FFWD Weekly
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Music by Mike Bell Sue Foley with Jonny Lang Jazz Festival Calgary Thursday, June 29 Jubilee Auditorium Reading the reviews for guitarist Sue Foley’s latest release, Love Comin’ Down, one wonders if a "welcome back" is in order. Not that the Canadian musician has been anywhere, it’s just that as quick as everyone is to heap accolades on Foley’s latest, they’re equally eager to take a swipe at her 1998 effort 10 Days in November, an album which seemed to wander away from the true blues path her career has followed for the past decade and into roots rock territory. Both the criticisms and the sentiments they relate are news to her. "I guess I haven’t been reading the same reviews as you," Foley says from her Winnipeg hotel room. "I’m proud of both albums – everything I do is a progression in a certain direction, and the last album had its purpose and so does this one.... "To a great extent I just don’t notice much of a difference. (Love Comin’ Down) is a roots album, too, it’s just that the blues are what ties everything together in it." The result is an exceptional package that’s tied as tight as you’ll find in the cotton field of contemporary blues. Producer Colin Linden and a host of guest musicians that includes Lucinda Williams lend their talents to nine firecracker Foley originals and three well-chosen covers that all showcase the hands and voice of an artist who sounds as though she’d be as at home in a juke joint as she would on FM radio alongside Bonnie Raitt and Eric Clapton. And while she isn’t ready to concede that 10 Days was a defeat, she does acknowledge that Love Comin’ Down is more successful because of how centred she has become in the past three years. It’s a trait that, not surprisingly, coincides with a pair of non-musical events that occurred in Foley’s life – the end of her marriage and, more importantly, raising her three-year-old son on her own. "It has made me more focused," she says. "Most people are so focused on their careers these days and so self-involved. I mean my job is my job, but being a mother is really real. It puts things into perspective.... "Raising another human is the most important thing that you can do, I honestly believe that. Far too many kids right now are raising themselves and I made a conscious decision that that was never going to happen with my son." But that understanding of her role as mother-provider doesn’t mean Foley’s willing to compromise her art for the sake of financial stability. Success may have its price, but in Foley’s world that price isn’t a pucker. "I don’t like to kiss ass," she says. "I don’t. I know in this business it’s sometimes necessary to do that to get to the next level, but if I was kissing ass I wouldn’t be happy. I enjoy doing what I’m doing and playing the music I want to play."

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