Multi-award-winning Ottawa born blues musician Sue Foley is excited to be back focusing on a plenitude of solo projects including a new CD.
“It’s been about 10 years. I took some time to focus on some cool collaborations,” said Foley from her new home in North Carolina.
During the course of her career she has earned 17 Maple Blues awards and won a Juno Award for her 2000 CD “Love Coming Down.”
“I’m ready to get back to doing my own albums,” she said.
“It’s a variety of styles, but I’m mostly playing blues and also some new stuff,” she said adding she is also dabbling in nylon string and flamenco guitar in her new music.
She will be performing at the Lethbridge Jazz Festival on June 18 as part of Jazz in the Park in the afternoon as well as that night at the Slice.
She recorded a couple of albums with Peter Karp, but is now pleased to have almost finished a new solo CD which she recorded with producer John Whynot and talented musicians like Garry Craig and John Diamond.
“I’ll be going to Boston in a month where he (Whynot) lives to work on overdubs,” she said.
In the meantime she is on tour which brings her back to the Slice
She brings a crack team of talented touring musicians from all over Canada including Edmonton based bassist Chris Brzezicki and keyboardist Graham Guest plus Winnipeg based drummer Ken McMahon who used to play with the Perpetrators and Foley on guitar and vocals.
“There will be lots of guitar,” she promised.
“I’m playing in the afternoon as well. I’ll be playing for about three hours and that’s a lot of music,” she said, adding as a result she may also play some of the songs she recorded as collaborations as well as new solo material and older songs plus blues classics.
Her most recent release was a fundraiser for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund called “ Live For Hope.”
“Peter’s wife passed away from cancer, so we both decided to each re-release and sell one of our older albums with all of the proceeds going to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund,” she said, adding she isn’t playing with Karp as both musicians are focusing in their solo projects.
“We believe the new CD will be out in fall or January 2017 but hopefully by the fall,” she said.
The other solo project she is excited to resume is “Guitar Women,” for which she writes about and interviews influential blues women.
She plans to release it as a book, but for now, she is releasing excerpts from the project on her website www.suefoley.com.
“ I got a little sidetracked,” she said, adding she has enjoyed interviewing a lot of women she idolizes like Bonnie Raitt, Susan Tedeschi, Heart‘s Nancy Wilson, Liona Boyd and Joan Armatrading and Suzie Quatro.
“ They’ve all been really interesting to talk to,” she said.
“There are are a lot of female musicians though not compared to the number off men,” she said.
“ I’ve been very impressed by the women, she said.
Sue Foley plays Jazz in the Park in Galt Gardens, June 18 as well as at the Slice that night. Tickets for that show are $20.
