The Arizona Republic (article link)
March 15, 2001

Backstage Pass
By Kerry Lengel

It's hard enough trying to raise a family and build a career at the same time, but it's even worse for musicians, whose "job" entails driving across the country from nightclub to nightclub.

For Alley, one-name singer for Wise Monkey Orchestra , the solution is simple: bring the kids along.

"Actually," she says, "in some ways, it's better, because the people that do the 9-to-5 thing, the child's raised by a stranger in day care. For us, we get to spend the whole day with them, and then put them to bed and go to work."

Of course, it helps that her husband, Chad Stewart, is also a member of the band. At the moment, though, he's the baby-sitter, trying to keep daughter Jordan, 4, and son Zane, 11/2, occupied while his wife is being interviewed at a Tempe coffeehouse. They escape often, inevitably making a beeline for Mommy's lap.

Life will only get crazier when their third child is born in September. Alley, 30, says she's already bracing for all the jokes about "Cranky Pregnant Chick" from her bandmates.

Being "in a family way," she says, in no way interferes with her job of being the sexy front woman of an eight-piece funk band.

"I think pregnancy's very sexy," she says. "I've played until three weeks before. People love it. And there's a certain kind of energy that comes along with being pregnant that I know men just can't understand. You've got this energy from another human being, and sometimes I thought that I performed the best when I was really pregnant."

Wise Monkey marks its 10th anniversary this year, although the only original member is multi-instrumentalist Sean Hart. The band's third singer, Alley joined in 1993, and soon thereafter members voted to move from Arizona to San Diego for a fresh start.

Since then, WMO's mix of funk, rock and jazz has become a staple of the San Diego scene (though Alley, Chad and drummer Bruce Stodola once again live in the Valley). And while the band calls its music "kinetic soul," it has also been adopted into the national community of independent "jam bands."

Alley is less than enthusiastic about the jam band tag, and though she's grateful for the group's following of eclectic music lovers, she can't restrain herself from making wisecracks about "the tapers, the hippies, the massage therapists of the world."

"The jam band thing doesn't really tell you what kind of music it is," she says. "It just tells you that you're definitely going to be able to smoke pot in the parking lot during the set break."

Nonetheless, Wise Monkey recently released its fifth album, They Live, on independent Lauan Records - "the jamband label." The live set features sax solos by Dave Ellis (Charlie Hunter Trio, Ratdog) and highlights the band's energetic, groove-oriented sound.

A new studio disc is also in the works for Lauan, and Alley says she figures Wise Monkey can easily last another decade, despite the fact that its music is out of step with Top 40 trends.

"I don't want to have these rock star fantasies," she says. "That's not the reason I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I enjoy it, because it's a passion for me, it's a therapy for me, it's religion for me. It's something that I have to do."