When Ruthie Foster opens her mouth, it’s hard to believe the little girl who started out playing guitar in church in Texas was more than content, as she said in a late-June interview “to be the person who backed up incredible singers because I was really, really shy.”
But 10 studio albums in, Foster has developed a rich voice that lives at the crossroads of gospel, blues, soul and country and has garnered her six Grammy nominations, with the most recent being a win for Best Contemporary Blues Album by way of 2024’s Mileage. For the Lone Star native, who grew up taping sermons and regularly attending services in the small town of Gause, she’s just as surprised to see where she’s wound up.
“I thought I wanted to be part of a group that could really move people,” she recalled. “I wanted to be support, because I didn’t want to be up front. Little did I know that I had a knack for being up front because I had studied so many incredible players and singers in the church. Great guitar players—rhythm guitar players and incredible soloists, including my mother putting on Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, young Aretha [Franklin] and Dorothy Norwood, who was a great gospel songwriter—all of these songwriters who wrote gospel. I was introduced to all of that first.”
While sacred sounds lit the fuse, Foster was quick to embrace secular music once she focused on studying music and audio engineering at Waco’s McLennan Community College. There she transitioned from playing in Black and white churches to widening her musical palette while getting a real-time education in the blues.
“I went to school for music so I was surrounded by blues, which didn’t move me as much,” she admitted. “Later on, when you have something to say you realize that the blues says it all. The first time really experiencing the blues was when Stevie [Ray] and Jimmie Vaughan were playing Waco. We got a chance to open for The Fabulous Thunderbirds when Jimmie was with them, so I got a chance to watch the band and make eyes at Jimmy down front. They would come through Waco at a time when my band, which was mostly Hispanic, was doing a lot of quinceañeras.”
Over time, Foster’s role as a musical sponge has found her working with a number of artists, ranging from the Tedeschi Trucks Band and Gov’t Mule to late producer/musician Jim Dickinson, the Blind Boys of Alabama and storied soul singer William Bell. Along the way, the singer-songwriter, 61, has accrued a stellar string of albums, including 2007’s The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster, 2008’s The Truth According to Ruthie Foster and 2017’s Joy Comes Back, while dropping on an array of eclectic covers drawing from myriad corners of the music world, including The Black Keys, Black Sabbath, Adele and The Meters.
For the current album, Mileage, Foster worked with producer Tyler Bryant, who also enlisted wife Rebecca Lovell (one half of duo Larkin Poe) to help with the creative heavy lifting. That collaboration eventually found Foster shuttling between the duo’s Tennessee home and Texas.
“Mileage came about one song at a time,” Foster said. “I was introduced to Tyler Bryant during the lockdown. Everyone is on YouTube, and that’s where I saw him and loved his segment on Andrews Masters, his YouTube channel. He mentioned Paris, TX so now I know this guy is from Texas. That stuck in my mind—and the fact this twentysomething little white boy from East Texas was playing slide guitar like an old Black man and I needed to know where he learned that. Fast forward and it’s time to do another project. My management mentioned Rebecca, from Larkin Poe, who is also part of my management. Her husband was this guy named Tyler. I asked if he wouldn’t happen to be Tyler Bryant and that’s what brought us together.”
She added, “I started taking trips up to Nashville, sat on their couch, drank coffee and talked about my life. They are wonderful listeners. Me and Rebecca sat across from each other just coming up with lyrics for “Mileage” for that particular song while Tyler walked around with an acoustic guitar, coming up with chords. And then we just kind of did that off and on for about nine or 10 months. Maybe one or two songs per visit.”
With a brand-new batch of songs under her belt and a solid canon to draw from, being on the road is a constant state of being for Foster, who plans to keep fans guessing on her current string of dates.
“I’m mixing it up on this go-round,” she said. “I will be anywhere from solo to quartet, so they can expect anything from just having ‘An Evening With…’ to me and my fellas with me.” For this week’s show at Moe’s Alley, Foster will perform with Chris Jones, frontman of local band Wolf Jett. Foster promises to do material from the new album, but she’ll also look back at earlier work, including 2007’s The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster: “We’ll try to put it all in there and stuff it.”
Ruthie Foster appears with Chris Jones of Wolf Jett at 8pm on Sept. 18 at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. Tickets: $45. moesalley.com
