Blues vocalist Candye Kane was born too late. Really. She'd probably have felt much more in sync with the world had she been around to witness the rise of jazz, the blues and rock 'n' roll first hand. She loves them all, and sings them wonderfully, she just finds herself as a bit of a nostalgic oddity in a nation that looks to the future, not the past, for inspiration.

Kane just finished performing in Europe and will return to the continent after her current tour of the West Coast. Although she enjoys the adoration of a cult following in the U.S.A., her fame overseas is greater, where she's perceived as an exotic treat: an authentic American blues mama. Here in her homeland, she -- like many of her peers -- is taken for granted. As a result, while she can travel abroad as part of the recently-completed ``Blues Caravan'' package tour, filling good-sized venues, when she comes to the U.S.A., she is stuck playing nightclubs. Likewise, she has to perform as the sole headliner, because the proceeds of ticket sales are not great enough to divvy up between multiple artists.

Speaking by telephone, Kane said, ``In the states, we're kind of jaded. Every great musician is from the United States: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters Howlin' Wolf, Frank Sinatra, Janis Joplin. We have millions of great musicians, so it's a little bit harder to make a living at this level, playing music.

``For instance, when you play a club like the Triple Door or the Tractor (Tavern) in Seattle, you pretty much command the whole entire door (receipts) that the club can give you. There's no advantage to bringing extra people on (as opening acts) because everybody has to divide up a smaller piece of the pie. In order to make it successful, you've got to have bigger pies to work with. That's theaters and community centers, which, in Europe, are usually funded by the government or by the community. It's a real different kind of monster, the United States. It makes us more competitive as musicians because we grow up where it's a little bit tougher.''

Such lamentations about American attitudes are nothing new. Jazz and blues artists routinely admit that they feel ignored in the country that gave their music its birth, while they're treated like royalty in other lands. Heck, it took the British band The Rolling Stones to expose American kids of the early 1960s to their own cultural heritage. Kane agreed.

``I think it's getting worse, not better, because with so many entertainment choices and options, you have so much on the Internet that you can stay at home and watch live feeds from shows all over the world. There's television and so many other reasons to stay home. Also, there's the fear factor (regarding domestic terrorism). People are afraid to go out, they're afraid to take a chance. It was already bad before (Sept. 11, 2001) in that people were lazy and just didn't want to go out, but it's much worse, I think. I'm not complaining. My life is great, and I'm really stoked about being able to play music for a living. I'm surviving and I'm very, very lucky, but it is different. People are not going out as much, and I hope that changes.''

Kane's reputation as a thrilling live performer precedes her, but she's also at home in the recording studio. Her new album ``White Trash Girl'' (due to hit stores this April) is the latest in a series of CDs that have seen her steadily improve as a singer/songwriter. The title track is a brassy blast of rockabilly. Kane growls and wails over electric and bass guitars, snare drums and a wheezing harmonica. ``Queen of the Wrecking Ball'' is a hip-shaking vocal showpiece, while ``Misunderstood'' rolls back the clock to the jazz age, allowing Kane to play the role of lounge lizard. ``It Must Be Love'' sounds like a Louis Prima track, crammed as it with horns and wry lyrics.

I literally kept checking the songwriting credits to see if these cuts were composed in the '20s, '30s, '40s or '50s. Nope. Every time, they were a product of Kane's imagination, tunes carefully groomed as tributes to times gone by. Her knowledge of musical forms is so thorough that she implicitly knows when to add percussion, a musical bridge or an instrumental interlude to both strengthen an arrangement and create the impression that she's from a different era. She's a master illusionist.

She said, ``Every song has a life of its own, and all I listen to is the stuff I like, so I'm kind of stuck from 1920 to 1971. I listen to a lot of soul, too. I love '70s soul, and I'd like to do a record like that some time. I grew up in East L.A. singing oldies to gang members, and the oldies that were being played a lot were '70s things like Harold Melvin's `If You Don't Know Me By Now' or The Stylistics or The Chi-Lites, bands like that. That's what I first learned to sing to keep my (butt) from being kicked in the ghetto. It would be cool to do a record that's a return to there. I mean, I was the white trash girl in the brown neighborhood, absolutely.

``I don't know that my songwriting has changed. I'm definitely better as I age. I'm more honest and I'm more willing to be honest about who I am. That's the thing that comes from just living and accepting yourself.''