Sue Foley Interview

by Tom Watson.

Sue Foley talks straight. "Here's the deal; I was born March 29 1968. I am the youngest of five children from an Irish working class family and a neighborhood called Mechanicsville-Hintonburgh in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I eat meat. I drink coffee. I drink booze. I hate small talk. I'm antisocial sometimes. I'm rough. I love to swear. I'm a good mother," says her personal bio. I looked forward to our conversation.

While the 39-year-old guitarist, singer, songwriter, and mother of a ten-year-old son, had recently released her tenth solo album, the blues-rock-country based CD, New Used Car (2006, Ruf Records), and a 136 minute performance DVD, Live in Europe, it was the book she's writing that intrigued me.

Foley was the driving force behind a double-CD compilation, Blues Guitar Women (2005, Ruf Records), that showcased a number of talented female blues guitarists past and present. While editing a review of the compilation I learned that Foley was writing a book about women guitarists that cuts across styles and genres. Though the book, Guitar Woman, is a work in progress, a related website is already in place and the list of artists Foley has interviewed to-date is a who's who of female players. Again, I looked forward to our conversation.

That women guitarists are under-represented by music media is obvious and the reason why, no mystery: Males account for at least 90% of the guitar buying market, and it's a safe bet that the guitar-magazine-buying demographic marches to the same tune. Nor is it a mystery why men account for so much of these markets: They're lured to the instrument by a pantheon of guitar greats populated by gods, not goddesses. Where are the goddesses? Name a movie (or popular song) in which a woman straps on a guitar, wins a bar fight, and walks out with the boy. A biased ideology of what constitutes proper gender roles is well entrenched.

The website (www.guitarwoman.com) dedicated to Foley's upcoming book made one thing clear at a glance: There is a pantheon of guitar goddesses, formidable players that have made and continue to make significant contributions to guitar-centric music, we've just been slow in climbing that Olympus.

Meanwhile, in between writing chapters for her forthcoming book, 2007 finds Sue Foley on the road again for dates in both Europe and the United States as a solo artist and on the Blues Guitar Women Tour 2007, an edition of the Blues Caravan series, where she'll appear with Deborah Coleman and fellow Canadian Roxanne Potvin. A complete list of dates can be found on Foley's website.

Our conversation took place on December 27, 2006.

I now look forward to the book.

Listen to two songs from Sue Foley's recent CD, New Used Car:

"Make It Real"

"When I Come Back To Ya"

Tom Watson: Let's work our way backwards and talk about Guitar Woman first. How did you go about choosing the guitarists?

Sue Foley: Through research and sort of a spontaneous process. I have my master list of probably the more well-known players, and then there are a lot of players I know personally, so I was able to draw from that pool too because I've been making friends my whole career. Then, every time I interview somebody I ask them to recommend somebody else and everyone's always forthcoming with another name. To tell you the truth, I can't keep up right now. I've got so much information, I'm just swamped. Every time I turn around, somebody's sending me a new name. Where do you cap it off? That's the question.

Tom: Exactly. How will you know when it's done?

Sue: I think I just have to cap it off at some point and be done with it. I'm hoping that comes within the next year [2007]. I could keep going, and I may keep doing interviews and have a backlog of interviews for a totally separate project. But, the book is its own thing. It's based around essays that I'm writing, and then quotes from the interviews. So I'll cap it off when I think I've gotten the main names down and I've got enough. I've got 70 people already. I could do a lot more. I'm still doing interviews and tracking people down. Right now I'm kind of trying to get down to what I would say is my A list, people like Bonnie Raitt. I'm trying to track down the bigger names and they're a little more challenging.

Tom: Do you have a page limit? How big is the book going to be?

Sue: No, I don't have a page limit, and I don't know how big it's going to be, but like I said, I'm not posting the whole interviews. I'm posting quotes.

Tom: Working the quotes into a narrative?

Sue: Yes.

Tom: You've already done 70 interviews. Who's up next?

Sue: Hopefully, Nancy Wilson from Heart. We've been playing email tag.

Tom: I wondered about Nancy because I didn't see her on your website list.

Sue: She's on the master list. She's not on the website yet because I haven't done the interview. I only post the people after I interview them. The website is just kind of a way for people to stay informed about the project and see who I've talked to and get a little information on those people.

Tom: Who else is on the master list that's not on the website, some other names?

Sue: Well, like Bonnie Raitt, Nancy Wilson, Lady Bo, who I've been trying to get together with. Some people, they email me and then they drop out. I can't find them again. I really want to talk to Poison Ivy from the Cramps, and Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, I'd like to talk to her. I'd like to talk to Joan Jett. Ani DiFranco would be fun. Lita Ford, I can't find her. I'd like to talk to the girls from Sleater-Kinney. I know they're broken up. And maybe the girl from the Donnas, some of the younger girls. People like that.

Tom: It’s a big project.

Sue: It certainly is because beyond being about the guitar, it's about women. It's about many aspects of the journey, the biological aspect, just from the biology of being female, and about our experiences that might be unique to women. There are a lot of experiences that we share. But, it's not a feminist book or anything like that. I'm just trying to keep the scope really broad. I've talked to female guitar players from a 16-year-old with kids to 92-year-old legends.

Tom: You're also covering just about every musical style.

Sue: Every kind of musical style, and every kind of woman, and different cultures in different parts of the world. I'm really trying to keep it pretty broad. Not that I want it to be watered down or anything. I just want to keep the scope really wide, so you get a really broad perspective of the whole experience.

Tom: There are some deep and serious social issues involved.

Sue: There are. And there are a lot of issues that don't usually come up, like juggling a professional music career with child rearing.

Tom: And the gender roles.

Sue: Exactly, and how they relate to our business and our industry. It's very exciting and extremely interesting stuff.

Tom: What are some of the common threads you've found, speaking to these ladies?

Sue: One of the main common threads is that I think the love for the guitar and the relationship between women and the guitar often flows out of a relationship with the female and the masculine, meaning a lot of us are tomboys and relate more to masculine things. That's a similarity I find almost 90% of the time. I think the guitar carries imagery that even subconsciously we associate with the masculine. It's not really a feminine instrument, at least for popular music and for western music. You would know from Portugal and the South of Spain where the guitar originates, and Africa and the Middle East, it kind of comes from this area that's very masculine. I think a lot of the women I've talked to are more on the tomboy side, more on the risky side of their character. They're also probably spirited individuals, women that aren't afraid to go into a domain that's completely unknown.

Tom: I would bet persistence is a common trait.

Sue: Yes, I would say so. Persistent and driven.

Tom: Were there things about your own experiences and career that inspired you to pursue this book?

Sue: Yes, but in a way I just fell into it. I had no idea. I mean, if you had asked me ten years ago I would never have guessed I'd be doing something like this. I had mentioned it off the cuff to somebody that there should be a book like this, and then I thought for sure there already would be because there are so many great female players. Then I did a little research, and not only was there no book, there was no research or any real concise place where you could gather information on women guitar players and I thought that was a travesty. There are so many that I knew because I've always been sort of keeping track in my head. I thought, God, I know so many great female players, why is there no document for us or any reference book or resource or anything in the literature? I thought that was crazy. So I took it on, and I just went for it. I don't know why. Now I'm so deep into it, and I get so many people that are, like, "It's just so important what you're doing. You go, girl." I get that all the time. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just following through.

Tom: Seems like one of those ideas that makes you wonder why it hadn’t been done already.

Sue: Not only has it not been done, women have been singularly excluded from a lot of the literature in the history of guitar. I'm talking about some really important figures. There are some major female figures in this instrument - in its history, in the way it has progressed as an instrument, and it's kind of interesting that they're being forgotten.

Tom: Definitely overlooked.

Sue: Overlooked, definitely. Why? We don't know exactly. I can answer that in a lot of different ways, and I don't really want to focus on the negative and turn this into a bitch-fest. It's so easy to do that and say, we're so "hard done by". I don't want to do that. What I want to do is find the good in it, the positive, and just do it, like it needs to be done.

Tom: Just lay out the information.

Sue: Exactly, and people can take it any way they want to. But it's definitely not about a gripe-fest. I just want to celebrate the talent that has come before me and is going to go way beyond me.

Tom: It was your compilation CD, Blues Guitar Women, that inspired me to pursue interviews with female guitar players. When I got the album it raised a similar question, why is it that we don't give much exposure to female guitar players? I don't care what magazine you look at, it's a rare thing to find a serious article about a female guitarist. Like you, I started doing research and found there just isn't a lot of information out there. Your website’s been my main reference.

Sue: Good. There are some other resources out there, but not quite as concise. The list on my website is strictly people who are alive, so there's a whole historical domain that I've done a lot of research into that hasn't been posted. It's a very interesting study.

Tom: Let's talk about you. How have you been affected by Memphis Minnie?

Sue: How was I affected by Memphis Minnie?

Tom: Infected, really. You're born and raised in Ottawa, Canada. How did your relationship with the blues come about?

Sue: Well, when I was young, or younger, when I was about 16, I developed an interest in the blues just through my own curiosity about music. At the time, I would go and save my pennies and my dollars that I earned through my little job, and I would go buy blues records. It was always guys. It was always Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins. Every week I'd get a new blues record when I had a couple of bucks. And T-Bone Walker, I'd go through all these guys.

Then one day I was just going through the blues bins, and I came across this woman. It was Memphis Minnie. I'll never forget, I just picked it up, I was like 16-years-old at the time, and said, "Wow. Who's that?" She had a guitar, too. I played guitar at the time and I wanted to be a blues guitar player. So, I brought it home, and her music just hit me like a ton of bricks. Just her delivery and the fact that she was playing guitar and her roughness, and the fact that she was a woman and I could relate to what she was singing, because she writes her own songs. It all just hit me really hard, and all of a sudden she was my main person after that. She remains one of my biggest influences.

And again, here's somebody like Memphis Minnie who's huge. She's so important in the history of the blues. She made such great contributions and people still overlook her. They don't hold her in the same regard as Robert Johnson, and I'm thinking, "Why?" She wrote way more songs. She was around longer. Her music transcended three different eras of blues. She started out with a real early traditional Mississippi thing. She went on to play popular music of the day. Plus, she was one of the first recorded electric guitar players. And she wrote, she composed the whole time. She was an anomaly. She was somebody that we need to celebrate and not pass over. And she's somebody that other women should know about because it's a hard road. What she went through to do what she did, it must have been atrocious. As an African-American woman doing what she did back then it must have been incredibly difficult. People like that who have blazed trails need to be recognized, especially when we're still, as women guitar players, we're still sort of feeling pretty isolated in the whole spectrum.

Tom: How were you exposed to the blues?

Sue: I was just a really curious person. I did a lot of reading. I was really into rock 'n' roll and punk, and then I got into the early British Invasion. I grew up in the '70s, I was a kid in the '70s, and my brothers were all into Led Zeppelin and the Stones, so that kind of brought me to the blues. I started reading about those bands. I always knew I was going to be a musician, and I always knew I was going to be a guitar player. So, when I discovered blues, that just sort of gave me a place to focus in on, a style to focus on. I just loved the music so much. But I discovered it on my own, just through reading and figuring out this person came before this person. They were into them, you know?

Tom: Was there much of a blues scene in Ottawa at the time?

Sue: There actually was a good little blues scene, and there still is a decent Canadian blues scene. It doesn't compare to the scene down across the border because there are not as many players, not as much work. But there is a healthy scene. I was nurtured by the other players.

Tom: You started gigging professionally at 16. What kind of music were you playing at that time?

Sue: That was blues.

Tom: Right from the start.

Sue: My first gigs were all blues gigs. When I first started playing, I was just playing from book stuff, and then I found blues and concentrated on blues from there on in.

Tom: Were you a solo act, or did you have a group?

Sue: I played in an acoustic blues duo at first, and we did Memphis Minnie and Robert Johnson, just about everybody, Muddy Waters. And then I got into a band that played Chess Records stuff, early Chess Records stuff.

Tom: How did your family react to this?

Sue: I was kind of so into my own thing, I was oblivious. I was just oblivious. I don't know how they were reacting. I was a pretty hard-headed girl. Pretty driven and really into my own thing, and I didn't really tell my family much of what I was doing. I used to sneak out to the clubs and stuff, and my dad didn't know where I'd go. He worked midnight shifts, so I could go out after he went to work. I was every father's nightmare, I think. His 16-year-old daughter's running around.

Tom: I'd have to ask my daughter, why the blues? I mean, I could understand if she's playing rock 'n' roll, but it seems so atypical that she's,already, at 16, dedicated herself to the blues.

Sue: I know. It is atypical. And it's too bad, because it's such good music. I guess people consider that it's old people's music. It's like the core audience for blues is quite old, and you think, "Where are the young people?" This is stuff that's real, and it's more rebellious than anything on the radio.

Tom: True. It's raw, it's simple, it's direct.

Sue: It's raw. Exactly. I think the blues is also going through some growing pains, which is why a lot of the young people have stopped listening. But I was an anomaly. I was a complete freak. I was a freak for music and guitar and I had nothing to do with anybody around me unless they were into guitar and blues. I just didn't care.

Tom: How did this work out with high school? You were in high school at the time, right?

Sue: Yep. I made my way through. I'm a smart girl, but I wasn't really an ambitious student, so I just kind of had to do what I had to do. I made it through. Gigs at night, was late for school a lot. But I made it through.

Tom: Would your brothers come out and see you perform?

Sue: Not early on. They come out now. They didn't then. I really was into my own thing. The rest of the family really didn't know what I was doing.

Tom: When did you get into electric guitar?

Sue: After playing acoustic blues for about a year, then I went into early Chess Records stuff and started playing more electric. Then I went from a hollow body archtop to sort of like a hollow body electric. Then, eventually, I settled on a Telecaster by the time I was 18.

Tom: So since 18, the Telecaster has been your main electric?

Sue: Yes. A Paisley, I guess it's a Thin Line. I don't even know.

Tom: When you started out with acoustic, were you playing slide, finger style?

Sue: I always played with a thumb pick and my fingers. I wanted to be able to do the bass lines and be able to play the country blues stuff properly. I never used finger picks and I didn't ever really play slide. I've always just played, and I don't even play in open tuning that much. I'm a pretty standard guitar player. But I do a lot of right-hand stuff.

Tom: Were you teaching yourself?

Sue: Yes, I taught myself. I practiced a lot, and I did take some lessons from a local guitar player in Ottawa named Tony Dee, who, at the time, was one of the hot-shot Strat players around. He taught me the best thing that anybody could ever teach somebody. He taught me to teach myself. There I went. After he taught me that, I just went on my own and I practiced like crazy.

Tom: At 18, you leave home and go to Vancouver?

Sue: Yep. I just felt like I needed to go far from home. You know, Canada's a relatively small country, considering how big we are.

Tom: Size-wise.

Sue: Size-wise, really big. But the way the music scene is, it's quite small. And the opportunities are kind of limited. So, I knew there were two places I could have gone, Toronto or Vancouver, as far as major cities. I guess Montreal would have been an option, but it never occurred to me. But Toronto or Vancouver, so I picked Vancouver because I wanted to go far away.

Tom: You pack a suitcase, grab your guitar, and you're on the road.

Sue: Yes. I left home.

Tom: What happened when you arrived?

Sue: I had enough money saved up that I could afford an apartment. Then I just started going to the local blues jam. I found out where that was and I started going down there, hanging out and trying to get them to let me play. After a few weeks, after I got to play a few times, I met a few people. They started to accept me. I couldn't find a gig because nobody would hire me. The town was kind of sewn up as far as gigs went, which was too bad, because I was trying to find a sideman gig. It really hadn't occurred to me to start my own band, but I had to start my own band because I couldn't find a gig. I found some guys my own age and they wanted to play with me and I wanted to play with them, so we just formed it up and started going on the road.

Tom: What was the blues scene like in Vancouver?

Sue: It was all right. You know, in most towns there are one or two clubs. I think there might have been three or four clubs where you could play there. Then there's the road. You have to kind of find your way around. There was work. We managed to make a go of it.

Tom: Were you focused on a particular style at the time?

Sue: At the time, very guitar driven, sort of like early Chicago blues along with Texas blues. I was pretty traditional.

Tom: Stevie Ray Vaughan?

Sue: I liked Texas blues, but I was into the more traditional styles, like Lightnin' Hopkins. I really liked the T-Birds. I didn't listen to as much Stevie Ray because everybody was listening to Stevie Ray and I really made a conscious effort not to.

Tom: It was almost cliché?

Sue: Everybody bought a Strat and was Stevie Ray. So, I just thought, I'm not going to do that. I bought a Tele and I was more into, like, Albert Collins and T-Bone Walker, those guys. They're from Texas, too. People just associate Stevie Ray with Texas, but he was only one guy from a huge music scene.

Tom: Maybe that has something to do with why a lot of young people take their time coming over to the blues - how do you juggle the past with the future? You have a strong tie to the roots of this music, but then again, things progress. You want to take it somewhere else. How do you balance the past, the present, and the future?

Sue: I really believe you have to be irreverent. You can't fall over yourself with respect to these people. Respect only goes so far. I think one of the things that the blues is suffering from right now is that there's not enough youth or energy in the music, and there's a whole contingent of people that are dead set on never changing. They're dead set against it ever changing. It's like, grow up. You cannot control something. It's alive, it's changing. We don't need to sound like we're from 1955 playing through the same gear that they played in 1955, and recording … it's like, if those guys were around today, they'd be recording with modern technology. They'd be using all the bells and whistles we have now. Come on. You've got to be today. Blues has got to live now.

So, that's how I rationalize it. I've never been a traditionalist. I think it's great to learn the forms and to learn how to play it properly and to play with the old guys, I think that's beautiful. I love doing that. I love being a sideman. When I was in Austin, Texas, I did a lot of that. I backed up a lot of guys and I really, really enjoyed it. But that doesn't mean I've got to play exactly like them. They want you to be who you are. And I'm not this guy from Mississippi who's 80-years-old. I'm a kid from Canada. So I think blues is about your truth. Your own path and your own truth. You have to be honest with yourself.

Tom: There's a strong contingent of blues purists that don't want anybody …

Sue: Right. We call them Nazis.

Tom: The Blues Nazis, that's right.

Sue: They're well known as the Blues Nazis, and they want things a certain way. It's crazy.

Tom: You’d rather find your own voice, your own style, and mix it up.

Sue: That’s what we do.

Tom: You tell the stories the way you hear them.

Sue: Yes, and I'm not just influenced by blues music. So whatever seeps into my playing, I just let it go. I don't try to conform. You can call me a blues player or you couldn't. I don't really care. I'm not really a straight blues player. But there are blues elements in a lot of what I do. And I think my singing is very bluesy. I'm very influenced by Memphis Minnie.

Tom: It's good to simply be a musician.

Sue: My favorite people were just musicians. They didn't really classify themselves. Like Gate Mouth Brown. He just played guitar, and he's like, "I'm just a musician. Don't label me."

Tom: How did you end up in Austin?

Sue: I ended up in Austin because basically I sent Clifford Antone a demo tape and he called me back. He liked my tape so much that he invited me down there.

Tom: What was on the demo, do you remember?

Sue: One particular thing that caught his ear was a solo piece that I'd done called “Gone Blind”. It sounds kind of like Lightnin' Hopkins. He thought it sounded like Lightnin' Slim. I hadn't even heard of Lightnin' Slim, so he was kind of blown away that there was a girl in Canada playing Lightnin' Slim. He was just, like, wow, how does that happen?

Tom: He invited you down to record?

Sue: He invited me down to visit, first off. Then the recording kind of happened a little later. But he put me in a studio to do some demos and that turned out pretty good. Some of those actually made it onto my first album.

Tom: Did you take the band with you or did you go by yourself?

Sue: I came by myself at first, then I invited my band from Canada down. They followed me a few months later.

Tom: Are these players that you still work with?

Sue: Oh, no. I've gone through many, many bands, although I don't go through as many as some people.

Tom: Tell me more about the Austin years. You opened for a lot of big acts and you recorded. You recorded four albums with Antone's, right?

Sue: Yep. And then they released an outtakes album, so they slide albums on me. My years in Austin were great. I arrived, I was 20-years-old or 21, and I came right into the middle of the best blues scene happening. The T-Birds had just rocketed to fame, Stevie Ray Vaughan had just come out of that scene. There was a lot of strong female talent too, which I really drew from, and great guitar players. We'd go see Junior Brown all the time and Derek O'Brien. Kim Wilson was hanging out all the time. It was just a real vibrant community-oriented scene, and they were very welcoming. There was no, like, get out of town kind of thing. It was a really warm place.

Tom: More of an open city.

Sue: Very open, very warm, very friendly, progressive kind of scene. Not just blues music was happening there, there was every kind of great music. So, for me, who was so into music and just being a sponge at the time, it was perfect.

Since I was on Antones Records, they signed me pretty much shortly after I arrived, I was down at the club all the time and I'd get to play with all the people. Clifford Antone was a real nurturing guy. He'd always get you up to play with whomever was in town. He was all about that. James Cotton's in town, I want you to back him up, or Jimmy Rogers is here, we need a band, do you want to play guitar? It was always like that. So, for me, it was like heaven. Just showing up and being able to do that.

Tom: You opened and played with some of the top names like Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter, and Albert Collins.

Sue: Yeah. We toured with a lot of guys, too. But, yeah, at the club I got to play with Jimmy Rogers, Pinetop Perkins, Earl King, Buddy Guy, and Albert Collins.

Tom: You had to be in blues heaven.

Sue: It was heaven. I was totally in heaven. There was no place I would have rather been, and I wouldn't change one thing about those years. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Tom: How well did you get to know Albert Collins?

Sue: I didn't get to know him well. I did shoot dice with him once.

Tom: Did you open for him or play with …

Sue: I sat in with him once at the club.

Tom: Was Coco Montoya with him?

Sue: No, actually when these guys came to the club at Antone's, they usually came without their bands and they'd play with the Antone's house band. But I know Coco. We met them on the road many times.

Tom: I interviewed Coco last week.

Sue: He's an awfully nice guy.

Tom: And a great guy to talk to. You’re a Tele player, which is why I wondered if you got to know Albert very well.

Sue: I can't say I got to know him very well, but I did get to see him many times, and he was a big influence on me, especially from a Tele player's perspective. He just nailed it so good.

Tom: Did you spend much time with Buddy Guy?

Sue: We toured with him. We did get to open for him quite a few times. We got friendly with his band, and I've met Buddy several times, though it's been years since I saw him.

Tom: Another gentleman.

Sue: He's a very nice guy. And that's the thing about the big blues guys, they're pretty down-to-earth.

Tom: [Sound of a young boy in the background] That's got to be your son, Joe, right? How old is he now? 10?

Sue: He's going to be 10 in February.

Tom: Did he have a good Christmas?

Sue: Oh, yeah, a very good Christmas.

Tom: Does he play an instrument?

Sue: He does. He plays drums and piano. No guitar as of yet.

Tom: Is he interested in guitar?

Sue: Mildly. But I think he kind of likes having his own thing, too.

Tom: When Joe was born, you moved back to Canada, correct?

Sue: Right before he was born.

Tom: Moving from Austin back to Ottawa must have been a big change.

Sue: It was, and I was scared, because the Austin scene had been so great. I was a little concerned that it wouldn't be good up here. I can't say I was enormously excited about going back home, but I was pregnant, and kind of like all the roads were leading back home. So, I just went back, and I wasn't really looking for excitement anymore. You know, when you're pregnant you get that nesting instinct. You really don't go out as much. But I was happy after I got back and made some friends and realized that there's some good music up here. The Canadian music scene actually has its own identity and the blues scene has developed and grown, and there's some young talent that we can be proud of up here. So, it's been all right.

Tom: How has it been as a home base?

Sue: It's fine. For me, it doesn't really matter where I live anymore, because I fly a lot. I just have to get to an airport. And we do so much on the Internet with our work, you could really live anywhere these days.

Tom: I'm proof of that, let me tell you.

Sue: Portugal sounds pretty nice, actually.

Tom: Not only is it Portugal, we live in a farming village. I look out my window and I see a vineyard and sheep. How did you connect with Ruf Records?

Sue: Actually, he found me.

Tom: Thomas Ruf?

Sue: Yes. He was, I guess, looking to expand his label. Thomas has a fondness for female artists because he actually found me, right before I was releasing my CD Change. He just said, I'll sign her. Just straight out.

Tom: Ruf Records is based in Germany, you’re in Canada, where do you record?

Sue: I record wherever I want. It doesn't matter.

Tom: Where did you record New Used Car?

Sue: New Used Car we recorded in Montreal.

Tom: You got a two-album deal.

Sue: I've already fulfilled my two-album deal. Change was the first one. So I'm done. I'm a free girl. But I actually just recorded another CD with Ruf, and I'm going to be touring. And that's with three women guitar players [Blues Guitar Women Tour 2007, featuring Sue Foley, Deborah Coleman, and Roxanne Potvin]. So, it's kind of upped the angle for my book. That starts in Europe, actually.

Tom: Where in Europe?

Sue: It starts in Germany. The tour dates are posted on my website already, the German dates. We start in late January in Germany, and then we do three legs. We’ll be closer to your area at the end of March, but we don't get to Portugal.

Tom: We're often last on the list, if on it.

Sue: I love that area, though. I've never been to Portugal but I love the south of Europe.

Tom: Who are the other guitar players you'll be touring with?

Sue: Deborah Coleman, another blues player, and Roxanne Potvin. She's Canadian. Young girl, 24, so she's kind of just getting a go. It'll be the three of us.

Tom: Tell me a little bit more about your gear. What amps are you using?

Sue: Well, for years and years it was a Fender Bassman '59 reissue with a reverb pedal. Right now I've got one of those Electro Harmonix Holy Grail reverb pedals.

Tom: Still use the Bassman?

Sue: I still actually use it sometimes, but I've scaled down to using two small amps instead of one bigger amp. That works quite nice, too. I like the [Fender] Deluxe, and I have a [Fender] Vibrolux. Sometimes they're wired in together.

Tom: Let's say a teenager said to you that she wanted to pursue a career similar to yours, what advice would you give her?

Sue: Don't put it down. I don't know, it depends on what kind of advice she wanted. There are so many things. That's kind of why I'm writing the book.

Tom: Let's imagine my daughter's 16 and says, "Dad, I want to become a blues guitar player." I call you and say, "Sue, what can she expect? What's down the road for her? What's she going to face?" What would you tell me?

Sue: Well, I wouldn't want to discourage her.

Tom: But talk straight. It's not going to be a bed of roses, right?

Sue: No. It's incredibly difficult, that's one thing. I'd say this is not for wimps. You've got to be prepared to work really hard and you've got to be prepared to sacrifice everything. If you can do that and be happy with your choices, you'll be all right. Don't expect anything, and don't expect any handouts. But go with a clear heart. You really have to need to do this. It's got to be your calling. There are a lot of things that if I had known 20 years ago maybe I wouldn't have done it. I don’t want to discourage anybody from doing it, but it's really hard.

Tom: What are some of the things that you'd point out? I understand you don't want to discourage people, but on the other hand, what's the reality that a teenager sitting alone in the bedroom practicing may not have encountered yet?

Sue: Be careful. Be very careful. A teenage girl, alone … I don't know. It's a hard question. What can you say? Go with your dream. Follow that dream and if your dream is strong enough, you can do it. You just really have to believe in yourself. I know that sounds corny because everybody says it, right? It sounds like a typical answer to this. I could add other things like stay off drugs and stuff, and I would say that, too.

Tom: She’s still going to have to deal with gender problems.

Sue: Oh, for sure. That's never going to go away. This is a guy's domain. You've got to be comfortable around men. You've got to be one of the guys, and just give up that feminine side, at least to some degree. You can't be a girly-girl out there on the road. You'd get eaten alive.

Tom: What about competition? It's a sad thing that music is a competitive business, but that's the reality, isn't it?

Sue: It is competitive, but, you know, that doesn't need to be your focus. I'm getting to a place where I want to be in a position to be able to help people a little bit more and not see this as some kind of vortex where you're all alone. I think for women, another reason why the book will be really helpful is because we really do feel very isolated in the industry - in this part of the industry. Not pop singers and stuff. But as guitar players out playing in a band or a drummer or something, as a female, you're very isolated.

Tom: It must have been good for you to talk to these other ladies because you've got so much in common.

Sue: Totally. We've got so much in common, and it also dispels that whole feeling of "oh, I'm all alone here" when you realize we've all lived these parallel lives. We haven't been alone at all, but we thought we were.

Tom: You just weren't communicating.

Sue: We just didn't know about each other.

Tom: What’s the other side of the coin? What's the joyous part of it that I could tell my daughter?

Sue: Oh, playing is the most amazing thing to do in the world. Playing music and having the freedom of being on the road. I love it. I love the adventure and the spirit.

Tom: What kind of venues are you mostly playing now?

Sue: Right across the board. We do a lot of big clubs, we do a lot of festivals. I've done big opening shows, even up to stadiums. But then I'll turn around and I'll play the coffee shop down the road. You've got to love to play, and I love to play, and I love the challenges, the day-to-day challenges. I love the challenges of bringing my playing up a level and the creative challenges. I love being friends with musicians and hanging out with other players. I really like what I do. I even like doing this book. I don't like sitting at my computer all day hammering out emails, but that's just one of the aspects of my job that I have to do.

Tom: Do you have a favorite kind of venue?

Sue: Probably clubs. I probably prefer clubs because I like the controlled atmosphere and being inside. Festivals are also a lot of fun in the summer because you have easy hours and you get to see your friends because otherwise you don't get to see them that much since they're always working at the same time. But, I really enjoy big clubs. I enjoy collaborating.

Tom: What's one of the high points in your career in terms of a gig?

Sue: For me, when I get to meet or play with some of my heroes, that's certainly a high point. Even meeting them more than playing with them. I really have never been the type that I needed to play with everybody. But it’s great when I get to meet and communicate with people that I think are awesome musicians. Like the other week, I was hanging out in Minneapolis and I got to make friends with Dr. John. That was awesome. That’s kind of like my favorite thing. I still am really in love with music and I'm in awe of great talent.

Tom: Who else would you like to meet?

Sue: Well, Memphis Minnie, but I'm going to have to wait for that one.

Tom: You're going to start touring starting next month.

Sue: Yep. I'll be on the road a lot in January [2007]. January, February, all the way to May. I'm working a lot.

Tom: Do you get to see your son much when you’re on the road? How does that work out?

Sue: No. It doesn't work out good. The hardest thing I do is leave him. It's necessary sometimes. I try to keep my tours sort of spaced out to where I'm in and out. And we have a pretty strong support network here. My mom's here, and his dad's pretty close. He's got cousins. We just do what we do. But, it's very difficult. That's the hardest thing for me.

Tom: Does he get to see many of your shows?

Sue: He does, when it makes sense, when it's not too late or it's the right situation. He's pretty cognizant of everything I do. I think he's also pretty impressed, as are his friends, that he has a mom that works as a musician. They think it's pretty cool.

Tom: What's his music of choice?

Sue: He's into hip-hop mostly. Hip-hop and punk.

Tom: What can you say?

Sue: That's what's going around. It's kind of neat because I get to hear new music, which I would never expose myself to otherwise. So, kids are good that way. [Laughs] They help keep us current.

Tom: My wife's a newspaper journalist and has been doing research on how women are portrayed in the media. There's a lot to learn about this issue, whether you're a man or a woman

Sue: Yes. Gender issues are huge. I'm going to keep this to where I can understand it, but I've been reading a lot about gender matters. I'm not into feminism, per se. I was raised in the '70s, so I understand when it happened and what it was about, but I think it kind of went too far, and there was too much anger and baggage. Calling yourself a feminist is too much of a label. It's got all of this baggage associated with it, all these belief systems you may not share.

Tom: Almost like reverse discrimination.

Sue: It is, and I'm not into that. I'm not into groupism. I’m not writing the book as a statement of “hard-done-by” or groupism, because, really, the creative process works both ways. The reason why a woman would pick up a guitar and a guy picks up a guitar is probably almost identical and where their creative urges come from is almost identical. But, women’s experiences and the way they're perceived is different. And, for example, because they might be mothers or they might choose not to be mothers, there's an added dimension of experiences that are different. Guys are able to have kids, go out, tour, and have a home to come back to. But the woman musician who has kids, that's a whole different ball game because she can't just disappear.

Tom: There are a number of gender role assumptions.

Sue: There are, and they're not all bad because there are certain things we're cut out for more than other things. There's nothing wrong with that. There are specific differences in the way we think and what we're able to deal with.

Tom: Another tricky issue is how to avoid treating female guitarists as a novelty.

Sue: There is that. My beef with a lot of guitar magazines is that there's not a lot of coverage of women players. They don't reach out to women audiences. And unfortunately they're missing out on a potentially large amount of sales by reporting only one side. Actually, we all miss out.

Related Links
Sue Foley
Ruf Records
Brian D. Holland's review of New Used Car
Brian D. Holland's review of Blues Guitar Women

More articles by Tom Watson

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