By Rush Evans
Photography by Barton Wilder Custom Images

Y'all are sounding like a congregation!

It didn't take long for Ruthie Foster to say that. After performing the first song of the evening, she has already turned Thursday night at Austin's Shady Grove Café into Sunday morning at church.

Her audience members are no strangers to gifted singer-songwriters. This is, after all, Austin, and KGSR-FM Radio's Spring Concert Series at the Grove provides one of the better showcases for our talent-filled city. But tonight's performer brings something special to the Texas singer-songwriter tradition: a soaring voice that can shatter glass, drop jaws, and save souls.

Ruthie Foster is a Renaissance Texan, raised in the rural Brazos Valley, educated in Waco, and inspired by travels throughout America. She developed much of her original musical sound during her years in College Station (no Aggie jokes please; that community has embraced her and her music for years).

Making Austin her musical home was just a matter of time. Home matters to her, literally and spiritually. And finding home, through a peace within, runs thematically throughout her uplifting songs. That musical message is fully understood by the attentive congregation at the open-air Shady Grove gig. And Foster has a lot of music-and stories-to share with them this evening.

The People's Key

We're gonna stay in the People's Key for awhile, the key of C, the key of Sam Cooke. I love what he could do with a melody, just move it all around. Especially in the key of C. I tried to write something kind of Sam Cooke-ish, and this is close as I could come: "Another Rain Song."

A few hours before the gig, Foster shares thoughts on her music over a bowl of the Shady Grove's chili, as does Cyd Cassone, Foster's on-stage partner, percussionist, back-up vocalist, business manager, road manager, publicist, and all-around creative support system.

"One thing I noticed," reflects Foster on a few of her formative musical years spent in Charleston, North Carolina, "was that singer-songwriters weren't playing any songs by the black writers. Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, I didn't see anybody doing that. So that was my niche in Charleston, and I got a lot of calls because of that."

That simple observation steered her directly to where her musical heart lay. It's easy to forget that a brilliant soul vocalist like Cooke really was a singer-songwriter and a folk singer in the most literal sense, singing music of the people. That point is not lost on Foster and Cassone, who still perform "You Send Me," "Chain Gang," and "Bring It On Home To Me."

The gospel according to Foster

Somebody came up earlier this evening and said, "Girl, I had to come here this evening. I have had a time this week, and I needs to hear me some gospel!" Has everybody else been gettin' your gospel on, 'cause if you haven't, we about to get back on it.

Getting one's gospel on is an important part of understanding and feeling Ruthie Foster's music, but don't think that she's just a gospel artist. Most folks don't quite know where to put her categorically, but they sure do try. In fact, an Internet search for her finds a number of musical genres that have claimed her as their own. The names of the sites on which her name appears reflect the ease with which her music fits into each style: takecountryback.com, yardbirdsuite.com, acousticcity.org, girlsnguitars.com, kerrvillemusicfestival.com, texasmusiccafe.com, nothinbutdablues.com, and (the one that kind of says it all) singslikehell.com.

There are elements of jazz, country, blues, reggae, folk, world beat (Cassone brings that in, through her various percussion instruments), everything that you might expect from the musical melting pot that is the state of Texas, except possibly Bob Wills western swing (she's still young; give her time).

One easy stylistic comment to make is that of comparison to other spirit-filled voices. The powerful vocal abilities and emotional honesty of Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin are frequently brought up as critics struggle for words to describe the soulful sincerity of Foster's voice.

Are categories and comparisons particularly meaningful from the artist's point of view? "Not to me," she says. "I guess lately it's been a thing that our label (Blue Corn Music) has been trying to deal with, where to put us. Every time we do a CD, we have the intention of putting it all in a certain category, which is why we recorded Crossover (the second CD). That was supposed to be folk songs that weren't gonna really go with Runaway Soul (the third CD) which we thought was gonna be all blues."

Cassone has a new tag line that she has used for describing the music they make. "It's gospel and blues-infused folk!"

The lowdown, dirty, living-in-a-small-town blues

I'm gonna do a song called "Smalltown Blues." It's a song about growing up in a little town called Gause. Over in Gause, you can get just about anything you want at the Coats Grocery and Feed. If you're feeling like a road trip, go on over to Gause and say hello to Alfred Ray and Wanda Sue Coats at Coats Grocery and Feed. You'll be glad you did. You can get your hog feed, cow feed, barbecue sammitch…

"…and a Ruthie Foster CD," adds Cassone.

Gause is a tiny cotton-farming community thirty miles northwest of Bryan-College Station, and it was Foster's hometown until her love of music drew her to the commercial music program at Waco's McLennan College (now McLennan Community College). Her mother, though always supportive of Ruthie's music, was not happy about her departure, and it certainly required money that they didn't have. Foster was determined and scrappy, finding grants and loans to carry her through three years of the program.

While there, she managed to flunk music theory (the study of musical structure) three times. But her music and her life were based less on theory than on instinct, and that would lead her to her next musical adventure. She had once been moved by seeing an Air Force Top Forty band perform at her high school. "I thought that was just awesome. To be able to do all these songs that you hear on the radio, and all you do is travel in a band, and you get paid, and you don't have to think about where you're gonna live."

She went into the Navy, having made a conscious decision to do something other than music for her first year, which was spent in San Diego. "That was real important to me. I was trying to figure out if I could even hold a conversation without bringing up anything about music, and to see if I could make a living doing something else. So I was in the helicopter squadron."

After that first year, she decided to audition for the Navy band, to get back into music. Her commanding officer and others told her that once you're in the "real" Navy, getting into something like that exclusive band was tough. Foster's response to the naysayers was simple: "Watch me."

"We had to stand watch four times a week, so I would stand watch and have my little sight-singing (music reading) book out, while I'm singing, while I'm sitting on the flight line, watching the helicopters go, getting myself ready for this audition. I not only passed but I got into the Navy band on my birthday. I went to Norfolk, Virginia, and relearned how to sight-sing-the Navy way."

She then traveled throughout the South, singing the Navy way in a Funk Top Forty band, doing urban hits with accompanying dance moves. Now she was performing for high school kids, and "they will boo you right off the stage if you don't do it right!"

She got out of the service while living in Charleston, where she began night managing and performing at a folk club that had once been a strip bar. The strip club customers were still hanging out at the joint in those days, which proved interesting for a solo guitar-playing singer. "Once I (was) up onstage doing my thing, and this big Cadillac pulls up. This old guy walks in, he's standing at the bar, he's watching me. The bartender (later) told me what he said: 'How's she gonna take her clothes off with that guitar on?'"

Lost in the city

When I was living up in New Jersey, I signed up with this major label. They told me to go out and write some songs with all these people who had all these awards for writing songs. It's funny, I was up there and in all that time, the only thing I could write about was Texas. So I want to do a song that is my tribute to Texas. I call this one "Home."

South Carolina had been a good experience for her. She had learned how to talk to people from the stage, creating a rapport with an audience. Mostly though, she'd used the time to develop her songwriting skills. But there was to be another musical diversion before finding her way back to Texas.

At the end of the nineteen-eighties, a tape of her singing at a wedding found its way into the hands of someone at Atlantic Records. She soon found herself with a publishing and recording contract, living right outside of New York City.

The label was looking to develop a black female singer-songwriter, but they had something a little more refined and stylish in mind for the image side of the artist. Foster was a Texan with an unpretentious, casual disposition and demeanor. In creating their new artist, the label gave her something of a makeover, with short curly hair, lots of makeup, and more stylish clothes. "It was very eighties," says Foster.

After creating the newly fabricated image, the star-making machinery at Atlantic committed it to paper in the form of a publicity photo, which was worth a thousand words on the ill-fitting artist-label relationship. "I sent these little postcards around, and I sent one to my dad. Dad called me up to say, 'Baby, I just wanted to know who this white woman was with my baby's nose!'"

Nothing was released during the Atlantic contract period, though she penned a great song about the experience ("Lost In The City") and some demos were recorded, including "Give You My Love," an outstanding song, with a heartfelt, hymn-like quality.

The amen corner

Every church got an amen corner. My Big Mama-that's what I called my grandmother-would amen anything. You'd hear something like, "We're gonna turn to page 357 in the hymnal," (she'd say) "Amen, 357, Amen!" She had a church fan; you know the ones, they advertise your local funeral home on one side and (have) praying hands on the other side. It's for keeping cool and it's for keeping time. Big Mama would have that fan in one hand and her handkerchief in the other, and she would testify. She'd stand up. That was Big Mama's way of saying, "We having some church!"

There is a church-like quality in a Foster show, but not in a denominational sort of way. Like the songs of Sam Cooke, there is a positive thread throughout all her music. It's not a calculated process, creating songs with a spiritual common denominator, but like many songwriters, Foster doesn't question or analyze it too deeply. "It's just as much a surprise to me, finding out that the stuff we're doing is uplifting. I was doing it for myself, to keep myself uplifted, you know?"

Cassone, being an integral part of the creation and performance of Foster's songs, has a special perspective on the intangibility of the music's meaning. "It's not about spirit and church in the traditional sense. It's not about anybody's faith or religion or perception of God. It's about people finding their own spirit within themselves. We can be chasing-a-car-dog-tired, so exhausted when we get up onstage sometimes, and then something happens where the people we're performing for have an energy that they give to us, and we're revived. We absorb that energy and give it back."

'Hole In My Pocket'

Feel like doing a little singing? This is a song that Terri Hendrix wrote, a wonderful singer-songwriter. Terri calls it "Hole In My Pocket," and we want you guys to sing it with us.

The spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood among Texas musicians is legendary and in Foster's case, it represents how her musical message began to reach all corners of the vast state, and beyond.

After relocating back to College Station in the early nineteen-nineties to be near her mother, Foster began making some noise, and doing so within the context of a rock 'n' roll band. Connecting with Cassone (who had also relocated to the area by way of Oregon), she stripped down her sound, took it back to the acoustic self-accompaniment that she'd started back in Charleston. This time, she had background vocals and percussion, thanks to Cassone's years of experience in various rock groups, church choirs, and the traveling Gospel Crusaders.

After building a following in the Brazos Valley for a while, a friend in the business told them of the revered Wednesday night Supper Sessions at Threadgill's, which afforded them a free opportunity to play in front of a critical Austin audience. But the real turning point was the Kerrville Folk Festival, where lovers of their particular brand of American music converge each year to find musical salvation.

Getting to know other Texas writers and performers proved particularly fortuitous when they befriended San Marcos's own Terri Hendrix, an equally positive musical force, along with her producer and musical partner, Lloyd Maines. Foster and Cassone had been performing Hendrix's poignant "Hole In My Pocket" for more than a year when both acts wound up performing at the same festival. "We cut it out of the set list because Terri was there. Lloyd and Terri both came up and said, 'absolutely not,' and they sat as close as they could get by the side of the stage so they could hear us do that song. I turned and looked at Terri and she had tears running down her face."

Maines also just happens to be one of the most highly sought record producers in Texas, apparent in the fact that he won a Grammy for producing the last studio effort by The Dixie Chicks, whose lead singer Natalie Maines, by the way, is his daughter.

At the end of that festival performance, Maines told them to call him first when they were ready to record. They did. CD number three, Runaway Soul, was the excellent result of the collaboration. And "Hole In My Pocket" was included at his insistence.

Full circle

So many voices came out the church, y'all. Etta James, she came out of the church. Aretha Franklin came out the church. And my favorite, Mahalia Jackson, came out of the church, y'all. And you know what? Ruthie Foster came out of the church, y'all!

Foster's first album was called Full Circle, an appropriate title, given the introspective themes of finding her personal and professional self. It took Cassone to recognize the song-cycle as just that: a fully realized story of Foster's pilgrimage that began and ended in Central Texas.

There are other aspects of Ruthie Foster's story that are best characterized by that circuitous concept. Some seventy years after the legendary music producer John Hammond discovered the music of Robert Johnson and Billie Holiday (he would later be responsible for bringing folks like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan to worldwide audiences), Ruthie Foster has brought the music full circle. Now she and Cyd Cassone are sharing music inspired by those historic musical figures while sharing a stage with important influences like blues torch-bearer John Hammond Jr., among many others.

Performing with people like the second-generation Hammond, Richie Havens, Al Green and Taj Mahal can be heady stuff for up-and-comers, but it can also further fuel the creative process, particularly when a strong connection is made. After an impromptu backup from Odetta at a folk festival, the pair experienced a further complimentary endorsement of their music from the folk legend. "(Odetta) was talking to one of the coordinators for the event, and she was sitting there and she had tears on her face," remembers Cassone. "He thought something was wrong, and she told him that she had finally found someone to pass the baton to. Like we got it; what we were doing there had purpose. He got tears in his eyes when he told us."

And already, Foster and Cassone themselves pass the baton to others who will carry the tradition, making the musical circle complete. "We meet people who are just beginning, and we teach at a four-day workshop mentoring high school kids when we go the Winnipeg Folk Festival," Cassone says. "And they're looking at us that way. It's this incredible passing of information and lineage that we create by learning these people's songs and passing our songs to other people."

Knockin' on heaven's door
You know that death came a-knockin' on,
My mother's door sayin' come on mother
Ain't ya ready to go, and my mother sloop down
Buckle up her shoes, an' she move on down
By de Jordan stream, den she shout
"Hallelujah! Done done my duty
Got on my travelin' shoes!

Even the traditional spiritual with the ominous title "Death Came A-Knockin'" has a hopeful, ethereal feel to it, especially when Foster wails the Hallelujahs. Truth be told, the song's message was always hopeful: it's about the toil of slaves being freed from their labor, and moving on to a better place. However, in the universal language of song, it can serve as a reflection and a tribute to those who have passed on.

For Ruthie Foster, almost every song she sings can express the love and serve as tribute to the person who most inspired her music: her mother. "She walked into my room one day when I was eleven or twelve, playing my guitar. I just wanted to play the guitar. Here's this little black girl growing up with Van Halen (posters) on the walls; she stuck with me through all of that. She busted open the door one day and she said, 'Girl, I'm tired of hearing you just play. You need to just open your mouth and sing. Open it and sing.'"

Foster's mother, Shirley Jones, was a hairdresser by trade, and she had always played an important role in preparing Foster for every music gig. Both were living in Bryan in 1996 when her mother's health was declining and Foster was making ends meet with a day job at a local television station. Music was still her focus, her passion, but it could not yet pay the bills.

"My mom passed while I was playing," remembers Foster. "I had an opportunity to be there with her, but we had so many kinfolk wanting to be there, and I wanted to go and sing-for her. She was always a part of the process of my getting ready to go to sing. Even though she was unconscious that particular night, I just repeated that. I got dressed in the hospital with her there, and then I went to go sing for her. I'm sure people probably found it kind of odd that I would be onstage singing, knowing that my mother was about to die. But that meant a lot to me, to make her part of that process. So she was there. I remember at the end of the night, the lights went down, and I stayed up onstage, because I knew we'd lost her. It's a weird thing to try to explain, but I knew. So I did 'Amazing Grace.'

"Everything's different after she went from this world to inside of me. My voice is stronger. Everything felt new. I think that's what gave me the thought that I could start doing this full-time." And so she did.

Everybody's Key

We're gonna do something in the key of E, Everybody's Key!

Everybody will continue to learn of Ruthie Foster's music, thanks to her tireless traveling throughout North America, a 2003 appearance on nationally syndicated Austin City Limits, and a brand new live album.

And tonight, it has reached everybody at the Shady Grove in Austin. The Church of Ruthie Foster has concluded tonight's revival, to resume the next time she hits a stage. The crowd will disperse, filled with the spirit of Universal Love, thanks to Foster. And the appreciation goes both ways.

Thanks so much to you guys for showing up and getting out of the house. Aren't you glad you got out of the house tonight?

This is Rush Evans' third feature for The Good Life, and he's managed to work in a reference to Bob Wills and his Western Swing into each article. You may e-mail Rush at revans@goodlifemag.com.