The Queen of Steam

The lady's leather-less. But even so ...

"I had a guy crawl across the floor one time," says Michele Lundeen. "I get a lot of requests for a song called 'I Need a Dog.' When I performed it, I used to bring dog biscuits. He ate them out of my hand."

R&B Meets S&M? No, but the lady dominates a stage with a roar and a growl that command attention, such as when she sings, "I'm a real woman, and I'm never gonna quit. I'm a real woman, and what you see is what you get."

Yes, ma'am.

"I'm a sassy mama," says the San Diego-based blues belter -- nicknamed The Queen of Steam -- whose travels along the Southwest music circuit wind through Henderson tonight for a free performance at the Events Plaza on Water Street.

"I saw her in B.B. King's club in Memphis and the place was packed, abut 300 people, and she was playing her set," says Michael Kinsman, an admirer and president of a group of blues boosters called Blues Lovers United of San Diego. "She has a bit of a swagger to her, and she got to a point where the music stopped and it was an amazing thing. It's almost as if the crowd was afraid to say anything because of her demeanor onstage. Not that she was intimidating, but she was that magnetic a personality that the audience was fully in her grip."

For a performer who sparks parallels to the earthy Bonnie Raitt and earthier Janis Joplin, Lundeen is engagingly sweet, soft-spoken, even giggly in an interview. But onstage, she looks like she could eat any pop tart -- Britney, Jessica, the bubble-gum princess of the moment -- for a pre-breakfast nosh.

Singing is a full-body workout for Lundeen. She does project a shaggy, Joplin-esque power onstage, a live wire of locomotive energy that seems about to escape the constraints of her body, her legs, arms, hips and perpetual-motion rump pumping to the beat. Her sound is suffused with a gutbucket grittiness, and as much as she carries the music, the music carries her.

"I've sung all sorts of styles throughout my career, but I've always been partial to the blues -- sure, pick the genre that pays the least amount of money," she jokes. "But it's fun doing something I feel I was born to do, and to do it onstage makes my heart soar."

Dubbed The Queen of Steam by a disc jockey in Reno, where she lived and performed before relocating to San Diego 10 years ago, her bold, brassy style caught the ears of the local media. "She's not a shrinking violet, that's for sure, there's a real visceral impact," says George Varga, pop music critic for the San Diego Union-Tribune. "Critically speaking, it might be nice if there was a little more nuance. But she gets caught up in the spirit of the music she's performing and it's hard to argue with that."

Varga also was impressed by Lundeen's commitment to take the blues from nightclubs to classrooms in a program called Blues in the Schools. Lundeen visits elementary schools, filling students in on the connect-the-dots history of music they likely weren't aware birthed the artists they admire. "All the music the kids really know about, rock 'n' roll and rap and hip-hop, we share with them that the blues are the roots and the rest of the music is the fruit, the old Muddy Waters quote," she says. "We have lessons about how the blues are over a hundred years old, the legend of W.C. Handy, then the spinoffs of jazz and rock 'n' roll."

Her self-produced CD, "Songs Inside Me," largely was penned by Lundeen, only three of the 12 tracks bearing another composer's credit. Personal empowerment, unrequited love and, yes, the dog song (presumably about wanting the genuine species as opposed to a canine-minded human crawling toward her onstage) are the themes. But while she's flattered by comparisons to blues powerhouses -- Aretha Franklin and Etta James are other names routinely tossed into her performance profile -- she's quick to add that, "I do have my own style and the energy to back it."

Clearly she's an original who's got audiences eating (dog biscuits) out of the palm of her hand.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.