Las Vegas Marks 10th Annual Kristine W Day

Kristine W learned the art of performance from an unlikely source: a Vegas drag queen named Bubbles.

Well, not exactly. The legendary club diva, one of dance music's most consistently successful artist (her ninth consecutive #1 hit on the Billboard Club charts shattered a record previously held by Madonna), is a fourth generation entertainer who has been performing since childhood. She's a songwriter, producer, jazz musician, guitarist; music is in her blood.

But when she began her career as a working entertainer in the Vegas casino circuit, it helped to have friends who knew a thing or two about being fabulous.

"They had a drag show upstairs called Boylesque," Kristine W said of her first casino gig. "I would go up there and study the drag queens. How they put on their fake eyelashes, the way they would roll up the socks and put them in their boobs... There was one drag queen named Bubbles, and he would tell me all his secrets, like why he was shading his face. And I'd say, 'okay, I'm going to put on more makeup!'"

Today, it's Kristine who defines fabulous for her legion of devout dance fans, including a strong following in the gay community for whom, she says, she has nothing but love. Though the Vegas local juggles life as a married mom of two with her club life career, she's managed to carve herself a canyon sized niche in the Sin City scene, churning out hit after hit (including her current #1 anthem, "The Boss") that leave her countless imitators in the dust.

Sorry, Bubbles.

But success hasn't always come easy for Kristine W. It's been a long road from her birthplace of Pasco, Washington to the glittery lights of the Vegas strip.

After winning the title of Miss Washington, Kristine packed up her scholarship money, her sax and her dreams to strike out on her own.

"I jumped in my old, piece of crap Cutlass car and took off across the desert with my instruments in the backseat," she said. But Vegas luck was not on her side.

"In the first two months I was there, my car blew up," she recalls. "The transmission went out, so I went down to Goodwill and bought myself a 10-speed bike that I rode to all my gigs."

Not a glamorous start for a beauty queen, but hard work and determination paid off. After putting together her own band, she landed a contract with the Las Vegas Hilton.

"They ended up building me a 500-seat nightclub," she said. "Because we couldn't get any more people in the lounge that Tina Turner had performed in."

Kristine remained at the Hilton until 1999, breaking Elvis Presley's record for the most live performances staged in Vegas and earning herself a holiday: Kristine W Day on June 28.

By then, club hits like "Feel What You Want," "One More Try," and "Land of the Living" had firmly entrenched her reputation in the dance genre that she loved so much.

"I was obsessed with Donna Summer when I was a little kid!" she shared, adding that her love of dance music is rooted in her creative drive and constant need for artistic self-expression.

"It's good for the soul," she said of dancing. "I always felt like music was medicine, and I never really cared about how many records I was selling. I just cared about how many people were connecting to my songs and being able to use those songs to empower themselves."

And if that's not reason enough to celebrate, here are two more: Kristine's new production The Power of Music will be released next spring and the release date for her double CD Straight Up With a Twist will be announced soon.