Change is inevitable and impossible to stop in most aspects of life but the effect of a good, old fashioned blues song on one’s soul is a steady constant.
“It’ll never go away,” says famed blues artist Sue Foley. “It’s actually in a good place right now. There’s still a lot of young people playing it and I think people just keep discovering it. Once you discover it, you can’t not hear it. Once it gets inside of you, you can’t change that.”
Sue Foley will return to Houston to perform on Friday, January 26 at The Heights Theater with Houston’s own bluesman The Mighty Orq as opener. Foley will roll on with the celebration of her latest release, Live In Austin Vol. 1 released in October 2023.
“We had never done a live album and it was actually producer Mike Flanigin’s idea,” says Foley. Flanigin, a master of the Hammond B3 organ, has produced Foley’s previous albums The Ice Queen and Pinky’s Blues.
Flanigin suggested they record the album in one of Austin’s most prestigious and historical clubs, The Continental Club where they would be among friends, surrounded by the club’s rich, musical history and capturing their lightning in a bottle with a live audience.
“We wanted to really have the whole atmosphere so you can actually really hear the audience in the recording. Sometimes you can hear what people are saying, you can hear bits of conversations. It’s really cool and it’s part of what we do is the audience.”
They could also count on the support of their longtime friend and owner of The Continental Club, Steve Wertheimer, who can be heard doing the intro to the album revving up the crowd for Foley.
Recording there seems to be a perfect fit for capturing Foley and her band’s hot blues. “It is such a vibe and it’s been around so long,” says Foley. “It’s such a cool place. It’s got the history, the music and Steve is such a great music person. He’s so dedicated to helping Austin musicians and supporting Austin musicians. It’s such a great place and I’m really happy that we did it there.”
Following Wertheimer’s warm, welcoming words to the crowd, who was aware of the recording and can be heard hooting, hollering and at times chatting amongst themselves a bit, Foley and her band jump straight into the fire with her 2006 “New Used Car.”
“We did a cross pick of tracks from earlier albums so what you’re hearing on this live one is a lot of my old songs,” says Foley who has put out sixteen albums in her long career which brought her from Canada to Austin when she was only 21 years old when she was fully embraced and submerged in the world of blues under the guidance of Clifford Antone.
“I don’t get to play all these songs all the time,’ says Foley who, regardless of how many great songs she has penned herself, always finds a way to pay homage to her blues heroes and do her own take on their classics.
Live In Austin Vol. 1 kicks off with a batch of ‘The Ice Queen’s’ original bangers but keeps the heat with her rough and tough covers of Howlin’ Wolf, Memphis Minnie and even Bob Dylan where her version of “Positively 4th Street” shows off her distinctive ability to be a badass with a sweet side.
“The cool thing about blues, which I’ve always loved, is as you age your music gets richer and your message gets richer, deeper, more profound and interesting so I think I’m able to breathe new life into this stuff. It’s not like I’m just rehashing an old tune because I don’t have any other ideas, it’s not that at all. It’s just like I can breathe something into it that I didn’t have when I was 21 when I recorded that stuff.”
“The cool thing about blues, which I’ve always loved, is as you age your music gets richer and your message gets richer, deeper, more profound and interesting.”
Recording songs that have built her 30 year career in a city which had a huge part of shaping her as an artist, it’s tempting to think about the changes she has seen and felt not only in the ever growing city of Austin, but in herself.
“Well I have changed and it’s changed. I’ve grown and it’s grown and that’s life. I think it’s hardest on the people that have been here the whole time but I was gone and I was at home,” says Foley who returned to Canada years back but returned to Austin six years ago.
“My life changed, I had a child, I raised a kid, I did all kinds of things and I’m not the same person and it’s not the same city. I don’t think we can expect life isn’t going to change. It’s changed drastically,” she says of Austin.
“Even in the six years I’ve been back it’s been changing, shifting and growing exponentially so it’s even more important to support places like The Continental in light of that to remember what made this city cool in the first place. It wasn’t ramen restaurants, it was the live music scene,” she laughs.
Foley and her city may have changed but her love for the genre, dedication to moving the blues forward and solid bond with her longtime band of Jon Penner on bass, Corey Keller on drums and Derek O’Brien on guitar, remains strong as a rock. The band, with the exception of O’Brien, will join Foley in Houston.
“We’ve been on the road together a couple of years now already and it’s been going really well. We were all coming up under the tutelage of Clifford Antone. We all were friends and it was just a good vibe. We all speak the same blues language and we enjoy each other’s company and have been having a great time on the road and we love Houston.”
Time may take its toll on countless things, but it seems that Foley’s relationship with her music, band and fans is only getting stronger and Live In Austin, Vol. 1 shows them all at the top of their game, in a city that loves them showing off the grit they have earned through living in their captured performance.
“That’s what I always loved about blues and I always thought it was such an important style of music that way because you people really do appreciate you when you get older. They don’t just toss you out like a pop artist or something but being a blues artist, you can still have a lot of life in you, in fact much more, as you get older.”
Sue Foley will perform along with The Mighty Orq on Friday, January 26 at The Heights Theater, 339 W 19th. Doors at 7 p.m, tickets $24-384.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
