Eclectic Music and More

Due to routing problems, this show postponed until fall, 2012.

Sue Foley and Peter Karp
"He Said-She Said" An Evening of Folk, Jazz, Flamenco & Blues

Friday, April 13, 2012 • 8pm
Tickets: $20/advance, $22/door, $10/teens 12-17,
children under 12 are free with paying adult.
Unitarian Fellowship, 4th and C Streets, Ashland

"He Said - She Said" is an inspired and winning collaboration of original songs by Canadian Juno award winner Sue Foley and critically acclaimed U.S. singer / songwriter and Blind Pig artist Peter Karp. The songs are adapted from letters and e-mails between the two over a 2-year period.

Peter says, "What started as a casual exchange became a revealing account of the personal struggles and dramatic changes that were happening in our lives. Our shared thoughts became intimate. Then, we turned those letters into songs and made a great CD together."

The show encompasses folk, jazz, flamenco & blues resulting in an event that is moving, literate, romantic, rocking & exciting. It also has lots of humor and is very engaging moving between nylon acoustic guitar, dobro, grand piano and electric guitars. These two songwriters bring a wealth of performance history to this collaboration. Their CD was released in March 2010 on Blind Pig Records and hit #1 on the Blues Chart for 6 weeks. Also Top 10 on Billboard!

Sue Foley -- In her own words:

Early on I focused on the guitar and learned to play really well. That's how I built my reputation. I was determined to be a great guitar player, to play lead guitar, like the boys, like my older brothers and their heroes. Songwriting started out of necessity. Back then in club shows we had to play 3 to 4 one hour long sets a night and without enough material I'd just start making stuff up on the spot. It was easy in the Blues style because you only had to write two lines for each verse as the first line got repeated. So my songs were like... "I love my baby, he has brown wavy hair, I love my baby, he has brown wavy hair...I love my baby, take him anywhere" ...stuff like that. I noticed a change in the crowd's reaction when I sang my own words even though in the beginning they were simplistic. Though my guitar was my trademark it ended up being an original song I wrote that got me my first record deal and the recognition of Blues impresario, Clifford Antone. Clifford called me direct from Austin with an open invitation after he heard my song "Gone Blind" from a demo tape. We ended up using that demo on my first CD, Young Girl Blues (Antone' s Records 1992).

From 1990-97 I was living and touring out of Austin. Antone's was my Alma Matter and Clifford was like a father to me. For most of those years I was on the road learning and experiencing everything about my business and craft. I have been an artist, manager, road manager, roadie, booking agent, driver, sideman, band leader, psychologist, ingenue to expert. By the time I was 28 I had 5 releases under my belt, had done about a million miles on the highway and had sat at the feet of and played with many Blues Legends like Otis Rush, BB King, Albert Collins, Pinetop Perkins, Buddy Guy... I was in Blues Heaven. I had arrived.

Then I got pregnant and everything changed. Within a year I had left Austin TX and was back living in Canada, baby on the way. I hunkered down and embraced my hometown and country and continued to record and write. Motherhood gave me a new sense of myself, a deep and real life experience. My writing started to develop even more. I think it's because I was really living and had something that tied me to the rest of humanity. In this period I recorded another 6 albums, won many awards and continued to grow my business, all the while raising my son.

In 2001, I was being interviewed by journalist, Don Wilcock and he was telling me about a biography he'd written about Buddy Guy. I mentioned off the cuff that he should write a book about all the great female guitarists like Bonnie Raitt, Nancy Wilson, Chrissie Hynde etc.... I decided to write this book myself and call it Guitar Woman. Guitar Woman remains a work in progress.

My partnership with Peter Karp came out of the blue; a rushed and forgotten meeting at the 2006 Ottawa Blues festival, a phone call from his manager, a haphazard recording session that I sang horribly on but that made us laugh our asses off and two years of email correspondence that turned into a CD, a tour, an entirely new concept and show, the reinvention of two careers and whole new approach to making music. Working with Peter brought back my love of writing and having fun with words and ideas.

Peter Karp -- In his own words

In '81, in my early 20's after a succession of bands and recording dates, I started a most unusual band. We called ourselves "They Came From Houses". A deafening psycho surf blues art band. We became very popular in the NYC lower east side punk movement, regularly headlining the clubs down there. Our front person was an eccentric performer who bordered on conceptual artist. Her name was Mary Lou Bonney. Later we would marry. I'd walk away from a recording contract to do so.

For the next 10 years, I embarked on a great adventure. I had 2 kids James and Courtney. I got involved in film making first as an editor then as a director. I directed commercials and short films. I composed soundtracks. I worked with and learned from some great people. I worked on film and music projects with Stevie Ray Vaughn, Motorhead, REM, John Lee Hooker and Junior Wells. Tony Randall, The Spindoctors, Tim Hutton, Ashford and Simpson, Bon Jovi, The Jacksons, Yes, Hall and Oates, Captain Beef Heart, Don Henley and Patty LaBelle.

In '96, I started playing solo once a week in a little shot and beer joint in North Jersey. I played my own material with a few obscure blues tunes thrown in. Soon musicians from Jersey and NYC were coming to check me out and to sit in. All of a sudden I had a band. In 1998 I made my first solo CD "Live At The American Roadhouse." Sold it out of the trunk of the car. Never liked it much. However, it got me hooked up with my long time friend and producing partner Dae Bennett, Tony Bennett's son the engineer. Together we made "Roadshow." It was released on a small indie label and put me on the map as a singer/songwriter. Didn't get much national exposure but it did get picked up by John Prine's label and sold on their website and catalogue along with my third release "The Turning Point." Mick Taylor the former guitar player of The Rolling Stones heard the rough tracks for that one and flew over to Jersey to record it with me. He was paid $300 for his trouble. We hit it off and when I released it in 2003 Mick came back over and went on a 10 show tour with me and my band. A fourth CD came out of that called "Live At The Bottom Line in NYC." It was never released but what a great record. Maybe someday it will be heard.

From there I was signed to Blind Pig Records based out of Chicago and San Francisco. For the first time I received national attention for the critically acclaimed record "Shadows and Cracks." My songwriting was getting attention and I was touring the USA 47 weeks out of the year. Then it all stopped cold. I got a call that my wife of 24 years had Ovarian Cancer. For the next 8 months my family and I huddled around her. She passed in Feb 09.

I had met Canadian guitarist singer/songwriter Sue Foley at The Ottawa Blues Festival in 2006. I was there playing with my band and I caught her act....I had written a duet called "That Smile" and was discussing with my manager at the time which female artists to approach to do the job. "Sue Foley?", he asked. "You sound so different from one another." "Exactly", I replied. I drove with my band up to Ottawa for a gig and a recording date. ... Over the course of the next year and a half while I was arduously touring the US promoting "Shadows and Cracks" we stayed in touch via email. At first the letters were cordial and light fare. But as the rigors of touring, the isolation of the road and my out of control drinking and manic depression took hold, these letters became more revealing. ...

Finally in late 2009, when I was ready to go back to work, we decided that we would work together. We'd look to the letters for our next CD - and turn them into songs. The result was "He Said - She Said" released on Blind Pig in March 2010. This collaboration has turned into a partnership. As of this writing we are touring and working on a brand new record.