Acclaimed blues guitarist Sue Foley is bringing her One Guitar Woman tour to Midland later this month.
Foley, who’s received numerous accolades over the years, says she’s looking forward to heading back to Ontario.
“It really is a guitar show,” says Foley, who captured her fourth consecutive, Traditional Blues Female honour at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis this spring.
“I’ve been playing guitar now for 43 years,” says Foley, who started playing the guitar when she was 13.
“I started as a young teen and have been playing my whole life. My family were all guitar players. It’s the way I express myself.”
Foley is in the midst of a North American tour and describes being on the road and notes that getting to perform in front of appreciative crowds as a “good problem to have.”
Foley, who moved to Austin, Tex., at the age of 21 and released her first album Young Girl Blues in 1992, says she and her band have been “doing a lot of good work lately.”
Since those early days, Foley has put together an impressive discography that delves deep into her guitar roots, making her a favourite with audiences.
While Foley counts her own influences as fellow Texas blues players Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, T-Bone Walker and Jimmie Vaughan, she also travelled the road paved by other women guitarists such as Memphis Minnie and Maybelle Carter.
“Memphis Minnie was doing it in the 30s and 40s and really opened the door to women guitar players,” says Foley, who arrived on the scene when female blues guitarists weren’t as common as they are today and describes the roads she and fellow guitarist Susan Tedeschi have walked over the past 30 years.
“It was rare when we were coming up, (but) there are a lot of women who play well.”
While the first part of Foley’s current show serves as a tribute to guitar women of the past, it later moves into a full-scale rocking blues show.
“I do quite a diverse show,” she says. “I’ve got a great band. We’re kind of at the top of our game.”
She says the show also appeals to women who might not have previously had a passion or strong interest in the guitar.
She adds: “Women get really jazzed up when they see me play, when they see another woman play.”
For tickets to the Nov. 20 show, click here.
