Raised in a dysfunctional, blue-collar family, Candye 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. Ten cds, six record labels, millions of international road miles and countless awards later, Miss Kane has proven to be a true survivor as she 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, Dave Alvin, The Blasters, X, Fear and Los Lobos, to name just a few. While raising two sons, this role model for the disenfranchised, 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.

Her full time, 250 days a year touring schedule started in 1992 and today, 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 “fat 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.

Kane’s eleventh CD release, Sister Vagabond will hit the streets on August 16, 2011 for the Delta Groove Label. Produced by Candye and her amazing guitarist Laura Chavez, Sister Vagabond promises to be as exciting as their last collaboration, Superhero, nominated for Best Contemporary Blues CD
of the year. Audiences love seeing two curvy gals onstage together and Candye and Laura deliver the goods. With scorching, yet understated guitar work and empowering, healing and sometimes funny lyrics, Kane and Chavez are the feminist fireballs of the future.

Candye has been included in countless Blues and Jazz Anthologies including the Rolling Stone and Musichounds Guide to Jazz and Blues and Dan Akroyds’ 30 Essential Women of the Blues. In addition to her music successes, she is an activist and philanthropist. In August 2009, she appeared in Dublin, Ireland for the World Congress for Downs Syndrome with her United by Music charity http://www.unitedbymusic.euThis project provides performance opportunities, blues history lessons and songwriting instruction to young people with disabilities, encouraging them to write their own blues songs to help them overcome their daily challenges.

A fighter par excellence, Candye’s authenticity, determination and optimism keep her shows passionate, honest and irresistible. One evening with Candye will keep the crowds happy, hopeful and coming back for more!

People are talking about Candye!

“A Blues Diva of the 20th century who can liven up any party without shedding a stitch.” – People Magazine

“A true celebrity diva” – New Yorker Magazine

“This tough cookie wails with a rousing confidence, affirmation of identity, the courage of her convictions and wisdom beyond her years.” – Downbeat
Magazine

“A serious and seriously powerful singer who lays it all on the line” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A voice that is a natural wonder – like the Grand Canyon.” – The Washington Post

“Candye Kane has that big, brassy voice that has authority and sass; the kind of thing men like because its seductive and women like because its
powerful” – BB King to the San Diego Reader

“If you haven’t taken Candye Kane seriously before, now is the time to listen. This is a great album and the best of her career.” – Richard Ludmerer/
Blueswax

“Laura Chavez is not just a rising star. She’s already arrived.” – Vintage Guitar Player Magazine

“An Older and Wiser blues diva” – All Music guide

“A smart sassy blues diva mama with a powerhouse voice and a generous frame “ – Style Weekly

“Bawdy, brassy and gloriously omnisexual, the plus sized singer belts out the blues like nobodys business” – Dallas Voice

“The Most powerful and entertaining female blues singer of her generation” – Bluesbytes.com

“A natural born, supremely gifted vocalist who can sing her humanity while touching ours” – Illinois Blues.com

The release and touring behind Murali Coryell’s latest CD release “Sugar Lips” has drawn praise from such music heavyweights as Jimmy Webb, Judy Collins and Joe Louis Walker.
Acclaimed by Billboard, CNN, Rolling Stone, & The New York Times, singer/guitarist/songwriter Murali Coryell is a rising force in contemporary American music. As the son of jazz guitar legend Larry Coryell and author/actress Julie Coryell and grandson of TV, film and stage actress Carol Bruce, Murali was born into an entertainment family. Murali has a voice, a guitar style and a musical intuition that enable him to excel at many different kinds of music. To quote Mark Uricheck in reviewing “Sugar Lips” in Living Blues Magazine “He can play beer-soaked blues until last call, and he can also hang with more pop-tinged material-think a grittier, bluesier John Mayer.”

“Murali’s latest CD “Sugar Lips” released November 17, 2009 reached # 5 on the Living Blues Radio Chart was recorded in Nashville with Grammy nominated producer Tom Hambridge featuring special guest stars Joe Louis Walker and Larry Coryell. The CD has also garnered features and rave reviews in Guitar Player Magazine, Elmore Magazine, Living Blues, and newspapers across the United States. Murali Coryell can be seen this year performing extensively as a featured artist with Joe Louis Walker. Murali has toured as the supporting act for B.B. King and played with Buddy Guy, Levon Helm, George Clinton, George Thorogood & Gavin DeGraw among others. Murali’s music can be heard on independent, college, blues, internet, Pandora and public radio. As a performer, songwriter and producer Murali has built up a body of hook laden classic and contemporary blues, rock and soul songs that have appeared in TV, film and been covered by other artists.

Over the course of multiple solo CD’s as well as in collaboration with his father Larry and brother Julian, Murali has recorded the songs of Sam Cooke, Al Green, Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Charles Mingus and Marvin Gaye as well as the Chess Chicago blues classics on the CD co-produced by Marshall Chess “2120″. Murali’s voice and guitar has been heard on NBC’s TV show “Crossing Jordan”. Murali Coryell is a fully realized artist in complete control of a voice with soul to burn and the tastiest of guitar chops.

She wields an electric guitar as if it were a wand. — LOS ANGELES TIMES

Debbie Davies is an award-winning singer, songwriter, guitar player of extraordinary talent. A professional
musician since the early 1980s, Debbie ranks among the top blues artists in the country. She has received ten
nominations for Blues Music Awards, and in 1997 and 2010 won the award for Best Contemporary Female
Blues Artist.

Live April 27th

Look in any book on the History of Rock and Roll and you will find Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. This 8 piece super band was Billboard Magazine International’s WORLDS BEST LIVE BAND in 1974-75 and their album Deep in the Heart of Texas is one of Rolling Stone Magazine & top 100 albums of all time.

Its no wonder-Billy C Farlow, the lead singer, also played trumpet and blues harp.The fiddler, Andy Stein, played saxophone; the guitar player, Bill Kirchen, played trombone, and Cody -the piano pounder- doubled on Kazoo. AND THEY ALL SANG except Cody, of course, who bellowed. They made 7 original albums and the individual players all had their own bands and the CD total for the LPA is over 20.

Since the breakup in 1977, each band member has continued the legend by fronting their own smaller groups-sitting in with each other bands and doing the occasional band revival (see Prairie Home Companion 1/14/01). Each has produced award – winning albums and CD (Cody and Kirchen Stein and Farlow) and keep in touch by getting together regularly. The Commander Cody Band with Cody – having moved to the East Coast in 1997 – is going strong in the new century and still does KICK BUTT on a nightly basis….. still doing festivals- giant biker conventions – various sizes of college concerts as well as the usual suspects (sleazy, downhome/uptown and/or very posh bars) – and best of all Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise extravaganzas.

Today Commander Cody Band features Mark Emerick on Guitar, Steve Barbuto on Drums, Chris Olsen on pedal steel, and Randy Bramwell on Bass – of course all vocalize. Cody is still trying to pound his electric piano into submission. The band has been touring the US for the last 10 years. They recorded a new studio album-the first in 20 years – from the Woodstock studio of producer Professor Louie (of Crowmatics fame ) -it features the new band players and was released on April 21 2009 by Blind Pig Records.The title; Drunks Dopers and Everyday Losers – and has 14 great tracks-some new some classics redone (better) and a few surprises. Still rockin the USA and the world!

HISTORY

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen was a country rock band formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The band’s name was inspired by 1950s film serials featuring the character Commando Cody and from a feature version of an earlier serial, King of the Rocket Men, released under the title Lost Planet Airmen. The band’s founder and leader, George Frayne, took the stage name Commander Cody.

The band’s style was basically a mixture of country music, rockabilly, and blues with a foundation of boogie-woogie piano. It became legendary for marathon live shows, but many felt that the spirit of those performances was never fully captured in the band’s recordings. In addition, they were among the very first country-rock bands to take their cues less from folk-rock and bluegrass and more from hardcore barroom country of the Ernest Tubb, Ray Price style, and to incorporate Western Swing into their style along with rockabilly and rhythm and blues. Other bands, such as Asleep at the Wheel, would later follow a similar pattern.

After several years spent playing in local bars, core members of the group migrated to San Francisco (along with Asleep at the Wheel) and scored a recording contract with Paramount Records. The group’s first album release, titled Lost in the Ozone, arrived in late 1971 and yielded the group’s best-known hit, a version of the country song Hot Rod Lincoln, which reached the top ten on the Billboard singles chart in early 1972. They then moved to Texas; the band’s 1974 live recording, Live from Deep in the Heart of Texas features cover art of armadillos by Jim Franklin, and the band released several moderately-successful albums through the first half of the decade. After appearing in the Roger Corman movie Hollywood Boulevard, Frayne disbanded the group in 1976. The core members of this version of the band were Frayne, John Tichy, Billy C. Farlow, Bill Kirchen, Andy Stein, Paul “Buffalo” Bruce Barlow, Lance Dickerson, and Bobby Black on pedal steel. John Tichy, now Dr. John A. Tichy, is former head of the the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, having earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

The 1976 book Star-Making Machinery by Geoffrey Stokes was an analysis of music industry production and marketing using Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen as its primary case study.

Retaining his stage name of Commander Cody, Frayne has a solo career, touring and releasing albums from 1977 to the present day; some later albums were released under the Lost Planet Airmen name.