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1999

UPDATE: 9/11/2000
News Article from Bullseye Blues & Jazz
written by Michael Heaton

I wish I could say I knew Candye Kane from way back to Home Cookin, her first ass-kicking album in '94. Or better yet from high school chemistry class. Because she's got chemistry my friend. Like China's got chopsticks.

But I can't say that. I'm relatively new to this party that's getting bigger all the time. In fact I only picked up the last album, Swango, because I was amused by the dead-on '50s rumpus-room decor on the cover and amazed by the girl with cleavage like the San Andreas fault. Something good was going on there I just wasn't sure what it was. After I got home and gave the steel wheel some serious rotation I was flat-out, drop-jaw knocked out. Forget the San Andreas fault. The songs on that album were without fault. As was the voice of the woman singing them.

It swing, swang swung, man. It rocked not only the house but the entire street. Ms. Kane combined the blues of Bessie Smith with the jump of Etta James. And she frosted and flavored that big old groove-cake with the sass and brass of Bette Midler. When I tell you this girl had all the toys I'm not fooling around. Her music lifted me up, laid me out and sent me home smiling. When's the last time that happened to you?

Candye Kane is a Little Big Voice crying in the wilderness of love. Forget these tinny teeny tunes littering the current American radio landscape. Candye Kane is a WOMAN. She knows all about the nature of love. She also elaborates on the loose juice of lust. And she doesn't mind dancing, eloquently, and soulfully on what can often be a fine, shifting line between the two.

Candye Kane is a force of nature coming your way. You've got a big decision to make now. Either make straight her path or get the hell out the way. This album isn't called The Toughest Girl Alive for nothing. That's not hyperbole. Shut up and listen.

When Candye began coming of age, she was not just a big girl. She had a big personality to match. And she ran around annoying everyone with this notion that she was a big singer too. Well being big and obnoxious made it hard for her to fit in. In fact she felt at times like a frustrated artist and a freak.

At 16 she became a single teen mom living on welfare in East L.A. Talk about tough. She thought she hit bottom and turned to topless modeling to make a living for herself and her child. Since she was blessed with a second floor porch you could put potted plants on, Candye Kane became very successful in her field.

In a strange way in this strange land being a blue movie star gave Kane her first exposure to positive self- esteem. This is not a path she necessarily recommends. But earning big bucks can do that. She went from being on welfare to making $2,500 a week. But her desire to write and sing music is what saved her soul - not the money.

It kept her out of the seediest side of the adult film biz and gave her a way to make a transition out into music. Dave Alvin of The Blasters, Dwight Yoakum, members of Lone Justice and Los Lobos all encouraged Kane to press on and make her dreams come true. And her music career began to happen.

Happy ending? Hardly. Candye likes to say that the sleaziness of the adult film industry hardly prepared her for the hypocrisy of the record industry. Record people tried to fashion Kane as a country western singer, a born again Christian artist, everything but what she really wanted which was to have no limits or labels. And now she sings on an album with songs that rock and swing, blues that cry, the bawdy and the naughty. Why she even sings in French, like Mo-Reese Chevalier. Mae West said she only likes two kinds of men: Domestic and foreign. Candye feels the same way about her music. If marriage is the only war where you sleep with the enemy, then Candye Kane should have three purple hearts. I don't know what the third one would be for, she doesn't tell me everything.

The title track to the new album was ripped straight from the personal life of Miss Thing herself. First off her music partner and collaborator of eight years, Sue Palmer bowed out of the picture with a bad case of white line fever. The road goes on forever and if your heart isn't in it, you won't be on it. Candye Kane also split from her husband and musical collaborator Tom Yearsley. So with two poles of the teepee down Ms. Kane was feeling a bit that way herself. That is until she stepped back and thought about her life, where she's been and how far she's come from teen mom to welfare mother, to battered wife to porn queen to fat girl to bi-sexual recording artist. How's that for a tv movie?!

She started feeling sorry for herself. But Candye's therapy has long been song-writing. And all this reflection on the ups and downs of her life became the blues shouter Toughest Girl Alive, a new song for a new album and a new era for Candye Kane.

But for me the coolest thing about Candye Kane talent aside, and that's a big aside, is that she may be the only un-reconstituted recording artist out there. She has not been filtered through the Dullotron for maximum mainstream acceptability. My God, or Mon Dieu, as Candye likes to say, here's an actual singer songwriter who doesn't need an army of handlers to make her more provocative (yeah, right) or less controversial than she already is.

I'd say God bless Candye Kane, but I its pretty obvious think God already has. Now if she can just stay out of jail for the next couple years. . .

UPDATE: 4/26/2000

Things have been so busy lately. I just came back from amsterdam where I did this revue show ala alan freed/apollo theatre. This dutch guy, Bill Turner, loves the promoters of the 50's and put together this incredible revue show featuring yours truly, and british singers James Hunter and Paul Ansell, and dutch singer Mieke Stemerdink, plus a host of singers and dancers and a 20 piece orchestra. It was really an amazing show and I wish we could have done more appearances. just being backstage when the dancers were rehearsing and everyone was getting all gussied up for the show, was so much fun. The energy and talent of all these people was really incredible.The orchestra was conducted and the songs were arranged by Ruud Van Dijk, who heads the Amsterdam University Jazz Department. He did cool arrangements of my songs, "200 LBS of Fun", "Blind Love", "Poetry Cocktail", and a version of "Shake , Rattle and Roll". Photos from the show coming soon.

I'm going back to Europe this summer, and bringing both my sons, Tommy and Evan , so I am really excited about that. Evan, my 20 year old, may even play drums with me on a gig, or two!!

I also did interviews for two major european magazines. One for the French edition of "Cosmopolitan", and "Femme Actuelle", and the Dutch Magazine "Samsonic".

My new cd should be out really soon from Rounder. "The Toughest Girl Alive". For those of you who know me personally, you know that I was really upset when my pianist of 8 years, Sue "Beehive" Palmer, quit the band back in July 99. I was feeling really sorry for myself when she quit, even though her reasons were nothing personal. (She just wanted to stay at home , have a dog, make a solo cd, etc). Anyway, I was feeling very low about it all, and I started thinking about all I had been through in my life....teenage welfare motherhood, battered wife, drug abuse, porno business, and I just slapped myself and wrote the title song! this cd is really significant for me, because it is the first one I made without Sue Palmer and without the aid of my husband , Thomas Yearsley. (He was in Belgium producing the "Seatsniffers" gospel cd.) So anyway, I really needed to prove to myself that I could do this cd, and I think you'll like the results. (At least I hope so!!)

On a very very personal note, yes, its true that I am separating from my husband of 14 years, Thomas Yearsley. We are still good friends, and love each other very much, but we have grown apart and for personal reasons, have decided to separate. He's a fox and I know there are lots of women that have been waiting in the wings for this to occur. He's become quite a successful producer these days, working with earl thomas, blue largo, and kyle jester. My kids are taking it very well, but of course , we are all deeply saddened by this occurence. I want to thank all of you for your emails and gestures of friendship and support. It means so much to me, during this troubling time...hope to see you this summer in your town!!!!