Ruthie Foster natural storyteller and singer

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

GRAVENHURST — Blues singer Sue Foley would have loved to hear the stories of fellow artist Ruthie Foster told Thursday night.

The two just missed crossing paths at Peter’s Players a couple of weeks apart.

But they’ve no doubt seen and heard each other on their cross-Canada summer tours.

Foley is chronicling women musicians and Foster is a huge supporter of her sister singers.

And both made that clear in their shows at the popular Gravenhurst music venue.

Foster, who returned for a third time in the past few years — this time solo — is an engaging and entertaining performer.

In a set that was just over an hour and a bit, she showed it’s no wonder the east Texas troubadour is a multiple blues award winner.

This girl has the gift of the gab. An easy patter that is as engaging as her easy smile and comfortable stage presence.

Not to take anything away from her super Godin guitar playing, but she can spin a yarn a mile long.

Like the one she took the time out to tell about one of her idols, Miss Jessie Mae Hemphill, a legendary country blues singer from Mississippi.

Foster had named one of her Resonator guitars after her. And somehow, “through the blues grape vine,” Miss Jesse got word out she wanted to meet her.

So, while on a tour down South Foster arranged to meet with her.

Foster said her mother taught her was polite to bring something when visiting.

“I was at the Piggly Wiggly,” Foster told the 90-or-so people in the crowd.

“You all heard of the Piggly-Wiggly?” Foster asked them.

Many had, it appeared to her surprise.

“I called and asked her if she needed anything when I came over. There was a pause for a few seconds and she came back on the line with a big long list of things — including cleaning supplies,” Foster said with a big laugh that was reciprocated.

To make a long story short, Foster said she got over to Miss Jessie Mae’s place and — “after cleaning her house” — she had a wonderful time talking to and singing songs with her.

“She was blind and couldn’t play anymore due to age and a stroke, but she could tap her tambourine.”

Foster had a lot of stories like that, which the crowd ate up.

It didn’t seem to matter that it more like sing one, talk one.

But it didn’t matter, Foster made up for it with quality over quantity.

Like many singers who are beginning to reappear regularly at Peter’s Players, Foster seems certainly destined to join the roster of performers who make the rounds to Gravenhurst on at least a semi-annual basis.

Foster loves Canada (“I even had a Canadian bank account.”) and says she grew up touring here coast to coast on the festival circuit like many singers and songwriters.

She’s doing it again this summer, coming from Canmore and out to Lunenburg and back to Kitchener the same week. With Gravenhurst stuck right in the middle.

It’s an exhausting trek for a girl and her guitar, but one she clearly enjoys.

And do her audiences.

She was preceded by Burk’s Falls singer/songwriter Sean Cotton, who performed a great little blues set that was an appetizing musical appartif that complemented Foster.