Sue Foley – An Xperience Interview

Sue Foley – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

RRX: What is the “One Guitar Woman” album all about? How about the tour, seeing that it’s a solo show? Is that rare for you throughout your career (going solo) or has it been pretty commonplace?

SF: I’ve been doing solo shows since I was in my teens, but I really only spent the last couple of years really getting the art of the solo show down, and actually having an album to support it makes a huge difference. It’s really easy to kind of run with because I have the whole album. It’s a concept that there’s a lot of stories involved, and so it just kind of evolved, but it has definitely all come to fruition with this album, “One Guitar Woman.”

RRX: Can you tell us a little bit about one of the stories inside “One Guitar Woman”?

SF: The full title is “One Guitar Woman: A Tribute to the Female Pioneers of Guitar,” which is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s a passion project that I started working on a couple of decades ago, with studying the work of the female pioneers of guitar and actually their specific guitar styles, learning about their methods of playing, but also about their histories. It encompasses a lot of different genres of guitar and music. Like from country, somebody like Mother Maybelle Carter, to Piedmont folk fingerpicking, which is Elizabeth Cotton, whom I tribute on the album, to a blues artist like Memphis Minnie. Even up to a classical artist named Ida Presti; I mean, these are all pioneering women. And I’m speaking of women who recorded at the inception of recorded music. Some of them, like Maybelle Carter, were recording in the ‘20s, maybe Memphis in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. So a lot of the music is kind of older, but I’m reworking it and reimagining it, but also telling when I do the show, I tell a lot about their personal histories and stories, which are all really fascinating.

RRX: During this show, do you kind of go chronological, or is it more like you just pick moments from different women in history that you thought kind of went together in a different way? How do you present that history that you’re going for?

SF: It’s not really chronological. It’s a kind of mix, like they’re all coming from within 40 or 50 years of each other. So it’s more of a personal narrative that ties it together. A lot of the material I picked ties in with my own narrative, and I talk about how they’ve each influenced me and what’s important about their work, and I try not to turn it into a master class. However, I can do a master class on this, but it’s more of a performance that just sort of showcases and highlights their stories and how they affected me personally, so there’s a personal narrative involved.

RRX: When you’re growing up and learning, because you started playing when you were 13, so you’ve been playing your whole life. I’m a blues player too, so I know when I went into blues, I was looking at like Stevie Ray Vaughan and, and Eric Clapton, and, you know, I’m sure you were looking at some of them too, but the idea of going out and looking for the women players that were fundamental in laying down different tricks and different types of things into blues. You don’t hear about that so much. You don’t hear about there being a path where a young woman who’s learning to play blues guitar could go and learn from the other women who’ve been playing. Usually, everybody kind of has to go through all the men. Did you find that there was an actual pathway when you started out? Were you just learning the Clapton people and the BB King people, and then you found women performers, or did you start out trying to find women?

SF: I knew I was gonna be a guitar player from a very young age, so I was always very conscientious that it was mostly all guys. And so whenever I would see a woman play, it really affected me and I always filed it away in my mind cause I think the idea of role models is really important. I mean, you sometimes don’t even know something’s possible until you’ve seen, “Oh, they did it.” For blues, specifically, discovering Memphis Minnie changed my life. And I talk about that in the show and how a young girl from Ottawa, Canada wanted to be a blues guitar player, and here I am listening to Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton, like you say, and wondering ‘where’s my place in this,’ you know, ‘how am I gonna fit in with these guys?’ And then I discovered Memphis Minnie, and she’d been doing it since the 1930s, and she was the lead guitar player; she was a really important figure. She’s a huge figure in blues musicology in so many respects. And so when I discovered her, it was like, ‘Oh wow, she did it in the ‘30s. Are you kidding me? I can do this. It’s not like I would not have done it if I hadn’t discovered her, but having discovered her and knowing her narrative and the words to her songs which were very specific about her experience, which is really important because my experience and the guy’s experience are a little different on the road and in the business. Even how we approach music in a lot of ways, and how we think about things. Having a female perspective was really important to me. So Memphis, I’ve talked about her my whole career like she’s my favourite artist I’ve been doing her songs since I was 16 and I’ve been in love with her, and I’ve always paid tribute to her, but having that as a guiding light has meant more to me than anything, you know. I think that has really been the impetus of this project is knowing how much, how important that was to me, and just paying back in a lot of ways, you know, letting everybody know about these remarkable figures.

RRX: So you’re out of Austin right now, which is a world-famous music spot, a mecca of blues and country music. As you’ve been on the road a big part of your life, how would you describe Austin to someone who’s just never been there?

SF: It’s actually quite diverse. It’s not a blues town. When I got there, it was a real blues town, but I wouldn’t say it is anymore. I think it’s really grown into all kinds of music, and the blues thing has changed so much anyway. But there’s a lot of Americana, there’s a lot of roots music, a lot of great musicians, a lot of good country, a lot of singer-songwriters; kind of a lot of everything. A lot of funk now and R&B, some great hip hop even. It’s just a great community of musicians. What I really love about Austin is that it’s not really an industry town per se. It’s more about the hanging out and being a player rather than making deals. And you know, I do go to Nashville. There’s a ton of musicians there too, but all you hear about in Nashville is who’s playing with who, who’s got what deal, you know what I mean?

That’s the same with LA.  In LA, everybody’s looking over your shoulder to see if there’s somebody more important to talk to. Like, Austin is just not like that. Austin is really about everybody just hanging out. Like you could be hanging out in the club, talking to Jimmy Vaughan or talking to some of the greatest players in the world, and they’re just like people, you know? People don’t put on airs there. And it’s a cool and very supportive community. If somebody’s ever in a problem or in a pinch – you know, someone’s house burns down or somebody’s got a medical problem – like everybody comes out. And that has just been really an important factor to me … how the musicians really look after each other.

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