|
January
18, 2001 'White
chick' plays the blues "I fit the image - I'm a white chick who plays the blues," says Sue Foley, when she's asked the inevitable question about comparisons between her and famous female blues guitarists Bonnie Raitt and Ellen McIlwaine. "I've got no complaints. You're going to get pigeonholed no matter what you do. My job as an artist is to transcend categorization, to keep breaking out of the boxes other people want to put me in." Foley, 32, has broken out of quite a few boxes during a career that already spans more than half her lifetime. Raised in Ottawa in a musical family, it was inevitable, she says, that she would play music for a living, and after her first encounter, in her early teens, with the electric blues of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, it was just as inevitable that she would soon be running against the grain in the male-dominated blues arena, doing what few women would dare. Foley, who once played at B. B. King's New York blues club when the blues legend was performing elsewhere, opens for him Monday night at Massey Hall. "I'm totally excited," she says. "It's such a great honour to be on the same stage, even if I don't get to play with him." Not that the music Foley writes and performs these days is hard-core blues. Her sixth CD, Love Comin' Down - her second on the high-profile American roots music label, Shanachie - is an amalgam of blues, honky-tonk, country blues, soulful pop and Latin dance rhythms, a memoir of Sue Foley's peculiar musical journey so far. It was produced in the Tragically Hip's Bathhouse studio outside Kingston, Ont., by award-winning Toronto guitarist/composer Colin Linden, and was nominated a couple of weeks ago for six Maple Blues awards, including album of the year. "I've known Colin since I started playing when I was 16," Foley says. "We've followed each other's careers, kept in touch over the years. The thing I like about him is that he's a blues guy at heart, but he's not narrow-minded about it, not lost in the dogma of blues. What I'm doing now is more roots music than blues, and that's the kind of musician and producer Colin is." Though she lived for eight years in Austin, Texas, working under the musical wing of blues impresario Clifford Antone - her first four albums were released on Antone's label - Foley toured the southern and western states relentlessly, picking up musical inflections, colloquialisms, licks and ideas from locals wherever she played.Pregnant and loaded with songs that testified to a life lived hard, she returned to Ottawa three years ago to raise her son among family and old friends. "Everything's moving so fast now," Foley continues. "We toured Canada all summer, promoting the new CD, and early February we're heading down to the States for at least a couple of months. All I'm looking at is touring, touring and more touring." She takes her son with her whenever she can. "I'm a mother most of the time. I have to stay focused. My son is number one in my life, but I'm also a musician. It's a challenge."© 2001 The Toronto Star |