Sue Foley

Alone (Together) A Holiday Companion

FOMZ Records / Guitar Woman Records

Thankfully, Alone (Together) A Holiday Companion is not at all a typical holiday music companion. Rather, it presents multiple award-winning, Canadian born guitarist, singer, and songwriter Sue Foley mixing up blues moods and styles to accentuate the holiday “spirit.” Foley launched her career as a 21-year-old in Austin and quickly became a riveting entertainer steeped in Texas blues traditions. In 2006 she took a twelve-year break from music to raise her child and earn a PhD in Musicology. The time paid off, because ever since she released her comeback album, The Ice Queen, Sue Foley has been on a very successful roll of reignited passion.

Foley wrote three of the album’s eight primarily low-down songs, sprinkling inspired covers around them. Full-bodied, damn near hypnotic performances by Foley and her crack band—bassist/background vocalist Jon Penner; guitarist/keyboardist/background vocalist Reo Casey; and either Arjuna Contreras or Chris Hunter on drums—assure rapt attention, even after repeated plays.

Foley begins right at the bottom, with Hop Wilson’s “Merry Christmas Darling,” transforming the song from a resolute, piano-driven blues into a guitar-driven recital emphasizing the despair expressed by Wilson’s words. Foley lays it out assuredly in an engaging, and quite beautiful, high blues tenor. Hunter’s drumming, which sounds as though he’s tapping on a couple of tabletops, adds much to the song’s ethereal effect.

The mood quickly lightens with Foley’s own “’Tis the Season,” which calls to mind the rocking blues of Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Foley’s decisive guitar sting, distinct as it is, owes some to each of the Vaughan brothers.

Traditional holiday music appears in lighthearted form with a traipse through Sammy Cahn’s “Christmas Blues.” Foley purrs in the song as the band, this time propelled with panache by Contreras, swings. But it’s right back to gutbucket blues for Foley’s own, dreary, “Just Another Day,” as she professes to drown in her sorrows on Christmas Day.

AC/DC’s “Ride On” completes the second half of the program. AC/DC on a blues album or a holiday album? That’s the beauty of music, and of Foley’s grasp of it. The rollicking song ends Holiday Companion on somewhat of a high note, a blues expression of heartache and regret that also delivers hope. Sue Foley’s sympathetic performance, complete with exclamation-point guitar notes, rocks gently as it makes its impact.

 Tom Clarke for MAS

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