"I actually met her mother before I met Ruthie," says Cassone, 45, who has two kids, 22 and 15. "She was the sweetest lady, but she knew what she wanted. You see a lot of that in Ruthie."
Cassone was a musician in her own right, who had toured with gospel and folk groups. Also at the time she was the underwriting coordinator for KEOS-FM (89.1) in College Station. When Foster returned to Texas, Cassone asked her to play at a fund-raiser for the station, and the two hit it off. Not long after, Cassone began to manage Foster's local band, the Ruthie Foster Blues Band, but eventually Foster coaxed her onstage to sing harmony and play percussion, forming a duo. Soon Foster and Cassone became inseparable, playing gigs across the country.
Ruthie Foster, left, never found her niche at Atlantic Records. But with partner Cyd Cassone, her voice is finally being heard.
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By the late '90s, they had formed M.O.D. Records--for "My Own Damn" Records--and released two albums, Full Circle and Crossover, two strong but not-quite-complete examples of what the two were capable of.
With Runaway Soul, it's all there. The disc is refreshingly true to Foster's live sound, capturing the essence of her music.
"One thing I found astounding when I was recording her," Maines says, "was all of her vocals, all that you hear on that album, and her guitar tracks were one take. No punch-ins, no trickery, no resinging or anything like that. What you hear is exactly what she did, which is highly unusual and highly unheard of. With Ruthie, her timing was impeccable...She was just so on all the time."
Bass player Glenn Fukunaga, who also plays with Maines, Eliza Gilkyson, Terry Allen, Terri Hendrix and a host of other virtuosos, echoes the sentiment. He says playing with Foster--and Cassone, he adds--is "a pure pleasure. I had heard of Ruthie before I met her, and everything I'd heard was just, 'You gotta see this girl.' So I get a call from Lloyd saying, 'I want you to play on Ruthie's record.' I was thrilled."
Recently, Fukunaga has begun playing more often with Foster and Cassone, and he says, "Every time I'm just totally in awe. Just to be standing next to somebody who can sing like that." But he is quick to point out Cassone's essential role in the Foster mix. "What's amazing to me is their harmonies, the vocal blending they create."
Even so, Cassone says it's not always easy to be up there with Foster. "I love being Ruthie's side person. I enjoy that, but I know that in order to really complement what she's doing I need to be strong, because she's strong."
Maines points out that virtually anybody standing next to Foster onstage would feel intimidated. "When she holds those notes, I feel like every note she sings she's reaching down to the depth of her soul. I don't know how to describe it, but it just grabs me," he says. "But Cyd really is important to the whole dynamic. She's a great team member. She sings great harmony with Ruthie, and she really contributes a lot to her career. A lot of times, in fact, Cyd is Ruthie's guiding light, really."
But at the end of the day--or at the end of a show--it's hard to leave without Foster's blazing voice scorched into your memory. Though she might come on soft, even shy, as she approaches the mike, when she opens her mouth to sing, something changes. The shape-shifter emerges, and almost unwittingly, Foster becomes a vessel, channeling her collective history, the voice of her childhood church, of her family, her mother, the deep blues of East Texas--and the reality of her own coming full circle. There, the circle is unbroken. No doubt, this is the gospel according to Ruthie Foster.
