Jazz diva Candye Kane has fewer reasons to sing the blues these days, but that won’t stop her from belting out her signature tunes at Little Italy’s Anthology, Sunday Feb. 24.

The mother of two, who came from a broken, abusive home, has overcome the odds to win fans worldwide.

Kane, who had a short stint in the adult industry when she was living as a single mom, released her first album, Home Cookin’ in 1992 with Antones Records. She didn’t fit the mold for most major labels, but the buxom beauty soared to popularity. She has won the Best Blues Band category at the San Diego Music Awards seven times, including a nod in 2006, and was an SDMA Artist of the Year. With her new release, Guitar’d and Feathered, Kane is bringing more of her unique style to the stage.

Hot on the heels of a European tour, Kane took time out to answer a few questions, and plug her upcoming show, which will also feature local entertainer Sue Palmer.

Gay & Lesbian Times: After your time with the adult industry and major label failure, how did singing the blues save you?

Candye Kane: Well, first off, let me make clear that my time in the adult business was only three to four years. It is curious how this always becomes the primary focus of interviews with me, even though at 45 years old, that four-year period is way less than 10 percent of my life. I have spent far more time raising two children, one in college in New York and one playing drums onstage each night, and making records. I had a scholarship at 14 to USC music conservatory as an opera singer and appeared on the Ted Mack amateur hour and the gong show among other amateur contests. Yes, I did lose a deal in 1986 with CBS Epic but went on to sign with Antones in 1992 and have made eight CDs since then.

I don’t know that singing “blues” particularly has saved me, but just singing in general. I write songs that are good therapy for me; songs that inspire me and keep me off the psychiatrist’s couch. I share these songs with an audience and when they give a positive response, it becomes a mutually affirmative relationship. I think performing and sharing my stories through music has really saved me. The genre in particular is not as important as the act of deliverance. I sing jazz, gospel, French and Spanish language songs, swing, country, rockabilly, blues and hillbilly. That being said, yes of course, the blues is near and dear to me. Blues history has given us many amazing, powerful women who often tackled provocative and political subjects; Memphis Minnie, in particular, with her songs about prostitution; Billie Holiday with “Strange Fruit”; Bessie Smith who performed provocative songs in bathhouses. Women of size and substance and ambiguous sexuality like Big Mama Thornton, Big Maybelle and Alberta Hunter have paved the way for me to be myself in this music but it is still a journey. I am becoming a better interpreter of this music as I age and I think that this music also becomes richer as it ages. In that way, the blues has forgiven me for my youth and ignorance and rewarded me for my age and wisdom. The blues, as a music genre, has embraced me because of my size and sexuality when other genres marginalized me.

GLT: How did those experiences prepare you for this phase (touring and recording) of your life?

CK: I have no regrets about the choices I have made in life. I did what I needed to do to survive as a single mom and a poor person of modest means. Because I have had a wide variety of life experience, I think I have more compassion and tolerance for myself and for others who are outside the cultural norm. I am able to bring my depth of life experience to my music and I think it shows. My voice is better and richer today than it was when I was a young woman. I have more soul now. As for the touring parts, well, that gets a bit harder with age, I feel it more in my joints and lower back than I used to in my 20s, but each night I am rejuvenated by the audience and the music, and all my energy surges back.

GLT: What about the blues speaks to you? What is the message you want your audience to come away with?

CK: Again, I use music as an instrument to make myself feel better. I write a song like “The Toughest Girl Alive,” or “I’m Not Gonna Cry Today,” to heal myself during a low point and often hear from fans who are also healed by the song. Every night when I sing it, I am healed again. A song like “The Lord Was a Woman” or “I’m in Love With a Girl” might speak to a gay or transgender person to realize they are not alone.

Of course historically blues was also used as an escape from extreme oppression. Call and response songs were a way to make the brutal work of the day go more quickly. Blues has a raw honesty that other music lacks. It still has that mystical healing quality for me and for the audience. I am satisfied when an audience leaves feeling a little bit more hopeful about themselves and their bodies. This music and performing brings me joy and sometimes I am successful in transplanting that joy to a crowd.

GLT: You have said that you were kept alive by the gay and rockabilly communities. How so?

CK: I have always been a champion of the disenfranchised, just by virtue of my background. I was born into a dysfunctional family of blue-collar alcoholics, schizophrenics, criminals and shoplifters. I was a teenage mom who turned to hard drugs, sexual experimentation and sex work to survive. I am a fat, over 40 woman, and yet I dance and jiggle on stage, dress sexy and embrace my age and my size. Gays, lesbians, and transgender people, fat women and people who love them, porn fans, drag queens, fetish communities and rockabilly kids hired me for their clubs and festivals when the blues people were terrified of my sexual persona or treated me like a joke. They have literally paid my bills and kept me working when I couldn’t get a break from blues purists. The mainstream blues people seem to have forgotten that much of blues history was forged by women who stood up, unashamed of their gender or their sexuality. The mainstream blues organizations have often dismissed me as a novelty act just based on a rumor they have heard about me and/or my stage show. Even Bob Margolin (the producer of my latest CD) tells a story of how everyone he asked mentioned my pornographic past and that I played piano with my breasts. Nary a mention of the music was heard.

GLT: What are the complications of being a mom on the road while your sons were growing up? What were the joys?

CK: It’s a cruel irony that now that my body is slowing down a bit and I long to be at home more, both of my children are grown and moved out. My youngest is in college in New York, my eldest is my drummer in my band. I was driven to succeed in music both for myself and for my kids. I named my publishing company Evans Hope music, indicating that “Evan’s hope” would be for me to get a hit song. That hasn’t happened yet, but having a mother who lived her dream of being a musician has certainly allowed both my children to pursue their own musical ambitions. I didn’t start touring full time until my youngest was five years old, but they did have to learn to survive without a full-time mommy around. I used to make these little calendars for my youngest, Tommy, and illustrate them; showing mom at the Eiffel tower and Tommy doing his homework back home. Music took me away from them but it also afforded me the chance to bring them around the world with me. I would sometimes hire my ex-husband. Instead of paying him a salary, we’d agree to use his portion to pay for the boys plane tickets. They served Jell-O shooters in Dallas, and slept backstage at the Grand Emporium in Kansas City. They traveled to Greece, France, Germany, Belgium, Australia, Reunion Island, Spain and Italy as youngsters, all because of the music.

GLT: What is it like touring with your son as a member of the band?

CK: Well, I had him when I was 16 so we are more like siblings than mother/son. We have a very interesting, unusual relationship. I don’t think it inhibits him very much, but I find myself going back to the hotel early and not being as wild as I might be if he weren’t here. He is a good influence on me. He longs for me to be taken seriously as an artist. He encourages me to leave the more sexual songs out of my show and to concentrate on my serious song writing. I think this is good advice.