'Guitar woman' Foley is also a lady who sings the blues
By JOHN WIRT
Entertainment writer

Canadian singer-guitarist Sue Foley flashes a tough, Stevie Nicks sort of voice, often applying a strong vibrato to her no-nonsense delivery. And, boy, she can play that guitar.

"I'm pretty much a traditionalist in the way I like my blues," the touring Foley said from a truck stop north of Memphis. "That's a bit of a contradiction because I'm not a traditionalist in the way I play blues. But when I listen to blues I just want to hear stuff by Slim Harpo and a lot of the music I heard in Texas when I lived there."

Foley lived in Texas for much of the '90s. She moved there in 1990 at the invitation of Clifford Antone, whose Antone's music club has been Austin's home of the blues for decades.

"It was a little dream of mine to go there from Canada," Foley said. "Clifford Antone wanted to check me out, check out my playing. So I had a good in right away, yeah."

The fair-complexioned Foley recorded five albums for Antone's Records, beginning with her CD debut, 1992's Young Girl Blues.

Moving to Austin and being part of the Antone's scene helped Foley meet many of her blues heroes. She got especially close to former Louisianian Lazy Lester. She also got to know her favorite guitarist, the late and great Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, a longtime resident of Slidell.

"We've been very friendly with Lazy Lester," Foley said. "He's sat in at my shows, I've backed him up at Antone's many times and I'm on his latest record."

Foley also toured with Barbara Lynn, another lady who sings the blues and picks a wicked guitar.

Although Foley returned to Canada in 1997, she loved her time in Texas.

"I had so much fun down there and I miss it," she said. "I miss the South a lot because it's a different pace and there's different kind of music there."

Foley's back in the South this month, performing three concerts this week for the Louisiana Crossroads concert series. The last of those concerts brings her to Baton Rouge Friday for a show at the Manship Theatre. It's her local debut.

Foley's visit to Louisiana form the latest few pages in a music history that began during her teens in Ottawa.

"Because I am a child of the '70s, all my big brothers listened to rock 'n' roll," she said. "I only realized later that it was actually blues songs, like on the first Led Zeppelin album and those early Rolling Stones. Then I discovered Muddy Waters. I realized that I had been listening to that kind of stuff, even before I knew who Muddy Waters was."

When young Foley attended a concert by Waters' long-time harmonica player, James Cotton, her blues deal was sealed.

"It was an epiphany when I saw him," she said. "I can't even explain what happened to me, but I was completely changed. It hit me like a ton of bricks."

Even before that Cotton show, Foley had found her instrument. A girl playing guitar was unusual at the time, but she didn't let that worry her. "I was so much into the playing that it never even occurred to me. But it did occur to me recently when I started working on this book."

Foley's been compiling a book about female guitarists for about four years. It's called Guitar Woman. So far, she's interviewed about 40 players in many genres. The project was a calling, she said.

"I was doing a little research and I discovered that there was no book of the kind. I thought, 'Well, that's a shame, because there are so many great players.' During my whole career, if I heard about another woman player, I read about her. I've been collecting that information for years. So when I do these interviews, it's really fun."

"It's a player talking to a player and a woman talking to a woman. For one thing, I can ask intelligent questions about what they do, even down to the technical aspect of their jobs. We can talk guitar stuff, but I can also talk about human stuff. There are so many things about their lives that I'm interested in."

While her Guitar Woman book is still in the works, Foley has already produced a two-CD set called Blues Guitar Woman, released by her own label, Ruf Records. The disc includes Memphis Minnie, Etta Baker and, the most famous female guitarist of our time, that sly slide-guitarist, Bonnie Raitt.

"The licensing was kind of tough," she said. "It's really a miracle we got Bonnie on it, but we did and I'm so happy we did."

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