FOLEY’S PATH WINDS BACK TO BOATHOUSE,
Sue Foley has a soft spot for Waterloo Region, and bar owner/blues music visionary Glenn Smith who had a lot to do with her early success.
In this Ottawa-born multi-award winning guitar phenom’s salad days she played in the late ’80s/early ’90s at Smith’s blues music haunts, The Hoodoo Lounge, and then Pop the Gator.
“I love Glenn because he is one of the first guys who championed me in Canada. (Veteran Texan blues musician/impresario) Angela Strehli from Austin had seen me play at a festival. Glenn also made Clifford Antone (of iconic Austin, Texas, blues bar Antone’s) aware of me. He was one of the first guys in Canada who said she is good and no one else was willing to put their money where their mouth was. Nobody really got me and Glenn was one of the first guys who said ‘You know what? This is good. I endorse this.’ He was really good to us,” recalls Foley fondly in a slight Texan lilt.
By the time she was 21, Foley was living in Austin, “landing in heaven” playing at Antone’s backing up prime blues players/ music heroes like Albert Collins.
In 1992, she recorded “Young Girl Blues” on Antone’s Records — the esteemed blues label named after the historic nightclub that helped launch the careers of Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Fabulous Thunderbirds. Wowing the fans, she sported her (now 30-year-old) signature pink paisley Fender Telecaster — a Japanese model simply brought “off the rack” at Long and McQuade’s in Vancouver. Foley and her band shared stages with blues giants B.B. King, Duke Robilliard, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, Nina Simone, Van Morrison, Lucinda Williams, Tom Petty, and the late Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown whose playing style made a huge impact on Foley as a guitarist.
“I would see him all the time and I watched his right hand,” she notes. “The real magic of guitar playing is actually in the right hand. I think a lot of guitar players forget about that. They work on the left hand and the dexterity which is also important but the right hand is where the tone and personality comes from. So I really focussed on that. I was in Texas for a number of years and then I went back to Canada. When I got back to Ottawa and had my son I started taking flamenco guitar lessons. That developed my right hand and that is what you see now — a hybrid of classical and flamenco technique that I have applied to my blues playing. And it has given me my own spin on it. I have continued to develop that style through the years,” she adds.
Foley’s music path began in Ottawa, hailing from a musical family where her dad played Celtic tunes, and her brothers played ’70s hard rock.
The Rolling Stones’ early work introduced her to blues. But Led Zeppelin and other ’70s rock bands inspired her musical brothers.
“When you really boil it down, they were all just trying to play the blues but doing it with a rock guitar base,” notes Foley, adding her brother taught her the first chord on her Epiphone acoustic. “I practised a lot and I was determined.”
At 16, she began playing the Ottawa club circuit, and at 18, Foley took off for Vancouver, taking audiences by storm in her blues music wake from her sassy singing style to her kick-ass guitar technique.
She recalls that the music scene everywhere was vibrant with more open blues jams, more venues to play and lot more musicians touring who were still alive.
“That made the bar was really high because when I started to play in the States in festivals and venues with guys like Buddy Guy and Albert Collins, I mean, the bar was so high that you were really reaching up to the gods,” she exclaims.
In Austin, Foley joined Antone’s Records (Memphis Slim, Kim Wilson, Pinetop Perkins, Marcia Ball, Angela Strehli) where she recorded four albums.
Foley won a 2001 Juno Award for her CD, “Love Coming Down.”
She has garnered 17 Maple Blues Awards, three Trophees de Blues de France, and several nominations from International Blues Music Awards in Memphis, Tennessee. She’s also a guitar teacher, and has a love for vintage players like Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Memphis Minnie. “Guitar Woman” is Foley’s ongoing project involving interviews with legendary women guitarists through the years from Precious Bryant, Joan Armatrading and Ellen McIlwaine, to Liona Boyd and Susan Tedeschi.
She is the only female member of The Jungle Show — an esteemed group of players including guitarist Billy F. Gibbons (ZZ Top); (B3 keys master) Mike Flanigin; guitarist Jimmy Vaughan (Fabulous Thunderbirds); and Chris “Whipper” Layton (formerly of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble).
In 2016, after playing several sold-out shows in Austin, she asked her Texan chums to play on her next album.
Foley is thrilled about upcoming 11th solo release “Ice Queen” recorded outside of Austin in a studio called The Fire Station in San Marcos, Texas.
“Ice Queen” is like coming full circle because some of the boys played on “Young Girl Blues.” Fondly dubbed the “Austin Mafia” by Foley, “Ice Queen” players include drummer George Rains (Boz Scaggs, Willie Nelson), Derek O’Brien (James Cotton, Double Trouble), with special guests guitar sleuths Jimmie Vaughan and Billy F. Gibbons, plus Charlie Sexton (Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, The Arc Angels), Johnny Bradley (Gary Clark Jr.) and J.J. Johnson (Tedeschi Trucks Band).
Ice Queen was produced by Foley’s longtime pal Mike Flanigin. Foley loved his acclaimed new album “The Drifter” and wrote to him. He told her to come back to Austin and record the group of songs she was sitting on.
“I started at Antone’s the club and Antone’s the record label,” says Foley. “Mike said the club just reopened. You have to come back. It seemed like everything looked really natural and easy. I reconnected with friends and everybody was really supportive,” says Foley who will be touring “Ice Queen” in addition to playing a few more gigs with The Jungle Show later on this year.