For solo album, she goes back to where it all started
Sue Foley enlists all-stars for her first solo album in a decade
After the demise of a long relationship, Ottawa’s Sue Foley is gearing up to release her first solo album in a decade.
Entitled The Ice Queen, it’s a return to form for the award-winning singer-songwriter-guitarist, who gravitated to her old stomping grounds of Austin, Texas in the quest to rebuild her life on her own terms.
“I came back to where I started my recording career,” said the 49-year-old musician, whose first four albums came out on Austin’s Antone’s label in the ’90s. “A lot of people who were on my first album are on this one, and we recorded it live in the same studio I did much of my first album. It was pretty mind-blowing, one of those experiences where you go, ‘This is cool.’ ”
Even cooler is the list of Texas guitar greats who sat in as guests on the new album, including Jimmie Vaughan, Charlie Sexton and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. They’re all part of the Austin blues community that Foley reconnected with when she came for a visit.
An old pal, veteran Texas sideman Mike Flanigin, known for his flair on the Hammond B3 organ, enticed her back into the scene and produced the record, working mostly out of the Fire Station Studios in San Marcos, Texas.
Flanigin is also one of the brains behind the Jungle Show, a showcase of Texas guitar heroes, including Gibbons, Vaughan and Sexton, presented at the legendary Austin blues club Antone’s. For the second Jungle Show concert late last year, Sexton couldn’t make it and they wanted another singer-guitarist. Foley happened to be in the right place at the right time and got the gig.
Just a few weeks later, she was in the studio with the same crew. “Everybody was off, hanging out in town and we just grabbed them,” Foley said. “We recorded live in one room, and used all the heavy hitters. We pulled out everybody who knows how to do it and just nail it. You’re not going to get a bad performance or a bad sound with these guys.”
While it probably won’t be available until later this year, an advance listen to the album imparts a palpable live essence. Foley’s expressive guitar chops and the mellow grit of her tone are on display. Plus, it contains some of her best songs, including a solid handful (Run, Gaslight, Send Me To the Electric Chair and Death of a Dream) that carry the baggage of a toxic relationship. Her voice sounds better than ever, too, ranging from sweet to barbed, and meshes remarkably well with Gibbons’s growl on the slow blues track Fool’s Gold.
It’s the latest chapter of a career that started in Ottawa’s fertile blues scene of the 1980s. At 15, Foley managed to get into the weekly blues jam at the former San Antonio Rose (later the Downstairs Club) on Rideau Street. She was a sweet-faced girl with a guitar in the middle of a ragtag bunch of older men in a smoke-filled bar.
‘’There was just something about the way blues communicates to people and the way it hit me that was just so powerful. There was nothing that could stop me,” she has said of those formative years.
Another defining experience was her first concert. Foley recalls being 12 or 13, before she learned to play guitar, and going to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Ottawa Civic Centre with her best friend.
“It was fantastic,” she said. “Wherever our seats were, we didn’t care. We ran down to general admission — it was when you could still do that — we were little kids and squeezed our way right to the stage, and stood there with our hands up. I was just amazed by his songs: hit after hit after hit. And such a great band.
“We loved his music and it was great because he went along and he was touching fans. My friend actually got his sweaty towel. He put it around her neck. We were walking on clouds for a while after that.”
Years later, she opened for Petty somewhere in Montana, although never had the chance to meet him.
Foley is back in Canada this month for a few dates, including this weekend’s Stewart Park Music Festival and a Rainbow Bistro gig with her friends in Soulstack next week. In the fall, she’s planning to pursue a doctorate in music composition at Toronto’s York University after a recent stint as a professor of music at a college in North Carolina. Her son, Joe, now 20, is pursuing his own doctorate in math at Columbia University in New York City. lsaxberg@postmedia.com twitter.com/ lynnsaxberg
We recorded live in one room, and used all the heavy hitters. We pulled out everybody who knows how to do it and just nail it.