2025 Grammy Award-Winner Ruthie Foster Playing the Greenwich Odeum Saturday, October 3

Ruthie Foster has spent decades making music that moves freely between blues, gospel, soul, and folk. With a commanding voice and songs that find hope in difficult moments, the Texas singer-songwriter brings a rich musical mix to the Greenwich Odeum in East Greenwich on October 3 at 8pm.

“I'm coming not just with blues in my shoes; I'm coming with a little bit of everything,” laughs Foster, who we spoke with recently. “It's basically my life and my experience with music -- so you're gonna hear a little gospel, some soul, and maybe even a little reggae. We like to have fun on stage, so just prepare yourself to have a Hallelujah time either way.”

Raised in the small town of Gause, Texas, Foster developed her voice singing in church, drawing inspiration from artists including Aretha Franklin and Mavis Staples. Her path to a music career included serving in the United States Navy, where she performed with the band Pride; moving to New York City to begin a recording career; and eventually returning to Texas to care for her mother, then building an independent career that let her follow her own musical instincts.

That approach earned Foster an audience well beyond the blues circuit, evident in her collaborations at this year’s AmericanaFest last month in Nashville, where she played alongside artists as diverse as Kathleen Edwards, Maggie Rose, Duane Betts, and Brandy Clark. Earlier this year, she won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album for Mileage, an extraordinary album recorded with producer Tyler Bryant and songwriter Rebecca Lovell of Larkin Poe.

Her latest album Just Say Yes, released in August, reunites the recording team with songs exploring gratitude, resilience, connection, and change. "After winning the Grammy, Tyler Bryant, my producer, Rebecca, my co-writer, and her sister, Megan, all just agreed that we should just try to do it again,” explains Foster. “I still had a few songs in me, and definitely more stories.”

Her writing style is straightforward and authentic: “I just basically go in and talk about things that are important to me, ideas that I want to relay through song, which is kind of how Just Say Yes came about,” continues Foster. “I was telling them the story about the Post-It note I used to carry around -- still do, actually -- that says, ‘just say yes.’ It was about saying yes to opportunity at the time because I wasn't in music full-time when I wrote it. I was taking little bits and pieces of things I could do in my community. And that meant playing for senior living homes, community events, churches, and eventually kind of turning it back into full-time music.”

"The album was really kind of built on looking forward,” says Foster. “Mileage was looking back and where I was then. But this album is really based around the things that I've learned in my journey in music and the industry.” And that included seeking out younger collaborators whenever possible. “I needed to feed myself something different, something new, something fresh, and with younger people who can process a little quicker than I can right now. That was a blessing, really, and surprising. I think what I got from being in that environment was that it fed my songwriting. It's about having other minds and other creators in the room who can really pull out what I'm saying.”

“And it's not just wordsmithing. They take what I say … almost like scripture. I'm a huge poetry reader; I speak like that sometimes when I'm really just being deep and talking about my life, being in that environment helped me see that I do have worth and I have purpose in my songwriting.”

That sentiment is evident on the new album. "Even when it comes to the instrumentation, we kind of went more country blues with some of these songs. Tyler is also from Texas, and that's why I wanted to work with him. It was one of those synchronicity things. He's a Texas brother, and I wanted to see what he's got to say. The guitar player who taught him was this old black man. And that's how he plays. He plays like an East Texas black man when he's playing slide. That's what got my attention. I felt this old soul inside of this young man.” Tickets are still available for Saturday’s show. Learn more at GreenwichOdeum.com.

See Foster on “That's All Right,” recorded live at The Paramount Theatre in Austin,TX: