Courtesy photo

A woman with one of the sweetest voices in American music will be onstage Friday night at Kirk Avenue Music Hall.

Robin Ella Bailey, known to many music lovers as Robinella, brings her band to the Roanoke Valley for the first time since a 2006 appearance at the second and final Blue Ridge Music Festival at Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium.

A lot has happened in her life since then. She and then-husband Cruz Contreras, who was also her bandleader, split up. Contreras went on to put together The Black Lillies, which last month played Kirk Avenue. Bailey remarried and recently had her second child, Beau, who is 7 months old. Her son with Contreras, Cash, is 5.

Slowly but surely, she has been getting back into the music business after the recent release of her record, "Fly Away Bird." While shopping with a cooing Beau on her hip, Bailey talked about what's been happening lately.

About her new record

Bailey waited about two years after recording to release "Fly Away Bird."

"I was just real nervous about releasing a record kind of all by myself," she said. "In the past, I'd had Cruz to collaborate with me, even for my Robinella album ["Solace for the Lonely" (Dualtone)].

"I had him to give me his opinion on things, so it was different that way."

She wants categorization

While her music often sits in a traditional country base, listeners can detect plenty of jazz, pop and soul. Some say her music is hard to categorize, but Bailey said she's looking for a category anyway.

"Actually I would like to be labeled -- I'd like to be fit into a big ol' group where people can find me real easy and buy my music easier at the record store," she said with a laugh.

At a record store near her home in Maryville, Tenn., she put her CDs in the pop bin. There is no Americana bin there, she said.

"But I thought, man, I wonder if I'd sell more records if I were in [the] country" bin, she said.

Details: 7:30 p.m. Friday. Kirk Avenue Music Hall, Roanoke. $10. kirkavenuemusic.com, kirkavenue@gmail.com, robinella.com, myspace.com/robinella1.