An exchange of personal letters has forged a partnership between blues musicians, which shows no sign of slowing down.
American Peter Karp and Canadian Sue Foley, performing at the Flare and Derrick Community Hall in Turner Valley Saturday, October 22, first met at the Ottawa Blues Festival in 2006. Now, a half a decade later, they are touring together on the strength of their acclaimed 2010 record “He Said She Said”.
It’s based on correspondences they wrote to one other during trying times.
“We ended up parting ways for more than a year,” Karp said of the period after their initial meeting and a subsequent recording session. “What we did is, we just wrote letters to each other. The letters went back and forth while we were touring in support of our respective records at the time.”
While the letters were initially limited to a surface level “how are you doing?” manner, they soon took on greater emotional depth.
“There was a year or more of tragedy and difficulty in our lives,” Karp explained. “Those letters became like a lifeline to somebody we really didn’t know but for some reason trusted because we were writing to each other. It was a sort of disembodied friend.”
Karp, who lost his wife of nearly 25 years to ovarian cancer in early 2009, has taken great solace in being able to lean on Foley though his darkest times. Together they found their words to each other translated well into the songs that make up the heart of the “He Said She Said” CD.
“Besides just letters, there were snippets and (music) demos and bits of songs,” Foley said of the foundations of the album. “It just happened very organically. Without much effort we kept finding these songs.”
Foley, who was born, raised and began her career in Ottawa, has long been acclaimed for her stellar blues guitar work. She found herself stretching beyond those boundaries on “He Said She Said”, an album that delves into the domains of rock, jazz, and flamenco as well as the blues.
There was a definite learning curve for both artists as they put the disc together.
“We realized very early on we were both alpha dogs,” Foley said. “We like to do our own thing and lead our own bands. We like to live our lives our own ways. When we got together we had to figure out who did what best and we had to surrender a bit of that power.”
They both also had to learn to harmonize and take on back-up vocal responsibilities, something neither of them had done before as lead vocalists of their own groups.
Those coming out for their Beneath the Arch Concert Series show Saturday night 7 p.m. in Turner Valley can expect to see two artists sharing great musical chemistry together.
“It’s an intimate show because we are traveling as a duo now,” Foley said. “We play all the songs from the “He Said She Said” album so there are a lot of stories behind the songs which we like to expand on and talk about.”
Karp reveled the pair will also be playing some songs from their solo records and new material from their next duo release slated for March of 2012.
Concert ticket information is available at www.beneaththearch.ca.
