Live your life, play your part.

Let the feelings flow from your heart.

You can’t change the tide, you can’t change the sea

you just gotta be who you were born to be.

I wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for three things; music, my kids and God. As a child, I found out that I could make people like me, maybe even love me, if I could sing for them. I made music. I made love. I made love to keep making music. Music kept me going times got tough. Having a baby young was rough but it made me consider someone else’s needs. Made me hopeful about tomorrow. Made me want to be a better person. My kids kept me going when times got tough. 

First time I saw or met Candye was at the San Jose State Fountain Blues Festival, produced by Ted Gehrke. I went mostly because I had heard that Laura Chavez, the young former St. Francis basketball player who was in Janis Stevenson and Mike Sult’s Blues class at Foothill, Laura from down the block, was in Candye’s band.

The Candye I met was nothing like the sex object in this photo. She testified from the stage, between songs, about her battle with pancreatic cancer, and it was poignant. At that point my mom had survived two types of cancers but had not been diagonosed nor had she presented with the dementia that dominated the last years — nine years — of her life.

Candye Kane was a band leader, a story teller, mother of two fine boys — young men — and a creative person. I still have never seen any of the adult material that dominated her early years or how I first heard about her. (And was not interested in working with).

God bless Laura Chavez for her true friendship with Candye Kane.

Tonite I read “draft 10” of Candye’s play and it makes me want to repeat my vow that her story deserves an audience. I had made notes on a hard copy of Candye’s plan but do not recall if I ever shared them. I have no idea how the production differed from what I just read (and quoted from, above).

I think there could be a indie movie with known actors doing a treatment based on this script. Somehow it’s “Brian’s Song” mixed with “The Rose”. It’s like a King Lear story but also Falstaff. Isn’t there a Falstaff bit about grabbing some dead guy’s balls?

Is this a bad place to mention that I thought “Whole Lot of Rosie” by AC/DC was about a plus size groupie? So if I met Candye at Fountain Blues 2009 and she died in May, 2016, then I knew her the last 7 years of her life. I wish I had known her better. I sent her a text early one morning, me rising from The Phoenix after a gig or scouting rather: I called her “sweet and tough” like taffy.

Here’s a a whole lot of Candye. Tits the season. Form Candye Kane.