At 8 p.m. Sept. 13, Bev Conklin will be at the Sellersville Theater with her group the BC Combo to present her eighth CD, “Glass Half Full.”

Conklin is known to Lehigh Valley audiences for her high-energy concerts. The Sellersville concert will also feature her upbeat spirit, but there is a sad story behind the album.

The CD is dedicated to the memory of Dave Smith, who committed suicide in 2019.

Dave Smith played guitar and saxophone in local bands, including Zen for Primates and the James Supra Band.

Dave’s brother Wayne has played music with Conklin for 33 years.

During an interview at a diner in Allentown, Conklin says, “Dave’s death rocked his [Wayne’s] world. It took him time to deal with it. He had this wealth of songs that came out of his brain.

“Over the  last two years he put the music together. He wrote all 12 songs on the album, about loss, love, healing and hope.”

The album is filled with a straight-forward, driving-rock feeling, with lyrics about persistence and overcoming adversity.

Conklin says one song, “Janis & Jimi,” “is about when Wayne and Dave saw them [Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix] as kids. It inspired them to do their own music.”

Conklin is primarily known for performing the blues. For many years, her band was called BC and the Blues Crew before it evolved into the BC Combo.

“I’m a blend of genres: roots, Americana, soul, funk and a little jazz, with my voice adding spice to the mixture, like gumbo,” she says.

Conklin was surprised that the CD, which was recorded last November at Bethlehem’s Godfrey Daniels without an audience, only took one day to record.

“We rented Godfreys for a day to get the songs down and listen to them, to see what we needed to work on.” It turned out that further recording was unnecessary. “It was something you couldn’t repeat,” she says.

The recording was engineered by Nick Franclik, who was a member of BC and the Blues Crew and fills in on bass occasionally for the BC Combo.

Franclik and Godfreys co-founder Dave Fry will open the Sellersville concert with separate 15-minute sets.

The new CD is Conklin’s first release on Momojo Records. The label will be re-releasing all her previous albums. Conklin met the label’s owner when she was asked to be on a panel at the Reading Blues Festival. “It turns out that she has been a fan of ours since she was a child, and her parents brought her to our shows.”

Conklin, now retired, joined Minerals Technology, Inc. in 1992 and became responsible for corporate communications while maintaining her singing career. She started there when the Internet was taking off.

“There were only 500 websites in the world in 1995 and only five devoted to music.” she says. “One of them was for BC and the Blues Crew, and another was for the Lehigh Valley Blues Network.”

Says Conklin of the Lehigh Valley nightlife concert, club and restaurant scene:

“There are a wealth of venues we didn’t have in the nineties, which opens up opportunities for many more artists. But it is more difficult to make a living.” There are more large venues, but the small club scene has contracted, she says.

“We used to play three or four nights a week, or 12 to 15 times a month. We covered five states, and were booked two years in advance. Now it is five or six times a month.”

Conklin also fronts the band BC Blue. That band and the Combo performed at Musikfest this year.

In addition to Conklin on vocals, the BC Combo includes Wayne Smith, keyboards and guitar; Joe Mac, guitar; Mitch Shelly, bass, and Glenn Spadone, drums.

The BC Combo will perform original songs in Sellersville in addition to those on the “Glass Half Full” CD.

Conklin says she invites people to “celebrate a lifelong journey with the BC Combo. Because of the positive message we have, people come up to us and say, ‘This is really beautiful.’ It helps people deal with their own challenges. I’m glad that we are the vessels for this.”

“The BC Combo featuring Bev Conklin: Album Release,” 8 p.m. Sept. 13, Sellersville Theater, 24 W. Temple Avenue, Sellersville, 215-257-5808, www.st94.com