continued from Marin Independent Journal, February 9, 2007, Paul Liberatore
Comparisons to the Dixie Chicks are inevitable, but not completely accurate. Musically, Blame Sally is more Indigo Girls than country pop. But, like the Dixie Chicks, they have the courage to speak, or rather sing, their minds.

"When we went to Colorado, where my sister lives, she said, 'I'm warning you that you might not want to sing that song, 'If You Tell a Lie,' here,'" Harcourt remembers. "This is a red state and you may not get the reaction you're looking for. But Monica is very political, and when they told her that she scoffed and said, 'We're gonna sing it.' I admit that I was a little scared. I thought, 'Oh, no.' But we did it and got standing ovations. People responded more enthusiastically there than they do here."

Favorites at West Marin's Rancho Nicasio, they draw crowds of fans who enjoy their between-songs banter almost as much as their songs.

"They're girl-a-riffic," jokes Mike Love, singer with the Rancho Nicasio house band and writer of the Huey Lewis and the News hits "Doin' It All for My Baby" and "I Hope You Love Me Like You Say You Do."

"They have an interesting, quirky way of writing lyrics, a different slant on traditional ballads," he says. "They have a sense of fun. I think they're very cool."

Harcourt, previously in the mid-'90s band Ruby's Tattoo, celebrates her 51st birthday today. She co-engineered and recorded "Severland" in her Laurel Way Studio in Mill Valley.

A pretty woman with a tangle of short blond hair and blue eyes, she was dressed in casual Marin hip on this day - designer jeans, a necklace of black and white beads and a green jersey top with a hummingbird on the front.

The main songwriter in the band along with Pasqual, Harcourt wrote the title track, "Severland" as well as four more of the dozen songs on the album.

"Severland" reflects her painful breakup with Janet Mumford, her partner in their Sausalito graphic design business, i4Design, as well as in life. They have a 12-year-old daughter, Kendall, who attends Marin Horizon School.

"I wrote a lot of songs about that breakup," she says, staring into the middle distance. "You can get some good material out of a broken heart. For me, 'Severland' came from a place of deep regret and sorrow that I thought was never going to end.

"It was extra hard, having to come to work every day. But Kendall's been our priority, and this business is our livelihood, so neither of us could walk away from it. We had to hang in there and make it work.

"I wouldn't go into business with my lover again, though," she adds. "It takes a lot of romance out of the relationship. It was rough, but we've stayed good friends."

Harcourt writes about their bookish, soft-spoken daughter in the song "Orange," Kendall's favorite color. It includes the lines: "Her words are few and far / Unless there's a pen in hand / Then she'll write you out a story / About her mama's band."

Last year, Blame Sally reached a pinnacle in its career with a triumphant tour of sell-out shows in the Rocky Mountains.

"When you play at home, you're playing for your friends and fans, and naturally they're going to think you're great," she says. "But we were playing for complete strangers every night and it was like a lovefest. It was such a good feeling. It made me realize that this is what I want to be doing with my life."

Two weeks after she came home from the tour, though, Harcourt came crashing down to Earth when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a lumpectomy, six weeks of radiation treatment and hormone therapy that she'll be on for the next five years.

During her treatments, she had to take a leave from the band, working her medical schedule around occasional prestigious gigs like the Strawberry Music Festival. But when she recovered, she returned to music with a devotion and a passion that she hadn't experienced before.

"As it is for a lot of people who go through a life-changing experience, it made me really think about what I want to do with my life," she says. "So I'm making changes. I'm working less here, three days a week, so I have two days left for the band.

"I'm having to let go of the money thing and do what I love to do, and music is what I really love to do. That's always been my struggle. I've wanted to do music, but I've got a mortgage in Mill Valley and a kid in private school, so I said there's no way. But when I had that life-altering experience, I decided that I'm just gonna do it somehow."

At the same time, the other three women in the band - singer/songwriter Pasqual, guitarist/singer Jeri Jones and singer/drummer Pam Delgado - made a similar commitment.

"All four of us said, 'Let's go for it,'" Harcourt recalls. "We put our intention out there: Let's concentrate on making a living doing this. As a consequence, all these great things began happening. I don 't think that's a coincidence."

Named after a girlfriend who made one of the band members late for a rehearsal, Blame Sally has a devoted lesbian following.

"But there are a lot of straight people at our shows, too," Harcourt says with a smile. "And a lot of men love Blame Sally. ... Why? We're four good-lookin' women, that's why."

And they're more than just a band. That's clear in the music and the obvious affection they all seem to have for each other, especially during the hard times they suffered through last year with Harcourt's illness.

"This album has a little bit of darkness to it, more so than our previous albums," she says. "My diagnosis was definitely a big blow."

But, together, they got through it.

"We're very close," she says. "When we're on the road, it's like a vacation for us. We spend holidays together. We're like a family, the four of us.

"Actually," she adds after thinking about that last statement for a moment, "we're not like a family. We are a family."

IF YOU ROCK
What: Blame Sally, CD release party and concert
Where: Brava Theatre, 2841 24th Street, San Francisco