Ruthie Foster - Live at Antones (2011)




Tracklist:

1. Stone Love
2. I Really Love You
3. (You Keep Me) Moving On
4. Up Above My Head (I Hear Music In The Air)
5. Runaway Soul
6. Fruits Of My Labor
7. When It Don't Come Easy
8. Back To The Blues To The Blues
9. Nickel And A Nail
10. Heal Yourself
11. Woke Up This Mornin'
12. Phenomenal Woman
13. Death Came A-Knockin'
14. Ocean Of Tears



The great thing about a Ruthie Foster song is that you never quite know where it’s going to go. It might start as a quiet ballad before morphing into an up-tempo song built on a New Orleans-style rhythm, as on “Woke Up This Mornin’,” from her first live album/DVD combo Live At Antone’s.

Or it might kick off with the lone strains of Foster’s melismatic vocals prior to turning into Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s triumph of blues-meets-gospel, “Up Above (I Hear Music In The Air),” where the band members contribute lovely harmonies before building to a climax as passionate as anything Foster’s ever sung. That unpredictability is part of what defines Foster as an artist, as well as what keeps listeners involved long after a less flexible artist might have lost his or her audience.
Ruthie Foster's Live At Antone's

Seven albums into her career, Foster’s audience is still expanding. It’s easy to see why: on the brief, five-minute interview that accompanies the footage on the DVD part of this dual-disc package, Foster refers to her sound as “gospel-blues-infused soul.” She shares that the artists on her iPod include Bettye LaVette, Sheryl Crow and Sam Cooke – it’s hard to imagine a more crowd-friendly balance between roots styles and pop influences.

In this performance recorded at Austin’s famed blues club Antone’s, opening number “Stone Love,” an original composition, exemplifies her standing in the blues world: the soulful, 1960s-inspired number is nothing fancy – just Foster getting the chance show that she’s not a “blues singer,” but rather a singer, period, capable of zeroing in on the heart of a song regardless of genre.

“I Really Love” you is pop-tinged, with a hint of reggae in the way the rhythm accentuates the off-beats. “(You Keep Me) Hanging On,” isn’t the Supremes tune, but it does have a classic soul sound that showcases the influence of Foster’s beloved Sam Cooke. On “Up Above My Head (I Hear Music In The Air),” the Sister Rosetta Tharpe song, Foster begins with an understated vocal melisma before turning it into something much more dramatic: lovely backing vocals by her band members, as well as a sparkling keyboard solo by Scottie Miller, help the song build to a soaring climax, with Foster’s passionate singing the focal point.

The highlight of both the CD and the DVD is Foster’s original “Runaway Soul,” from her 2002 album of the same name. She asks the crowd, “is it all right if we mix the blues with the gospel this evening?” Since that’s her signature sound, she already knows the answer, and proceeds to offer up a traditional, mid-tempo blues shuffle with high-energy keyboard solos between verses. “I believe my soul’s found a happy home/and left me here to suffer on my own,” Foster sings, and if that’s not a concise summation of the central theme of all gospel-based blues, I don’t know what is.

Another highlight is her take on Lucinda Williams’ “Fruits Of My Labor.” Where Williams’ version displays a yearning melancholy, Foster’s pleasingly optimistic voice lends the tune a whole different vibe. Indeed, that seems to be one of her special talents: taking another writer’s – or another genre’s – song, and putting her own spin on it.

Foster has a secret weapon in the form of guitarist/vocalist Hadden Sayers, and on Sayers’ original slow blues “Back To The Blues,” the two trade verses, Foster’s smooth tenor first alternating, then combining, with Sayers’ gritty Texas drawl. The guitarist shows his instrumental prowess on O.V. Wright’s classic “Nickel & A Nail,” a tough blues where Sayers lets go with a beautifully melodic mid-song solo.

For Foster’s own “Heal Yourself,” Foster is joined onstage by the great Papa Mali, the Louisiana-raised (but now based in Austin) wildman who produced Foster’s 2007 album The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster. Mali adds aggressive slide guitar to an already forceful, funky song about self-reliance. When Mali and the other band members join Foster in chanting the title phrase over and over at the song’s end, the effect is transcendent: this is exactly what blues music is supposed to be, and what it’s supposed to make you feel.

Foster’s in a class of her own in the blues community, and this project shows why. Like Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi before her, she lays claim to a style of blues that’s equally embraceable by fans of rock and roots music. By the time she gets to the traditional tune “Death Came A-Knockin’,” near the end of the set, the audience is clapping along to the rhythmic, 11-minute jam. You can’t help but feel that as Foster becomes more of a household name among blues fans – and there’s no doubt she will – she might also move beyond that world and into the status of a beloved performer of songs, genre be damned. (Blue Corn Music, released June 21, 2011)
_{Quelle:http://blues.about.com/}


Remi