For 50 years, singer Mary Jane Alm has been Minnesota's queen of near misses

With her long blond hair, lacy white blouse and faded denim bell-bottoms, singer Mary Jane Alm looked like she was auditioning to play Joni Mitchell circa 1969. She adopted her "ninth grade look" — complete with hoop earrings, three necklaces and cowgirl boots — for a Songs of Laurel Canyon tribute featuring the tunes of the Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Mitchell.

"I don't know a single woman singer-songwriter who didn't feel that Joni Mitchell is the one," Alm said recently onstage at Crooners in Fridley. "She's the most resilient, heroic woman there is. She had to learn how to walk twice [childhood polio, adult brain aneurysm], to sing again and play guitar and she's doing it again at almost 80 years old."

This weekend, Alm, veteran of tribute shows and countless other gigs, will celebrate her 50th anniversary of performing. The first one was solo at age 18 in July 1973 at a Holiday Inn bar in her Mankato hometown. Her golden gigs Saturday and Sunday at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres will feature her longtime Twin Cities band and a parade of guests including her guitarist son Sam Frederick.

The self-effacing Alm wasn't going to observe her jubilee, but a neighbor with a marketing background gave her a big nudge last fall.

"I picked the Chanhassen because it's a big part of my history," said Alm, who has never had a proper manager. "I actually did two theatrical productions there, and then the whole tribute [band trend] started with them asking me if my band would play in one of their smaller clubs." Instead she suggested that the theaters book her brand new Fleetwood Mac tribute show.

Alm's Minnesota-centric career has been an embarrassment of riches and a series of near misses. She has performed everywhere from the Ordway to We Fest, from the State Fair to the Red Carpet in St. Cloud. She won 14 Minnesota Music Awards back in the day, including artist of the year.

"How did that happen?" she said. "I was super embarrassed the year [1981] I tied with Prince for artist of the year. C'mon you guys, really? It took a long time to live that down. Now it's really fun to talk about my younger self tying with Prince."

One of the most acclaimed Minnesota singers in the '70s and '80s, Alm came close to signing a major record deal a few times.

In the late '70s, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary made a demo tape with Alm and took it to Albert Grossman, the big-shot manager of Bob Dylan, who promised her a contract with his Bearsville Records. It never arrived.

"This is how naïve and lacking in business sense I was: I was afraid that I would turn out to be a one-hit wonder like Mary MacGregor [of 'Torn Between Two Lovers' fame] because that's who Peter Yarrow had just produced," Alm confessed. "So I said to Albert Grossman, 'I'm hoping someone else will produce the record and not Peter Yarrow.' That was a stupid thing to do. Peter was the only reason we were there."

Still, the opportunities kept coming.

In 1986, Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall raved about Alm's audition in his New York office and instead of offering her a contract, he arranged a tryout in Nashville, where the executives at Capitol Records declared her "not country enough."

The following year, Bob Gaudio, producer of the Four Seasons, flew Alm to Los Angeles and then decided that her material was "too country for L.A."

Doors finally opened in Nashville in the early '90s when the Mary Jane Alm Band landed a development deal with Warner Bros. Their single was going to be "Safe in the Arms of Love," but their Music City talent scout got jettisoned by Warner Bros. along with all her projects. A few years later, Alm saw a video on CMT of Martina McBride singing that same tune, and she began crying.

"I don't sing as good as Martina McBride," Alm acknowledged, "but our version is better."

How many near misses can one singer endure?

"I don't have any regrets at all," Alm said. "Ultimately, I loved all of it. It's been so much fun. It still is. The journey has been ah-mazing. I don't know if I would have had my kids. I feel like it happened the way it was supposed to happen. I've had a wonderful music career for 50 fricking years and it's still going."

She attributes her longevity to her versatility.

"I never wanted to do just my songs. Because I love all these great songwriters and I want to be part of their songs. I love country but I love pop. I love it all."

'There's no ego'

Sitting barefoot in a floral print dress in her Plymouth home on a July afternoon, the queen of near misses exuded upscale hippie vibes. She showed off her late mother's self-published memoir about starting an alternative school, and the corn crib her husband repurposed into a backyard retreat. Her face lit up as she talked about her three out-of-town adult children, a guitarist, a video-game composer and a dancer who has choreographed videos for indie stars Sylvan Esso and Sharon Van Etten.

Minneapolis entertainment producer/activist Marian Moore has known Alm since the '80s. They worked together with the all-star Women Who Cook, who traveled to Russia in 1988, and as recently as last year collaborated on an Enbridge Line 3 pipeline protest song.

"She's one of the kindest, sweetest, most loving people," Moore said, "and I think she brings all of that depth of emotion into the songs she interprets."

Andrew Walesch, a musician and talent booker, observed special qualities about Alm when he presented her at Crooners.

"There's sort of this gentle warmth. She's very positive and very relaxed onstage and that allows the audience to sit back and relax, as well," he said. "There's no tension or trying to show off or prove herself. There's no ego."

Since majoring in flute at Mankato State University, Alm has made a living exclusively through music and not just singing "Willin'" — the Little Feat tune made famous by Linda Ronstadt — onstage nearly 5,000 times. She taught music for 16 years at the now defunct Institute of Production & Recording (IPR) and McNally Smith College of Music and recorded jingles, including "We're Gonna Win Twins" and Dairy Queen's "We Treat You Right."

Rocky beginnings

"I was actually shy. I didn't say anything between songs. It was super scary," she said of her early Holiday Inn solo gigs the summer she graduated from high school. "I made 100 bucks a night. In 1973, that's not too bad."

Soon thereafter, Alm's guitar teacher invited her to play in her first band.

"This girl came up to me on the break and said, 'Someday you're going to be a really good singer but right now you have no business singing Bonnie Raitt [songs]. You need to go get your face ground in the dirt a little bit,'" Alm said. "I was devastated and I went outside the bar and I was just sobbing. She was right, in a way. That was a defining moment."

Truth be told, being Bonnie Raitt wasn't the goal.

"In my early days, I really wanted to be Linda Ronstadt," Alm said. "She was a from-the-heart singer. Even though she didn't write these songs, she made them her own. That's probably why I'm all over the place [musically]."

Not only did Alm sing everything from rock to country to jazz in countless bars ("I can still smell the combination of smoke and beer and vomit"), but she also released three albums of original material.

These days, she performs nearly every weekend in tribute shows to Fleetwood Mac, the Everly Brothers, Laurel Canyon or "Wild Angels" (women singers from Ronstadt to Gaga) as well as with 2 Girls and a Boyd, the Mary Jane Alm Band and Synergy, which does mostly private events.

"Why do all these people still come out and hear me? I don't feel like I'm anything special. I'm just somebody who loves music and who loves songs. I think I started singing because I wanted to be a part of those songs I love so much."

The highlight of her near-miss career is not that James Taylor came to see her sing twice, but that she gets to perform with her best friends.

"I've been so lucky to be in this city in the time I've been playing music with these musicians that are living here. I don't ever take that for granted. I'm a Minnesota gal. Always will be."

She's simply content to be a big fish in a "small, beautiful pond."

Mary Jane Alm Jubilee
When: 8 p.m. Sat. & 7 p.m. Sun.
Where: Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, 501 W. 78th St., Chanhassen.
Tickets: $44-$64, chanhassendt.com