Cheer Up Charlies

Cheer Up Charlies is a roughly 400-person Austin venue whose main draw is an outdoor performance area built into the grounds of a former used-car lot. Its compact indoor bar holds about 100 standing, while the patio stage carries the larger shows. The result is a casual, open-air room with queer nightlife at its center: a place for live bands, DJs, drag, dance parties, comedy, and community gatherings under the same roofline.

A Red River rebirth

Cheer Up Charlies began in 2009 as a vegan food truck and opened as a brick-and-mortar East Sixth bar in 2010, founded by local queer couple Maggie Lea and Tamara Hoover. Its 900 Red River home already held a deep LGBTQ+ history: Sandra Dee Martinez’s lesbian bar Chances operated there from 1982 to 1994, followed by Club DeVille from 1997 to 2013.

A property sale ended Cheer Up’s East Sixth lease in January 2014. The team secured the former Club DeVille site and reopened on February 21, 2014, keeping familiar décor while gaining a larger downtown footprint. The reopening lineup included Gretchen’s Disco Plague, a fitting connective thread because the band had also played the building during its Chances era. That move placed Cheer Up’s programming in a site already shaped by queer music and nightlife.

How the room works now

Programming spans queer-centered dance nights, drag, DJs, local music, touring acts, comedy, and other community events; the venue’s own archive describes a history of thousands of shows. Booking inquiries go through its listed booking email. For concerts, expect a primarily standing audience around the outdoor stage, with an indoor stage available for smaller setups. Outdoor bars and seating sit at either end of the single-story building, giving the patio a social, backyard-party flow between sets.