Ruthie Foster

blues · electric blues · roots

Ruthie Foster is a blues, gospel and soul singer and guitarist born February 10, 1964, in Gause, Texas, and raised in a family of gospel singers; she was a church choir soloist by fourteen. She studied music and audio engineering at McLennan Community College in Waco and fronted blues bands in Texas bars before enlisting in the United States Navy, where she sang pop and funk with the service band Pride at recruitment events across the southeastern states. After the Navy she moved to New York City and worked the folk circuit, turning down an Atlantic Records contract that would have steered her toward pop. She returned to Texas in 1993 to care for her mother, taking work as a camera operator and production assistant at a College Station television station, and began her recording career in earnest with the self-released Full Circle in 1997. That led to a long association with the independent label Blue Corn Music, which issued Crossover (1999), Runaway Soul (2002), Stages (2004), The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster (2008), The Truth According to Ruthie Foster (2009), Let It Burn (2012), Promise of a Brand New Day (2014), Joy Comes Back (2017) and Healing Time (2022). Her repertoire moves between gospel, country blues, jazz phrasing, folk and Southern soul. She appeared on Warren Haynes' album Man in Motion, sat in with the Allman Brothers Band during their Beacon Theatre run in 2012, and has worked with the Blind Boys of Alabama. Foster collected Grammy nominations for The Truth According to Ruthie Foster, Let It Burn and Promise of a Brand New Day before winning her first Grammy in February 2025, for Mileage in the best contemporary blues album category. She has also taken multiple Blues Music Awards, among them the Koko Taylor Award for traditional blues female artist, received a United States Artists fellowship in 2018, was inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2019, and played Carnegie Hall in February 2018. Her album Just Say Yes, recorded in Nashville with Tyler Bryant, Rebecca and Megan Lovell of Larkin Poe and Mike Seal, is released by Sun Records on August 28, preceded by the singles Thank You, Take Time and Tangled; Foster has described it as growing out of a period of transition, recovery from knee surgery and a separation. Mileage also took best blues record at the 2025 Libera Awards.

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