When Tennessee lawmakers passed legislation targeting drag performance and transgender youth this month, many musicians living and working in the state felt their communities, their audiences and their artistic expressions were also under attack.

The trend of conservative-led lawmakers introducing laws restricting LGBTQ rights or using hateful rhetoric about transgender people has led Tennessee’s tight-knit music community to use their voices and songs to raise awareness and money, encouraging music fans to get out there and votes.

Love Rising, a concert held Monday in Nashville, featured Grammy-winning artists such as Sheryl Crow, Jason Isbell, Maren Morris, Hayley Williams and Brittany Howard in addition to drag performers and trans and queer singer-songwriters. The next night, efforts continued with a second show, We Will Always Be, featuring a showcase of LGBTQ artists in partnership with Black Opry.

No one is at risk from our community, from our beautiful greater rainbow coalition of those of us who identify as LGBTQ+ or a transvestite or trans or just a loving ally or just someone who loves music, said Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Allison Russell , one of the organizers of Love Rising.

LGBTQ people have long been part of the state’s lucrative music and entertainment industry, and drag performers and shows have a storied history in Nashville and beyond.

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Artists such as Reba McEntire, Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley have inspired or have been inspired by drag performances for decades. Parton once told an interviewer that she competed in a drag show alongside performers dressed like her and lost. Nashville has a street named after drag queen Bianca Paige, who was an advocate for people living with HIV.

But in a state that has long championed its artistic and creative communities, some musicians now feel threatened by its laws. The bill passed this year changes the definition of adult cabaret as harmful to minors and says male or female impersonators are now covered by adult cabaret, along with topless dancers and strippers.

On Monday night backstage at the Love Rising concert, Adeem the Artist, a non-binary singer-songwriter who

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East Tennessee, pointed to their floral blouse and plum-colored lipstick and wondered if their stage outfit from July 1 would violate the new law.

I don’t always wear dresses, but I don’t even know if this is okay, they said. Can I wear lipstick? What does it mean to be dressed as the wrong gender?

Adeem explained that just a few weeks ago, they were invited by the state to an event honoring songwriters. They refused politically.

You don’t honor me. You are testing my livelihood, you are challenging my child’s safety, they said.

The bill prohibits adult cabaret on public land or anywhere minors may be present. Drag performer Justine Van De Blair wondered if just walking from a location to the parking lot where minors might see her would be grounds for arrest.

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I can support myself. Drag is my creative outlet, she said. Unfortunately, it’s so vague now that we don’t know what’s going to happen.

At Love Rising, the drag performers earned some of the biggest acclaim as they rallied the audience between musical sets with impassioned speeches claiming the bills were a damaging government force majeure and a fear-based campaign to roll back rights . They walked through the crowd greeting fans and taking photos, blowing air kisses and waving.

Money raised at the concerts went to support LGBTQ support organizations such as Tennessee Equality Project, Inclusion Tennessee, OUTMemphis, and the Tennessee Pride Chamber. Donations were matched by foundations set up by Grammy winner Brandi Carlile and the family of the late Nashville singer-songwriter John Prine.

The record number of anti-trans laws enacted last year, as well as other legal rulings related to bodily autonomy, have even impacted some artists’ writing. Aaron Lee Tasjan, a singer-songwriter from Nashville, is working on his next record and wrote a song that depicts the nightmare that gay and transgender people go through.

I see people who have a great deal of mental and emotional distress about it, he said.

Izzy Heltai, a pop singer-songwriter from Massachusetts, said he recently moved to Nashville because of the industry connections there. But he soon fell in love with the hospitable people and friends he met, which he found contrary to state politics. A trans man transitioning into his teens, he called the ban on gender-affirming youth care life-threatening for a population already at high risk of suicide.

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There are many children who will die in the state because of these laws, said Heltai, who played both benefit concerts. It’s not theoretical anymore. It’s just that these laws kill people.”

But even with the benefit shows, performers said the Nashville music industry, still dominated by white men at the executive level and on the stages, should do more to support marginalized artists who face discrimination.

Black Opry founder Holly G started her organization to give black artists more opportunities to perform and grow their audience because the mainstream country music industry was not willing to open those doors. Those barriers also exist for LGBTQ singers, musicians, songwriters, producers and others, she said.

The fight for racial equality is also the fight for LGBTQ+ equality, she said. We must all do this at the same time and together.

Backstage at the Bridgestone Arena, drag queen Cya Inhale said she initially thought her drag community should stand alone, but felt it

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“The entire art community in Nashville is standing up and saying, ‘No, that’s not okay.

Furthermore, Inhale argued, drag and country music have often run in the same circles.

Do you think Dolly Parton is wearing all those rhinestones because a straight man told her to? I don’t think so, she said.