GAYE OL' TIME.

The snags of aging aside, Gaye Adegbalola is happier than ever singing the blues. Why? She's finally out

Blues singer Gaye Adegbalola faced an unexpected hurdle about ten years ago when she began her career: menopause. She and the two other members of Saffire: the Uppity Blues Women had anticipated difficulties as a newly formed all-female band, but the one thing they hadn't counted on was the stress three 40-something women can generate on the road.

"All of us were 44, 45, and we were like three bitches getting ready to kill each other--all of us just premenopausal, riding in a rickety van, fighting about the heat control," Adegbalola says. "We went to counseling, and the counselor told us to get three separate rooms on the road. Once we did that, it was a whole lot better."

This minor adjustment to the travel arrangements proved to be the key to the group's success--to date they've recorded six CDs. Now Adegbalola is releasing a solo album, Bitter Sweet Blues, that's full of originals reflecting her durable outlook on life--and, for the first time, her love of women.

Adegbalola's philosophy is summed up on Bitter Sweet Blues by two seemingly contradictory songs. "Big Ovaries, Baby," a brawny declaration of female power, reveals the grit of a woman whose adopted last name means "I'm reclaiming my royalty" in Nigerian. But the hymn "Let Go, Let God" expresses the adaptive spirit that's guided Adegbalola down her diverse paths. In her 55 years, Adegbalola has been a street-corner civil rights activist, the director of a small theater, a biochemical researcher, a mother, the state of Virginia's teacher of the year, and now a blueswoman.

One of her favorite phrases when recounting her life story is "Push came to shove." That's how she explains her decision to go from New York City's Harlem, where she knew Audre Lorde and fought for civil rights, back to her hometown of Fredericksburg, Va., where she supported her small son by teaching. And it's how she ended up a professional musician.

"I had always played in my bedroom late at night after my son went to sleep," she says. "Then push came to shove. He had a lot of eye surgery and I needed a second job, and it was either flinging burgers or playing music. I played three nights a week in a local bar for 25 bucks a night, and that what started the ball rolling."

By 1988 Adegbalola had turned that $25-a-night gig into a full-time job. Then came another curveball in 1992: She developed cancer. Unable to tour heavily, she was resigned to scaling back her career when she received an unexpected boost from her idol, veteran guitarist Rory Block. With Block to produce, Adegbalola had no trouble convincing her record company to get behind a solo album.

The new album has let Adegbalola express her homosexuality and feelings about coming out, themes she's kept muted until now. "Recently a lesbian who's seen a lot of our shows came running up to me and was just thrilled that now I was hers--that I was standing up and sticking out," she says. "I just figured it was about time."

Lehoczky writes regularly for the Chicago Tribune.