`READY WHEN'

If you don't like Kay Wolpers' music, try her kettle beef.

Saturday, Cape Girardeau singer Kay Wolpers will entertain and cook for 300 or so of her friends and friends-to-be at her Record Release Party. She'll debut "Ready When," a new novelty song she has written, somewhere between serving up mounds of her own chicken breasts, ham, kettle beef and cobblers.

Chances are everyone will like the music as much as the food because Wolpers has been fronting country bands quite nicely for more than two decades.

She has opened shows for some big names, including John Anderson, Christy Lane, the Bellamy Brothers and the Four Guys.

The party will begin at 6 p.m. at VFW Post 3838. The band Dirt Road Express will play.

Tickets are $15 and include door prizes and complimentary Champagne. They are available by calling (573) 651-3825, 335-4341, 335-2092 or 471-8574.

Children with parents are welcome to come for free.

Her current job has similarities to being in a band. She travels around the Midwest with a company that does glamour photography.

"Ready When" is based on her experiences in the business, a job that satisfies one of Wolpers' requirements for work.

"I have to have a job that's fun," she says. "It can't be serious."

"Ready When" are the words the glamour photographer utters when prepared to shoot a picture.

"It tells abut the outfits the girls are wearing and how they want to look thin with no bags under their eyes," Wolpers says of the record.

Buddy Emmons, one of the Nashville's premier steel guitarists, plays on the record along with the backup singing group called the Cates. Producing the record was Gary Buck, president of the Canadian Country Music Association.

Cassettes of the new song will be for sale at the party.

Wolpers began singing in church and at weddings. She was well on her way to raising her children before she began singing in honky-tonks.

"I didn't start singing in bars until I was 29. I'd never been in one until then," she said.

Her father was a church deacon. Wolpers thinks her mother finally has accepted her daughter's singing sideline.

She donated the quilt for Saturday night's silent auction.

Wolpers began recording as a naive hopeful. In 1975 she wrote a song called "Hardworking Man" and decided to sell it to Nashville.

She ended up giving a studio $2,400 and couldn't believe that was as far as the relationship was going to go.

"I went down there and started whining," she said, laughing now. "I didn't know anything about the music business."

Later on she made eight nationally-distributed records with a label called Caprice and signed a contract with a financial backer.

In 1982, she opened for Tammy Wynette and George Jones at Wynette's annual Fourth of July picnic in Malden.

She had a Southeast Missouri-based band called Southern Lovin', a name that embarrassed the other members enough that they changed it to the Outlaw Country Band.

Music never has been her real job, though. Wolpers had a beauty shop for a number of years and worked in record stores. "Doing whatever to make a living," she says.

One producer wanted to take her to Las Vegas but said she'd have to get rid of her boots and her steel guitar.

"I said I'm not getting rid of the steel guitar," she recalled. "Or my boots."