Grammy Nominee Sue Foley Is ‘All About the Work’
When Sue Foley released her latest album One Guitar Woman via Stony Plain Records back in March, it emerged as a project that was completely different from anything she’d tackled before. The album, which paid tribute to influential female guitarists through 11 covers and one original, showed Foley stepping away from electric guitar and instead recording every track using the same nylon-string instrument. From the research she conducted to the new playing styles she honed, the entire project was about two decades in the making.
Relatively speaking, recognition for Foley’s efforts came quickly. Just over seven months after the album’s release, The Recording Academy announced that One Guitar Woman will be one of the nominated projects at the 2025 Grammy Awards in the Best Traditional Blues Album category. The nomination is Foley’s first.
Foley, who has been releasing music since the early 1990s, was in Canada when the nominee list was released. “I knew the announcements were coming out that day, so I was kind of keeping my eye on things and hoping we had a chance,” Foley recalled during a recent interview with Blues Rock Review. Internet access “wasn’t great” in her location on that day, “so we kind of kept getting logged out and logged in.”
The “nerve wracking” experience ended when Foley’s assistant came through with the news. “I heard a really frantic knock on my door, so I knew we had it,” Foley said.
Receiving her first-ever Grammy nomination—and for a project as ambitious as One Guitar Woman—“feels great,” said Foley, who spoke with Blues Rock Review shortly before the album’s release. “I’m really proud of the work I put into this album. Not only the intention of supporting and promoting these pioneering women guitar players, but just the amount of work I put into it. It was years of study and application. So, to see that rewarded is awesome, because, you know, you don’t do it for that, but it’s nice if people recognize that.”
To cover Elizabeth Cotten, Foley learned the Piedmont fingerpicking technique, and to cover The Carter Family, she learned Maybelle Carter’s Carter scratch. She also learned classical guitar to cover “Romance in A Minor” by Ida Presti, a French classical guitarist. Some of the styles she studied took “a couple of decades to really get comfortable” playing.
“As a musician, there’s these moments of excitement and elation, where you get the adrenaline rush. But then there’s just like, the tedious hours of just sitting there, learning something,” Foley said. “I like both aspects of it, but it’s challenging to sit there, year in and year out, and go over one technique on guitar—which is what I did.”
With the Carter scratch specifically, it took Foley “at least three years of studying” Carter and using a metronome to get the sound right. “She was, like, a really strong rhythm player, so your rhythm has to be really even,” Foley said. “That’s why the metronome was so essential for me—because it just had to be like a drum.”
The years of effort have certainly paid off. As Foley took the songs of One Guitar Woman on the road, she was met with an “overwhelmingly positive” response. “I’ve been going out with the band and opening for myself, essentially, and doing a portion of the album acoustic, and then bringing the band out and really broadening the scope of what I’m able to do musically, which I love,” she said.
Women have been a big part of that positive response. “Females aren’t your number one audience of guitar work, generally,” Foley said. “That’s a generalization, but they love the stories, and they love the idea that, hey, these women were here all this time. They were here a long time ago, 100 years ago, doing this. And, you know, we have a place in the history of this. And it’s a really important legacy.”
In addition to the Carter family, Cotten and Presti, One Guitar Woman shows Foley deciphering the music and playing styles of Memphis Minnie, Lydia Mendoza, Elvie Thomas, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Geeshie Wiley and Charo. They all “have this kind of genius mentality,” Foley said. “People are excited to hear their stories, and just get inside their mindset.”
Foley’s tribute to these early female guitarists paired with the Grammy nomination’s spotlight present an opportunity to expose the music to new audiences. In fact, Foley believes new listeners are already finding it. In the wake of her nomination, Foley said she has been tagging The Recording Academy on social media and “trying to network through people, just to make them aware.”
“A lot of people know about some of these artists, they’re just not sure about all of them,” Foley clarified. “They’re all really interesting people that deserve to be remembered.”
As for the blues itself, Foley said the genre has “always respected” female players. “There are a lot in blues; there are a lot in classical,” Foley said. “I attribute that to the fact that Ida Presti was doing it as a young girl in the 1930s and ’40s. And then in blues, with Memphis Minnie and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and people like that. And then, of course, later on Bonnie Raitt, and people who kind of carried it forward. So I think blues has always had this, and it just keeps blossoming.”
Foley, who appreciates how “pure” blues music is, said she believes listeners “are still extremely attracted to” and comforted by the idea of a single person playing an acoustic guitar. “I think it’s really at a good place,” Foley said of the genre. “There’s a lot of young people—maybe it is the purity of it, and the soul. I just think blues has such an important message. It’s such powerful music that it just keeps finding its way.”
With the end of 2024 fast approaching, Foley said she is “excited for the new year” and looking forward to a couple of projects that she already has in progress. She is writing a book about female guitar pioneers, a project she started more than two decades ago that will feature interviews she conducted with musicians from 2001 through 2013. Foley also plans to work more with her Texas-based band, The Pistolas, in 2025. “We’ve expanded the people in the band, so we want to make a bigger ensemble album together.”
As for the idea of a second One Guitar Woman volume, Foley said she “could see that happening” in the future. “If I did that, I would expand into maybe ensembles, and focus on other things,” she said, adding that it is “in the back of my mind,” but for now she has “a few things already stacked up.”
In addition to her pending projects, Foley now has a Grammy Awards ceremony to attend. She is working on arranging an early departure from the next Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, where she will be performing, to attend the ceremony in Los Angeles on Feb. 2, 2025.
“Just getting a Grammy nomination is a big burst of wind in your sails, as far as the business goes,” she said. “But I’m, you know—I’m all about the work, basically. I just get up every day, and just kind of grind it out. So I’m happy doing it.”
