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Candye Kane puts her life on stage

Toughest Girl Alive" traces musician’s hard-knock past and redemption; previews began Thursday at Moxie Theater
GeorgeVarga/Sandiegotribune.com - The darkest and most disturbing moments in Shakespeare’s plays and Wagner’s operas almost seem like cotton candy TV sitcom fodder compared to the real-life travails San Diego blues vocal dynamo Candye Kane experienced growing up.

While her parents-to-be were on their honeymoon in Las Vegas, Kane’s father was arrested for embezzlement. He was serving time at Chino State Prison when she was born. Her mother’s side of the family suffered from alcoholism and mental illness — Kane’s grandmother and maternal aunt both spent time in psychiatric hospitals — and Kane was just 9 when her mother taught her to shoplift.

It was a prelude to even worse things to follow.

Kane joined a gang in East Los Angeles, where she grew up. She became an unwed mother at 17, a year before she started working in the pornography industry (she said she was raped during her first nude modeling job). Then came bouts of intravenous drug use, during which time she’d leave her young son with her mother. (“Even though my mom was dysfunctional,” Kane said, “she was less dysfunctional than I was at the time.”)

These harrowing travails — and Kane’s successful struggle to rise above them — inspired her autobiographical musical, “The Toughest Girl Alive” (which is also the title of one of her 10 solo albums). It remains to be seen if the play will find Kane demonstrating her uniquely hard-hitting, no-hands piano playing approach.

The play began previews on Thursday, Jan. 13, and opens a three-week run Saturday at Moxie Theatre. Adapted and directed from Kane’s memoirs by San Diego Ballet co-director Javier Velasco, it features 25 of her songs and her touring band (which includes her oldest son Evan, now 30, on drums).

“I definitely wasn’t just a victim,” Kane said. “There were a lot of decisions in my life I made of my own volition. I put myself in bad situations and paid the price.”

As harrowing as Kane’s early life was, her tale is ultimately one of tenacity and redemption in the face of dizzying odds (most recently, the nine-hour surgery she underwent in 2008 for pancreatic cancer).

“We didn’t homogenize it for any audience, although children are obviously discouraged from attending,” said Kane, a bisexual, divorced mother of two adult sons, who credits her move to San Diego in the late 1980s for helping to turn her life around.

“This musical has every dark aspect of who I am and where I came from. It was tough to write because I’m a positive person who uses self-affirmation every day, so it was a challenge. But that’s what humanizes it all. It’s not fiction, it’s real. This happened — and I’m still here.”

Kane's tenacity in the face of such formidable challenges appealed to Moxie Theater, the women-led San Diego theater company, that has won acclaim for its bold vision and daring productions.

"Moxie is thrilled to be producing the world premiere of a show that truly fulfills our mission to create more diverse and honest images of women for our culture," said Moxie Artistic Director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg.

"There are few women who have lived a life as rich and diverse as Candye's or who are as open and honest about how they've lived their lives. We believe the most thrilling part of her story is that she tells it without shame or regret and we at Moxie say: 'Hell yeah' to that! We feel honored to know her and excited to share her story with our audience."

Noted for her sometimes bawdy and irreverent performing persona, Kane cuts a bigger-than-life figure, on stage and off. “The Toughest Girl Alive” wisely offers some comic relief among the way.

“There’s an element of humor in much of my story,” she said. “The way I survived the darker elements of my life was by taking a lot of things with a grain of salt. After all, not everybody’s mom teaches them to shoplift!”

SWEET INSPIRATION

Candye Kane started her musical career as a twangy country roots singer, before she discovered the blues and had a musical epiphany. Here are three of the artists she cites as major influences:

Memphis Minnie: Born Lizzie Douglas in Louisiana on June 3, 1897, she got her start playing in circuses. A robust singer and guitarist, she achieved success in a male-dominated blues world, and her late-1920s song “Bumble Bee” (recorded with her first husband, Kansas Joe McCoy) provided the template for Muddy Waters’ classic “Honey Bee.” Minnie died Aug. 6, 1973.

Kane: “Not only was she a great female guitar player at a time when there weren’t very many, but she wrote a lot of songs about street-walking and prostitution, and was rumored to have participated in those activities at different times in her life, so that was an inspiration for me.”

Big Maybelle: Born Mabel Louise Smith in May 1924, this big-voiced singer was an early member of the Sweethearts of Rhythm, the pioneering, all-women jazz band. Her solo career ignited in the 1950s, thanks to such classic songs as “The Gabbin’ Blues,” “Way Back Home,” “Candy” and “Whole Lotta Shakin Goin’ On” (which preceded Jerry Lee Lewis’ hit version).

Kane: “She embraced her large-sized body and had a sense of humor about it. She wasn’t afraid to be a sexual being, even though she was much larger than most women in those days. She and Memphis Minnie were popular during a very conservative, Victorian era, and I found that to be very inspirational.”

Ruby Presnell: The lead singer of veteran San Diego band Ruby Blue, she sings blues, jazz, R&B and funk with infectious verve. The current edition of Ruby Blue teams her with three San Diego jazz mainstays, bassist Rob Thorsen, guitarist Bob Boss and drummer Richard Sellers.

Kane: "I saw Ruby sing music that I thought was reservedfor African-Americans. She was so pretty and, as the daughter of Harve Presnell, the actor, it can be assumed by some that she grew up leading a life of privilege. When Isaw her perform the first time -- this poised, attractive blonde -- I realized that maybe (singing the blues) was more based on honesty and soul than on race."

“The Toughest Girl Alive: An Autobiographical Musical by Candye Kane”
When: 8 p.m. Thurdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 24 only, 8 p.m.; through Feb. 6

Where: Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego

Tickets: Previews ( Friday), $20; Opening night (Saturday) $40; Thursday and Sunday matinees, $22; Fridays and Saturdays, $25; $5 off general admission for seniors, students and military. Attendance is for “mature audiences only.”