SUE FOLEY

It was during Sue's own childhood in Canada that music became "a great gift from the heavens for me." With a singing father and guitar-playing brothers, the house was filled with music and "crazy Irish poetry going around. It was something I really soaked up when I was young," she recalls. "When I was about 13, I asked my father for a guitar and started practicing like crazy. I just went for it. I had this drive, this hunger to learn. I really wanted to play lead guitar, I didn't want to just play strumming stuff. I started getting into blues, and next thing I knew I was going to blues jams and playing with the big guys in Ottawa, and then I was touring across Canada and the States." After noted Texas blues singer Angela Strehli heard Foley at a Canadian festival, she hooked her up with Clifford Antone, the major domo of the Austin blues scene, which centers around his world-famous Antone's nightclub and the Antone's Records label. Duly impressed with Foley's precocious musical abilities, Antone persuaded her to move in 1990 to Austin, where she received a first-class tutelage in real blues in the city that yielded such talents as The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lou Ann Barton, Angela Strehli and Marcia Ball. "It was like a complete dream come true. There was no better university I could have gone to than go to Austin and play," says Foley, who was 21 years old at the time. "There was the best music I ever heard, and the best times. And it wasn't just the blues, but everything I was exposed to: Mexican music, zydeco, Louisiana swamp music. You don't hear that stuff up here, I'm sorry. You have to go down there. You have to sit in those clubs at 3 a.m. The education was just great."."

Love Comin' Down
SH 8036