Sue Foley spins the blues

As the last of the 12 tracks on Sue Foley’s fine new album states, “Gotta keep moving, leave the blues behind.” Well, she doesn’t leave them behind at all — her work is still deeply rooted in the Mississippi Delta’s cotton fields and front porches — but Foley’s seventh album does take a bit more of a rock and roll turn. Of the 12 tracks here, nine are self-penned, and they’re testament to Foley’s continuing development as as songwriter. The title song is a fine country blues, with Foley’s undervalued axe-work particualrly sharp, as is the organ of veteran keyboardist Richard Bell (who plays on five of the tracks). Vertigo Blues marks a subtle shift to Texas. Here Foley is a lot less Bonnie Raitt and a lot more raucous roadhouse diva, like Lou-Ann Barton or Angela Strehli. She can do sexy, too, vamping her way through the Dr. John-ish Every Hour. She stays in bayou country for the dirge-like Two Bluebirds. I’ve always thought Foley’s choice of covers was innovative and occasionally inspired. This album is no exception. She delivers a rollicking version of the Rolling Stones’s Stupid Girl. Not only do her vocals and guitar work out-Mick Jagger and out-Keith Richards, but she plays an ironic cross-gender twist on the misogynistic lyrics. It reminds me of the stunning spin Lyle Lovett put on Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man. You’ll never hear the song in the same way again. The other covers are a frolicsome version of Etta James’s sexually open Roll with Me Henry (which way back when got cleaned up for radio play in Georgia Gibbs’s white-bread version as Dance with Me Henry; dancing is hardly the main thing on Etta’s mind — or Sue’s), and a mournful reading of early Mississippi blueswoman Matty Delaney’s Down the Big Road Blues, on which her producer, Colin Linden, plays a mean dobro. Listening to Sue Foley’s old-soul roots and blues, you’d hardly guess that Ottawa — on the face of it, the unbluesiest of cities, it features the country’s best blues festival — produced her. After all, there’s a lot more of the deep south in her than of eastern Ontario. It was really only after she moved to Austin, Texas in the early ’90s, and got taken up by Clifford Antone for his splendid Antone’s label that she began to develop a reputation. But moving back to Ottawa (for family and motherhood) five years ago haven’t hurt her career at all. For Sue Foley, the blues action is now wherever she happens to be.

Photo Credit: Andrew MacNaughtan- suefoley.com