The DelRayz

Let’s hear it for gender diversity in the workplace. After tearing up Valley gin joints for the better part of two decades in mainly all-female bands, blueswomen Rochelle Raya and Nancy Dalessandro have relaxed their ladies-only policy and launched a new group with some help from the less-fair sex. Not that Raya and Dalessandro ever hurt for lack of a Y-chromosome-carrying collaborator. Both are inductees of the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame, and both were founding members of Sistah Blue, one of the Valley’s most decorated and commercially successful funk-soul-blues acts. After playing their final Sistah Blues show last year, singer/harmonicist Raya and guitarist Dalessandro made it an all-gender affair by joining forces with a trio of talented journeymen: guitarist James Robertson (formerly of Sweetfinger), bassist Scott Alamprese (Whiskey River) and drummer-vocalist Dale Loyola, who once did a stint with Ray Charles. The resulting band — named, presumably, after a short-lived Chevrolet car model from the late ’50s — plays the same mix of classic covers and soul-infused originals that made the old band so popular. Back when it was all sistahs.