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Folk singer Ruthie Foster opens BCPA concert series
By Dan Craft
dcraft@pantagraph.com
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BLOOMINGTON -- The truth about Ruth is about to be revealed.

And it is this: She's a best-kept-secret who, once discovered, won't be soon forgotten.

The secret will be out, and the discovery made, a week from tonight (7:30 p.m. Sept. 25) at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.

That's when Texas-born singer-songwriter Ruthie Foster will go down in the BCPA record books as the first-ever artist for its spanking new music series and space, The Underground.

Like the name says, it's literally downstairs at the BCPA. It's figuratively a showcase for cutting edge and/or cult talent swimming just outside the mainstream.

"She's just a knockout performer with such a great sound. And the buzz that goes along with her is great," says the BCPA's Joel Aalberts, who fell in love with that sound so much that he pursued Foster as the series' debut offering.

"We wanted to tap into the same audience we did with the Indigo Girls last spring," he adds.

So who is Ruthie Foster and why are people abuzz?

A spin of her latest CD, "The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster," is a good place to start: a winning induction into her soulful world view, dispensed vocally with a gospel truth that veers from laid-back to rafters-raising.

Imagine the black folk traditions of Odetta and Tracy Chapman ratcheted up several notches to a slightly bluesier delivery, then infused with a hint of Anita Baker here, a dollop of Nina Simone there.

Though using a superlative like "Phenomenal" in an album's title might seem to be asking for it, Foster lives up to the billing.

"She's got a right to brag," a Boston Globe reviewer noted. "Foster is a natural-born singer with a voice that's potent, unfussy and deeply moving."

Blame her small-town Texas upbringing, some later East Coast detours and, oh yes, a healthy dose of "The Midnight Special."

"Everything about where I am today has to do with my upbringing -- listening to a lot of the blues and gospel that my mom loved. Then I picked up a guitar at an early age and that put me into a folk style."

The piano-trained Foster says her move to guitar can be blamed on several factors.

"I think that being of a child of the '70s had something to do with it, watching all those TV variety shows and late-night shows like 'The Midnight Special,' where the guitar was the key instrument in a lot of the bands. Like a lot of kids then, I thought it was cool to play guitar. And I could be with it by myself and teach myself the chords."

After studying music formally at a music school in Waco, Foster surprised a lot of friends and family by joining the Navy.

"I always had an interest in the military," she confesses. "You could go places, meet people, travel and play music, too. I thought it would be a great way to live."

The first time she tried to sign up, she was a teenager who didn't have her mother's consent.

"I was in high school in a small town in Texas, and I was ready to get out any way possible. That seemed like a great way to do it." Alas, mother "was not happy at all."

So Ruthie waited until a year after college. This time, mom was "fine with it, if I still had the interest."

She did. "I went in without a thought of being a musician, too. I just wanted to travel and do something different. I'd been living and breathing music, then waking up to study it."

Foster was shipped to San Diego, where she was invited to Christmas party "where a bunch of guys had put a band together and I remember walking in hearing them playing Jimi Hendrix's 'Red House.' And I thought, 'I know that,' so I walked up and started singing with them."

Having suppressed her musical past, she was now officially busted, with no turning back.

Especially after everyone heard that soulful Texan voice.

Soon, Foster was performing with the Navy's own pop-variety band, Pride, where she got to keep her musical chops in shape, "though there I was told what to play and what to sing -- the Navy way, very different, very structured."

Foster was stationed in Charleston, S.C., when her Navy hitch ended, and she remained in the area, breaking free with a steady gig at the city's top folk club, the Soft Rock Café.

"It used to be a strip club, and the guy that owned it was so cheap he left the same red velvet curtains hanging from the stage," Foster laughs. Cheap with the décor or no, the owner brought in ace talent like Peter Yarrow, Glenn Yarbrough and Josh White Jr.

"I started reading up on folk music and studying these guys, and I found a kindred spirit in them," she says. "I also knew I could take what knew about soul and combine the two together. That made me different from the others."

Foster suddenly found herself in the thick of the East Coast folk scene, and even wound up managing the club for a while.

The logical East Coast progression sent her to ground zero, Greenwich Village in New York, where she was courted by Atlantic Records, signed as a performer and paired off with a number of established songwriters to create music.

It was the late-'80s era of Tracy Chapman and "they didn't have anyone on their label like Tracy."

Ruthie was to have been their Tracy.

Though the opportunity came to naught (she had to return to Texas to tend to her mother after she became seriously ill), Foster says the knowledge and experience she gained was invaluable.

Foster's return to her Texas roots proved to be a blessing in the end: She re-established herself musically, played around the Austin area, took an artist management seminar at a folk festival and wound up managing/marketing herself "as this African-American woman who was a little bit different (in the folk tradition), but still could connect with people."

Her first album, 1997's "Full Circle," was the beginning ... 2002's "Runaway Soul" was the breakthrough" ... this year's "Phenomenal Ruthie Foster" is the culmination, crowned by her soaring a cappella musical interpretation of Maya Angelou's poem, "Phenomenal Woman."

As Foster heads for her descent into the BCPA Underground, she's hoping Twin Citians are willing to follow to the lower level for a higher level.

Of music, that is.

"Real spirit-lifting, hallelujah music-making," she promises.

At a glance



What: Ruthie Foster

When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25

Where: The Underground at Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 110 E. Mulberry St., Bloomington

Tickets: $20.50

Box office number: (866) 686-9541



BCPA venue boasts clubby, younger feel



By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

BLOOMINGTON -- Going down?

You should be if you find yourself in the vicinity of the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts a week from tonight (Sept. 25).

The occasion is the unveiling of the BCPA's new performance space and series, The Underground, located in the it's 11,000-square-foot basement space.

By day, that area is the BCPA Ballroom.

But next Thursday night, it will morph into The Underground, a rock club-ish configuration just right for emerging performers like Ruthie Foster and Austin blues-rocker Ian Moore (coming Oct. 16).

The series is the brainchild of BCPA marketing and communication director Joel Aalberts, who's had his eye on that space since the venue reopened two autumns ago this month.

Foster and Moore are the two performers who've been hired to break the space in and fill it with just the kind of audience the BCPA is aiming to court: a college-age and professional young adult crowd, a demographic Aalberts feels has been underserved.

"The first thing we've got to do," Aalberts remembers thinking, "is to book a band here where people can get up, and move and dance."

Originally, he says, the thought was to book a traditional ballroom dance band and turn the audience footloose on a nightclub-style dance floor.

But then the thinking turned to a younger demographic.

"We'd been looking to bring in a college-age and young professional audience," says Aalberts, "and we thought maybe this space would give us a better opportunity to do that in a more casual way."

Casual meaning tables, cash bar and the freedom to get up and move to the beat at hand.

Concerns about acoustics in the basement space should be tossed aside, says Aalberts. "We have a great technical staff and they are wizards at getting the sound system right. It'll be a more lively sound, because these are going to be rock shows in some cases."

Spatially speaking, the 11,000 square feet can accommodate a maximum of around 600 bodies, but the space will be adaptable to the circumstances at hand, especially on those nights when an act with an infectious beat inspires those bodies to stand up and express themselves.

"We'll be able to reduce the amount of seating easily," notes Aalberts.

The goal is to book two shows in the fall and two in the spring. The latter slots are still open, pending audience response to this fall's icebreakers.

"We're waiting to respond to audiences' desires after these first two shows," says Aalberts.

Ticket prices for all concerts will be a flat $20 (or $20.50, with service fees).

For the record, there have been several precedents on the BCPA's upstairs stage that could give an indication of where the series is headed.

Chief among those: last winter's Indigo Girls show, which attracted a young, hip crowd, and the concert with rock guitarist Tim Reynolds, the Dave Matthews collaborator, who especially proved a magnet for the collegiate set.

The latter was "a fantastic show, but the environment (upstairs) was almost too structured for the music he was making. I thought it would have been great to have him play in a space where people would be more comfortable to get up and move around, relax."

Take a look
Ruthie Foster will perform 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25 at the Underground at Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 110 E. Mulberry St., Bloomington.
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