Maybe you already know local band Deja Blu for their infectious classic rock, soul, Motown and blues-filled dance music. Even if you're a regular at the Eagle Grill, 4th and Main or Nissi's (where they're regular performers), or you've caught a glimpse of the five-piece playing around town, you may not know the rich history behind the band.

Liz Valles is a regular poster on YourHub.com, who primarily posts Deja Blu updates. When I recently called her up to get some caption details for a photo we were going to run in print, I asked her, "What's your affiliation with the band?"

"I'm the lead singer," she said. "I also manage the band."

I felt like such a fool. All this time, I assumed this Liz Valles gal was just a PR person and not the leading lady of the band. It's not every day you see a woman lead singer also taking on the publicity and managing duties for her male-dominated band (all the while owning her own separate business). I asked her how in the world she does it.

She said, "It's tough. I've been thinking of writing a book about being over 40, being a lead singer and having managed this band for seven years now."

Right that moment, Valles pulled me in. Hearing her story was a must.

Valles has been surrounded by music her entire life. She grew up in a musical family that encouraged her to start learning and performing at the age of 6. But it wasn't until she was 22 that she joined her first rock band.

Of the 27 years that Valles has lived in Boulder, life has thrown her some crazy curves.

After graduating from CU with a finance degree and marketing minor, she went on to work at US West as a financial analyst. Soon after, Valles became the first official employee for Horizon Organic Dairy in 1994.

"It was started by two guys in Boulder and I was hired on as their controller," says Valles. "It was very tough, though, because organic at that time was nothing. The law had just been passed."

Although Horizon quickly grew to be a multi-billion dollar company, Valles was working 60- to 70-hour weeks and losing touch with family and friends.

"I lost boyfriends because of how busy I was," says Valles. "And the business kept growing to the point where I didn't know the names of the people I worked with - and that to me was sad."

Little did she know a wake-up call was on its way.

While hiking during the winter in Boulder, Valles fell off a cliff. "I fell 17 feet and landed on my face," she says. "I broke my ribs and hand, suffered a concussion and survived."

With no hesitation, Valles booked a flight to Africa and quit her job with Horizon the very next day.

"I wanted to book a flight for a six-month trip and have something that I knew I couldn't turn away from - and something that would definitely give me a reason to quit my job," she says. "I told myself to jump off that cliff again - but in the sense that this time I wouldn't know where I was going."

Valles' hiking accident helped her realize what she wanted from life. "I traveled, saw villages, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and rafted the Zambezi. I even got mugged at one point," she says. "After what I went through I wanted to live and do it all."

In addition to finding a new path in life, Valles rediscovered her love for the blues in Africa. And although she was nervous about what she was going to do when she returned home, she knew it would have to involve music.

Sure enough, she started Deja Blu in her adopted hometown Longmont with three other men from around the area. Dorothy, the owner of the Eagle Grill in Longmont, booked their first gig.

"Our keyboard player knew Dorothy and decided to take our first demo to her," says Valles. "She immediately played it over the speakers and loved us."

While starting things up with Deja Blu, she took what she learned from US West and Horizon and started up her own business called Calico Consulting, named after her two Calico cats. This enabled her to do accounting and finance for small corporations such as Sounds True in Louisville and Peak Pilates in Boulder. She currently does consulting for Group Systems in Broomfield.

When Valles first started juggling her side jobs as a consultant, she tried her hardest to keep her singing gig under wraps.

"I didn't want these people thinking, 'She's an accountant during the day but she goes out and plays shows and parties at night?'"

But before she got hired on at Group Systems, the man she interviewed with discovered she was a singer when one of her references ratted her out. However - the result was far from what Valles expected. Group Systems didn't care. They cheered her on in a sense.

During the first few years of leading Deja Blu, Valles struggled to make ends meet with the other band members. She wanted to take her marketing experience and fulfill her dream to make the band successful. However, the other members didn't want that - they had other ideas.

Valles, on the other hand, wanted to somehow make a living from the benefits of being in a band.

"It gets hard working with men sometimes because most bands are led by men and not women. It makes for a completely different relationship -they have their egos and musicians can be a different breed," says Valles. "The moment the words 'manager' and 'business' came into play, they realized that was not where they wanted to be."

After two years of playing four to six nights a month at many local bars around the state, the band agreed to disagree on the direction it was going to take.

"It was Don, our original keyboard player, and I who got this band off the ground. We tried to co-manage it for two years - but with me wanting to be more business-oriented and Don not being interested in that, we parted ways," she says. "It was a tough time for all involved as we went through this change. I think what is important is that we all realized that you have to be happy if you're going to dedicate so much time and passion to a project. It happens all the time with other bands - mine is no exception."

After the split, Valles was determined to keep Deja Blu going - even if it required finding new members. She quickly found her four new musicians through friends of friends, word-of-mouth, ads in Westword, etc. However, there were some prerequisites.

"Before they committed, I told them, 'I believe in marketing, I want to be professional, we will share in all the funding and I want to make money.'" According to Valles, all the money that went into promoting Deja Blu for the first three years came out of her own pocket and it wasn't going to continue this way with new members.

Since the new additions, Deja Blu has been experiencing the success that Valles first dreamt of. They've played weddings - from local to national locations - for large corporate events for Frontier Airlines, the U.S. Air Force, Xcel Energy and more. But they still love staying super local. They only play three local spots - Nissi's, 4th and Main and Eagle Grill - and they are still managing to make a living doing so.

So where does Valles turn when she's had enough of the boys? She hangs with other local lady artists such as Jill Watkins, Lisa Bell, Jennifer Lane and Cindy Carpenter Wallace.

"We'll have girls nights quite often," she says. "We're all very strong, independent, assertive women who all have our own bands."

As far as Valles' goals go for the future, she is taking her idea of writing a book very seriously. She wants to co-author a book with her friend who is a paralegal and lead singer/manager of her own local band.

Lastly, what advice does Valles have for other gals attempting to enter the music business?

Valles says, "Don't ever doubt yourself. Don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't do it. You've got to be strong and you've got to stick to your guns."