CANDYE KANE "SISTER VAGABOND" Source: Bitch Magazine Date: 12/2011 Writer: K.C.

Candye Kane "Sister Vagabond"

Take a cue from “You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore” – Candye Kane is a “Hard Knock Gal” who’s way beyond your taunts and jibes. She’s been around the block and back: Sex-work advocate, LGBTQ activist, former teen-welfare mom, stripper, and porn star are just some of her resume highlights. Plus, the former women’s studies major has weathered the slings and arrows of SoCal punk and hardcore testosterone-clones back in the day, received the cold shoulder from her label when her libertine past came to light, and more recently, won a battle with pancreatic cancer. Kane’s been there, and it shows on her 11th full length album, Sister Vagabond.

ON the streamlines “Down with the Blues,” her voice rings out clear and true over the guitars of Laura Chavez and Nathan James, which weave and wander in the back ground. A hard won confidence streams off Kane’s full-throated renditions of “I Deserve Love” a song propelled beautifully by Billy Watson’s harmonica work. Chavez’s supple, thoroughly joyful turns on guitar provide effortless blues lines while functioning almost as a duet partner for Kane on covers like “I Love to Love You” and “Sweet Nothin’s.

On “Walkin’, Talkin’ Haunted House,” Kane takes her belting voice down to an anguished alto. Kane may be as haunted as the song title suggests – she confesses as much in the liner notes about ghosts of former lovers who dwell in her “hollowed heart” – but she’s found a way out, toward redemption, by channeling her troubles through these spirited songs.