What You Want” fans, the crowd didn’t know what Kristine looked like (the single didn’t include her photo), if that was her actually singing, and if she was really a woman.

“I’d be there and then feel his hand going up my leg,” says Kristine of a male fan. “That happened for years because, for some reason, they got it in their head that I was a drag queen.”

There was no question, though, that a dance queen had emerged with music that made a difference to so many.

“I think Land of the Living’s message resonated because people at that time were dying of AIDS,” says Kristine. “There was a place by the Palace Station that I remember going to and visiting a lot of the drag queens that I had known that were in the drag shows. They had no family; people didn’t come. It’s just so much fear, then the isolation, and then people lose hope because they’re all alone in a room and fighting this thing by themselves.”

But Kristine says when her album came out in 1997, it was a cornerstone moment.

“People were starting to live with the meds, and I think it gave everybody hope,” says Kristine. “’Land of the Living’ was pivotal and came out at the right time, right when that message needed to be heard.”

Pivotal for one man in particular who shared a deeply personal story with Kristine years ago.

“He said, ‘Oh my God, ‘One More Try’ saved my life,’” says Kristine.

“My mom was in the car, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. That song was about my hometown, that transition from leaving home and college and trying to make a new life,’ and he said, ‘No, it saved my life. I was going to kill myself!’”

Stories like that inspired Kristine to write another album she called The Power of Music. She also took a leap of faith and launched her own music label, Fly Again Music Productions.

“It was terrifying,” admits Kristine on becoming an entrepreneur.

But nothing could have been more terrifying for Kristine than when, in 2001, the then mother of two toddlers was diagnosed with leukemia.

“I had just come back from doing a tour of Japan, and I had cut my lip on my saxophone and it would not heal. I kept asking my doctor to do some more tests on me because I was so tired all the time,” says Kristine.

It would take almost nine months for that diagnosis, on Mother’s Day. Kristine then spent a year in Los Angeles undergoing a relatively new stem cell transplant treatment.

“I literally told only a few people because there was really nothing anybody could do for me. I was going to have to win that all by myself,” admits Kristine. “Honestly, I don’t think I could have survived it if I didn’t have kids.”

She says her faith and competitive spirit also helped her win the battle.

“I think being an athlete helped. I was always competing with somebody all the time. Now I’m competing with cancer.”

Incredibly, she survived and continued to thrive.

She recorded with the legend Patti Labelle, tied Mariah Carey for the sixth-most Billboard #1 dance hits, got to meet her idol, Donna Summer, performed numerous times at Rupaul’s annual DragCon, and this year, appeared as a guest judge on season 9 of Rupaul’s Drag Race All Stars.

“All the drag queens used to come to my shows, and we would just all support each other,” says Kristine. “I would promote their shows; they would promote my shows. When I first came to town, there were at least three really popular drag shows here.”

With so much success and hits right alongside other one-named notables, has Kristine gotten all the recognition she deserves?

“I think I probably would’ve gone down that [fame] road if I hadn’t gotten leukemia, but I put the brakes on everything after I got back because I saw how little all of it mattered.”

As Kristine wraps up the final track of her upcoming yet-to-be-titled album, and gets ready for a “Pride Under the Pines” event next month, what matters most to her now is sharing her music with the masses.

“I always try to weave hopeful, uplifting, ‘you can do it!’ messages into my music,” says Kristine. “My career has been a huge blessing, and I could not have done it by myself.”

That sentiment brings tears to her eyes. Kristine recently lost her mom, the one person who has always been her champion.

“I know she was proud,” says Kristine. “She was a good one.”

It’s all the inspiration she needs to keep creating—for her fans, her family and to inspire the next generation to keep dancing.

“I look at all of my friends who thought that they were going to die of AIDS 30 years ago,” says Kristine. “They’re still alive and kicking and killing it. You can marry whoever you love and FEEL what you want!”

For more information, visit: kristinew.com

This article was originally published in the 2024 PRIDE Celebration issue of Las Vegas PRIDE Magazine, and can be read in its original format here.