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Entertainment > Ruthie Foster
Ruthie Foster
Friday, April 18, 7:30 PM
Sundance Square Main Stage
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A Featured Entertainer in our Music on MAIN presented by WaMu series!
Superlatives are rare in album titles, and for good reason: unless you're a living legend or a legend-in-the-making like the Man in Black (1958's The Fabulous Johnny Cash) or the Queen of Soul (1962's The Electrifying Aretha Franklin), you're all but begging for a crash course in humility. So if you're going to stick a word like "phenomenal" in front of your name on a record cover, you damn well better have the goods to back it up.
"Those are some big shoes!" laughs Ruthie Foster, who, just for the record, is really one of the most humble and down-to-earth artists you could ever meet, phenomenal or otherwise. She admits to initially having "quite a few reservations" about calling her fifth album The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster, crediting both her producer, noted Austin-based "swamp music" guitarist Malcolm "Papa Mali" Welbourne, and her label, Houston's Blue Corn Records, for making that particular gutsy call. As for how they came up with it, well … just give it a listen, and you'll understand. The big shoes just fit — so much so, that calling this particular record by this particular woman at this particular time in her life and career anything but "phenomenal" would be akin to false advertising.
If you haven't yet been introduced to the music of this prodigiously gifted singer and songwriter from Texas, you're in for a major epiphany. And if you've been following Foster's career ever since her self-released, 1997 debut, Full Circle, or even since her 2002 breakthrough, Runaway Soul, you're in for an even bigger surprise, because you really haven't ever heard Foster until you hear her now. Simply put, mama's gotta brand new bag.
"Change is kind of scary for a lot of people when it comes to music," says Foster. "But I've had a lot of changes in my life the last couple of years here, both personally and musically, and it was just time to step out. Running across Papa Mali when I did was great for me, because he'd been showing up to a lot of my shows here in Austin, and he mentioned that he heard so much more in me than what was coming across. That really got my attention, because I knew that there was more, too. I'd been wanting to stretch out for quite some time. And he had a way of just saying, 'It's time to fly, Ruth.”
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