Candye Kane Continental Club, September 14

Candye Kane

Continental Club, September 14

Candye Kane doesn't have to be good. In fact, as she'd probably tell you herself, she'd much rather be bad. She most definitely plays music to swing by in both senses of the word, well-stocked with saucy double-entendre titles like "Eat It All Night Long." Supremely comfortable in her ample skin, the former adult movie star led off this set marking the release of her new CD Toughest Girl Alive with an ode to her plus-size status, "200 Pounds of Fun." It was more like 600, as Kane's Amazonian drag-queen pals Coochie and Adora patrolled the Continental, passing out cheez puffs from a picnic basket. As she detailed the laundry list of ways she's a "Wildcat for Your Love," the audience began putting those swing-dancing lessons to good use. Onstage, her Hawaiian-shirted fivepiece kept things light and breezy, even as the singer opened up her vocal throttle for a gospelicious "One More Day," then swung hard into the sassy jump blues of "She Was My Baby Last Night" and "Scream in the Night." Cordially bantering with the crowd (she was obviously among friends), Kane mentioned how glad she was that her van's transmission waited until just outside Austin to break down, and promised not to get naked this time, because "Steve said we'd have to charge a higher cover." Looking very Belle Starr in blood-red velvet fishnets, cowboy boots, and serious hair plumage, Kane hardly needed to disrobe to raise the room temperature, opting instead to do it vocally with the hard-to-misconstrue "Baby Let's Commit Adultery." Her voice, like her persona, is coquettish yet firm, occasionally brazen, but always with a wink and a smile that says "look but don't touch ... at least not yet." Sultry enough to coax Eartha Kitt out of her catsuit, with occasional detours into Angela Strehli's brassy belting and Ella's scoobity-bop scat, Kane's sense of fun and desire to let it all hang out were infectious. By the time she closed the set with "Eat It All Night Long," she had everybody in the club eating right out of her ... hand. Really now. What did you think I was going to say?