Sweetheart Swing with Candye Kane and special guest Skip Heller
2/14/10
Nominated this year for best blues contemporary female by the national blues foundation awards (formerly
known as the handys).
“The Toughest Girl Alive” is the name of Candyes’ original song and the title of her soon to be released memoir and stage play. It is also an apt description of a jump blues singer and songwriter from East Los Angeles who has earned this moniker the hard way.
Raised in a dysfunctional, blue-collar family, Candye Kane became a teenage mother, a pin up cover girl and a punk rock, hillbilly and blues-belting anarchist by the time she was just 21 years old. Eight cds, six record labels, millions of international road miles and countless awards later, including a 2008 National Blues Foundation nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Female and inclusion in countless Blues and Jazz Anthologies including the Rolling Stone Guide to Jazz and Blues and Dan Akroyds’ 30 Essential Women of the Blues, Kane has continually beaten the odds and scrambled her way to the top of the roots music heap, creating a world renowned reputation that has spanned two decades.
A colorful mixture of the traditional and the eclectic, Kane cut her musical teeth in the early 80’s onstage with Hollywood musicians and friends, Social Distortion, Dwight Yoakum, The Blasters, X, Fear and Los Lobos, to name just a few. While raising two sons, this role model for the disenfranchised has beaten pancreatic cancer, championed large sized women, fought for the equal rights of sex workers and the GLBT community and inspired music lovers everywhere. Her fans are a mixture of true outsiders: bikers, blues fans, punk rockers, drag queens, fat girls, queers, burlesque dancers, porn fans, sex workers, rockabilly and swing dancers, grey haired hippies, sex positive feminists and everyday folk of all ages, flock to see Candye and hear her musical messages of love, hope and empowerment.
Kanes’ live shows are the stuff of legend. She honors the bold blues women of the past with both feet firmly planted in the present. She belts – growls – shouts – croons and moans from a lifetime of suffering and overcoming obstacles. She uses music as therapy and often writes and chooses material with positive affirmations that leave the audience feeling healed and exhilarated. A show that is part humor, revival meeting and sexuality celebration, she’ll deliver a barrelhouse-tongue-in-cheek blues tune or a gospel ballad like Jesus and Mohammed, encouraging audiences to leave behind religious intolerance. She’ll slay the crowd with her balls out rendition of Whole Lotta Love or glorify the virtues of zaftig women with 200 pounds of fun. She often says she is a “black drag queen trapped in a white woman’s body” and she dresses the part. Bedecked in bright colored feathers, sequins and rhinestones, Kane’s performance is Mississippi by way of Las Vegas with a quick stopover in San Francisco.
Her last release, (RUF 2007) Guitar’d and Feathered, garnered rave reviews worldwide and earned her a West Coast Songwriting award for Best Original Blues composition. Kane will go into the studio again in 2009, to record her ninth and tenth CDs. The first, a much anticipated collaboration with her long time friend, New York shredder Popa Chubby – will feature the foot stomping, yodeling, country crooning, blues-a-billy that made Kane a mainstay on the Hollywood punk-try circuit and earned her a developmental deal in 1986 with CBS Epic. Look for a summer release on French label, Dixie Frog.
In 2009, Kane will also record a traditional blues CD for a Los Angeles based label, to be announced; featuring her smoking live band that includes 26 year old guitar virtuoso Laura Chavez, Kanes’ eldest son, Evan Caleb on drums and bass veteran, Paul Loranger. This newest effort will be chock full of the songs of triumph that have made Kane a favorite with enlightened congregations everywhere.
2008 has been an exciting year already, for Candye. She had major abdominal surgery in April and her first tests show that she has beaten back a rare form of pancreatic cancer! In August, she appeared in Cape Town, South Africa for the World Congress for people with disabilities with her United by Music show for special needs kids (www.unitedbymusic.eu). She just completed a month long tour of the Eastern United States and has set a date for her stage play, based on her memoir, "The Toughest Girl Alive.” It will open at the Diversionary Theater in San Diego at the end of January 09.
Candye is a survivor par excellence and her authenticity, fighting spirit and optimism are what keeps her shows passionate and honest and irresistible. One evening with Candye will keep the crowds coming back for more.
Join the jubilation by booking a Candye Kane shindig today!
As a boy growing up in Philadelphia, Skip Heller dove head first into music, literature and film. Reading by age 4, books were a wonderful way to keep restless young Skip out of trouble. In addition, he started asking his South Philly neighbors if they had any old records, and quickly amassed a stack of singles taller than he was, with everything from big band to doo-wop and lots of Dion. Life with his maternal Grandmother meant an almost constant immersion in movies, and Grandma — who was partially blind — required elaborate descriptions of the grainy black and white films they watched together. This constant exposure to words created a sophisticated wordsmith at a tender age. His hip grandmother also took Skip to an Elvis concert at just eight years old, instilling a love for roots music that has lasted a lifetime.
Presented with a guitar at 11 years old and subsequently given a vinyl copy of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, Skip was inspired to write his own music. He wrote his first song at 12 and started performing solo at school and church functions. By 15, he was playing every weekend in a Jewish society band, eventually finding his way into Philadelphia’s early 80’s jazz scene, gigging nightly before he’d even graduated high school.
Eventually, he migrated to Los Angeles, lured by the opportunity to study composition with exotica Godfather Les Baxter. Musician peers such as Dave Alvin and DJ Bonebrake encouraged him to stay in town. His knack for descriptive language and extensive knowledge about American music landed him some much-needed work writing for publications such as Pulse magazine and the LA Weekly. Within two years, he had produced, arranged, and/or played on three dozen discs in a variety of styles, including rhythm and blues, country, jazz, rockabilly, blues, and even Jewish and Mexican music.
As a leader, Skip has released sixteen records (see discography) and accompanied, produced and/or arranged music for such notables as NRBQ, Yma Sumac, Wanda Jackson, Todd Rundgren, and many more.
His latest effort, The Long Way Home (Ropeadope records) was released in November, 2009 and is already garnering rave reviews. Skip has never lost his lust for American music and it shows on this stellar effort, showcasing the mastery over words that he fine-tuned in his Grandmothers living room. All About Jazz calls him “genius by lightning strike” and calls Long Way Home “Perfection.” Sonic Boomers reported, “When you hear Heller perform, it feels like the sky has turned its most luminous blue and all the big white clouds are dancing in unison.”
Skip Heller’s songwriting is equal parts smart and sensual. His live show is captivating as he recalls vivid details and anecdotes, taking us on a musical journey that make us laugh and learn. His mastery over the guitar is impressive and prompted Sonic Boomers to say: “There just aren’t many people this soulful.”
