Pinky's Blues

Anyone who has spent time listening to Canada-born, Austin-based guitar slinger Sue Foley knows Pinky is her signature paisley-print pink Fender Telecaster. Pinkys Blues is her second offering for Stony Plain. Foley and her band -- bassist Jon Penner, drummer Chris Layton (of Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble fame), and Hammond B-3 organist, producer Mike Flanigin -- got together with engineer Chris Bell over three days in a San Marcos, Texas studio and cut these 12 tracks live on the floor. Foleys focus is the Texas blues and the artists who embody them in a set of covers and originals. She captures the Lone Star blues styles with raw energy, passion, and stellar musicianship. Foley penned the title-track instrumental, a sweet, swinging, slow blues with stinging leads and lyric phrasing. Its followed by Two Bit Texas Town, one of two tunes by Angela Strehli. Its a swamp blues shout-out that name-checks blues heroes. When Foley sings Back when radio/Could turn your life around/I know what it did to me ... shes singing its truth as her own, adding snarling fills and a cracking snare shuffle. Foleys riff in Dallas Man is equal parts Slim Harpo, Johnny Winter, and ZZ Top. She shifts gears on Strehlis glorious Say It Aint So. Over the bands sweet, simmering, vintage R&B groove, Foleys delivers the lyrics with aching tenderness. Her guitar accents, fills, and solo are melodic and committed. On Lavelle Whites Stop These Teardrops, Foleys voice rides the lyric into the guitar boogie as Flanigins organ fills paint the margins. Boogie Real Low is a revised reading of Frankie Lee Sims 1957 roadhouse jump blues She Likes to Boogie. Foley rocks it up with blazing lead breaks, a sexy vocal, and a fingerpopping vamp. She reveals her love of vintage Texas R&B again in Lillie Mae Donleys 1962 hit Think it Over. Guided by Flanigins B-3, Foley summons all the pathos and desperation in the original and injects it with a gritty underbelly that heightens the emotional tumult. Clarence Gatemouth Browns seminal Okie Dokie Stomp finds Foleys fat, sweeping chord boogie meeting the rhythm section head and nearly burns the joint down. The original Hurricane Girl features guest Jimmie Vaughan on rhythm guitar. Inspired by Elmore James signature slide boogie, Foley celebrates her musical and character bona fides as a force of nature. Two tracks are only available on CD and via the LPs download card, including a Texas-sized version of Willie Dixons When the Cat Is Gone, The Mice Play, (written for Junior Wells in 1965; it copies the vamp from the Chicago singers 1960 hit Messin with the Kid). The band digs deep into its slippery, bubbling groove and brings the record home. Pinkys Blues is unruly, wooly, joyful, and unprocessed. Its looseness is possible because Foley enlisted musicians who know the tradition and trust one another to deliver it with unvarnished intensity, without artifice. ~ Thom Jurek