Fresh from a Grammy win, Ruthie Foster is heading to The Street

America’s best blues and soul singers began their journeys singing gospel songs in church choirs, honing their vocal skills around pianos and organs while nurturing a passion for music.

That’s how Texas-born Ruthie Foster started out, and there’s no doubt that when it comes to singing the blues, she is absolutely one of the very best.

The Grammys know that.

Ruthie’s excellence was recognised in February this year with the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album for her 10th studio album Mileage.

She has been nominated for a Grammy a number of times – and she has won a truckload of other music gongs – but this is her first Grammy win.

Making it an even sweeter accomplishment, it is also the first Grammy for the legendary Sun Records with whom she collaborated for the first time.

Can you believe that?

Sun Records, which has recorded the likes of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, had never received a Grammy – until it hooked up with Ruthie Foster, that is.

(Of course, by the time the Grammys began in 1959 most of those greats had left the label. Sun operates today under different ownership.)

“I’m still feeling it. It was very exciting to win a Grammy,” Ruthie tells Region.

“And it being the first one Sun has ever had makes it extra special.

“We were working on Mileage when Sun approached us in the middle of it all.

“We only had three songs in the can, but they wanted to know what I was working on and if I’d be interested in doing it with their label.”

The “we” Ruthie talks about is the husband and wife team, Tyler Bryant and Rebecca Lovell (Rebecca of acclaimed duo Larkin Poe fame), with whom she collaborated on songwriting for the new album.

“I tried to catch them both at home at the same time because as a three-way songwriting collaboration we were quite a team,” she says.

“We’d just basically just talk about ideas and start getting them down.

“The song ‘Mileage’ is something I came up with. I’d been on the road a lot and feeling my age, and when I talked about it with my doctor, asking him if I should be worried, he said, ‘No, you just have mileage’, and I kind of liked that.

“So the whole album became a compilation of songs emerging from what was happening in my life.

“You know, like coming out of a relationship, finding my faith again – the kind of things some people don’t get around to in a lifetime.”

The songs are powerful, just like Ruthie’s voice and her command of the guitar.

And her stage presence is mesmerising.

A couple of years back, Ruthie was given the rare honour of a star outside the historical Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas.

“I feel so honoured by that,” she says.

“You know, I’m just doing what I do and people keep giving me things. It’s very touching.”

It has so far been an eventful and rewarding journey for Ruthie, who at the age of 14 was a soloist in her hometown choir.

From there, she eventually went on to record and tour with such great acts as the Allman Brothers, the Tedeschi Trucks Band and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

In 2018, she played Carnegie Hall.

And now she’s coming to play in Canberra.

A regular visitor to Australia, Ruthie says she can’t get enough of the Down Under hospitality.

“I’m coming as a duo, with the great keyboard player Scottie Miller,” she says.

“I just love coming to Australia.

“My blood pressure always comes down when I’m in Australia, so my doctor says I should stay.

“It’s so beautiful and the people are beautiful. I can get fresh air and fresh food. It’s phenomenal.

“That’s something I’ve changed about how I tour these days. I try much harder to immerse myself in the areas where I play, and get to know them a little more intimately.”

Ruthie Foster plays The Street in Canberra on Tuesday 18 March at 7.30. Tickets are $75 each and are available through The Street’s website.