Ruthie Foster

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This event is 21+ unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. 

About Ruthie Foster
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Ruthie Foster’s ninth studio album represents a new high water mark for the veteran blues artist—a collection of songs possessing pure power, like a tidal wave of musical generosity. Healing Time finds Foster pushing her boundaries as a singer and songwriter more than ever before, creating a truly live-sounding atmosphere with the help of her band, who sound refreshingly loose and lived-in throughout these 12 songs. We’ve all been in need of some healing in recent times, and Foster’s latest provides a guide for how to move through the world with equal parts compassion and resolve.

Healing Time is the latest jewel in Foster’s accomplished career, which includes multiple Grammy nominations and collaborations with fellow luminaries like Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. For her latest, Foster contributed more to the writing process than she had on any of her previous albums, effectively refining her own songcraft in the process. “With this album, I dug deep and tried to go for the best way to write,” she explains. “This album says a lot about the period we were making it in, and how I wanted to find my way out of it.”

Work on the album began in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, as Foster enlisted previous collaborators like Gary Nicholson and Grace Pettis to pitch in during the writing process—as well as every member of her band. “I wanted my band involved in the entire process of this album,” she explains, and they also played a large role in recreating the sound that Foster had become drawn to after spending time with her vinyl collection.  “I was aiming to keep these songs sounding like they came from that era, which says a lot about where I am in my life, too.”

Veteran producer Mark Howard (Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams) came in to bring new ideas to Foster’s table as recording began at Studio 71 West in Austin, TX, New Orleans’ famed Esplanade Studios, and Blue Rock Studio in Wimberley, TX. “Mark’s ability to turn a song's arrangement upside down was intriguing and sometimes challenging for me,” she states. “It was a lot to wrap my head around, but he made me think outside of the box I didn’t even know I was in.”

Producer Dan Barrett, who also worked with Foster on 2017’s Joy Comes Back, then took the helm at Black Pumas co-bandleader Adrian Quesada’s famed Electric Deluxe studio in Austin. Along with several Black Pumas members, Barrett brought in a collection of Austin’s finest backing musicians, like Glenn Fukunaga (The Chicks, Shawn Colvin). “With Dan onboard we were able to find the glue to these songs sonically, and he brilliantly melded my familiar Texas blues-Americana sound with what Mark pulled out of me in New Orleans,” Foster says. “This combination gave these songs a breath of fresh air, and it all came together very organically.”

Healing Time’s title—as well as its burst-of-sunshine title track, which features pedal steel legend Robert Randolph—is a reference not only to the trials many have faced over the last several years, but also the necessity of what Foster does as an artist. “I hear fans tell me that the music we make is very spiritually healing,” she says. “The experience of dealing with my own grief after losing a band member a year before the pandemic while navigating around zoom school with my daughter and trying to figure out what to do with myself was tough but necessary. When I look at it as a whole it was all very healing for me which is pretty much how I try to live my life. There’s always time for healing, if you give it time.”

Healing Time is ultimately a work that explores such extremes as being human often brings to the surface, reminding listeners that even when we feel like we’re at the top, we’re ultimately still finding our way—a beautiful reflection of the essence of living itself.

About Magnolia Boulevard:
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Like a caterpillar going through metamorphosis and becoming a butterfly, Magnolia Boulevard experiences a transformational process of growth on its latest EP, Things Are Gonna Change. The five-song project out July 7 sees the Lexington, Kentucky-based band embrace the change in their lives, both good and bad, from pandemic-related isolation to motherhood and the sudden passing of founding drummer Todd Copeland in 2021, in the process proving how through all life’s hurdles you can still endure.

Throughout the EP the soul-stirring vocals of Maggie Noelle, the blues-soaked electric guitar of Gregg Erwin, and the catchy keyboard arrangements of Ryan Allen are joined for the first time by bassist and Eastern Kentucky mainstay Chris Justice and drummer Chad Gravitt. Both are natural fits for the group who’ve helped to push the band’s fusion of rock, blues, soul, and jam into new territory, especially Gravitt, a straight-up rock’n roll drummer who was good friends with Copeland going all the way back to being on the drumline together in their high school marching band.

Over the course of Things Are Gonna Change’s five songs the band lays out the story of their lives over the past few years and how they’re collectively grown from it beginning with the frenetic, anxiety-ridden “Grip”. Slowly the paranoia present in the lyrics of the song evolve, eventually yielding the happy, loving, and nurturing “More” that concludes with Noelle triumphantly belting out how becoming a mother has given her a new perspective on life, singing “And I’ll break down the walls that I built once before, ‘Cause you build me up and you make me more.” 

In many ways, the band has thrived in part of how they’ve built and lifted each other up since forming in 2017 after a chance encounter between Noelle and Erwin at a local songwriter night ignited a spark. At the time Erwin was new to town and Noelle was playing in a bluegrass band, although she’d been yearning for a creative outlet where she could let loose like her idols Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi. Shy at first, Noelle eventually messaged Erwin on Facebook about joining forces, and a few months later the band was born. 

In the six years since Magnolia Boulevard has gone on to develop a close relationship with PRS Guitars Founder and CEO Paul Reed Smith (who helped to mix and master Things Are Gonna Change) in addition to sharing stages with the likes of Blues Traveler, George Porter Jr., Marcus King, Neal Francis, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band. The group has also been recognized for their excellence, winning the award for “Best Rock Band” at the Lexington Music Awards in 2018 and 2019 along with taking home first prize in the “On The Rise” band competition at Floydfest, one of the east coast’s biggest music festivals, in 2018.

Much like the band members of Magnolia Boulevard have endured over the highs and lows of the past few years, so has their music. The band’s emphatic and empowering anthems of love, self-discovery, grief, and uncertainty serve as a lesson to us all about life’s unpredictable nature and how to better live in the moment so we can appreciate everything and everyone around us before they’re gone.

“All I can hope is that folks can relate to each song in their own way & can feel every ounce of love that we put into them. There’s nothing more that I’d personally like to accomplish with our music than to share space for people to bask in.” - Maggie