GCA hosting Radney Foster Tuesday

Graham Concert Association is hosting Texas singer-songwriter and author Radney Foster at Memorial Auditorium next Tuesday.

Foster, who has written eight number one hit singles, said his interest in music came at a young age.

“It started when I was a little kid,” he said. “My mom has songs that I wrote in Sunday school from when I was 7-years-old, but I certainly didn’t, all growing up, I didn’t think it was going to be anything but a hobby.”

Things took a different turn for Foster when he was approached while playing with a band in college.

“When I was in college a million years ago, I was playing in a band at college and a guy heard our band and he asked about a couple of songs we did and he wanted to know what the band did, after the show he said what band plays those three songs because I know all of the other songs you guys play,” he said. “And they said you can’t get them, our singer wrote them and he said, ‘I don’t know anything about the music business, but I have a buddy I went to college with who was a record producer.’”

He said he was skeptical about if the person had an actual connection with a record producer, but wrote his number, which was to the payphone at the end of his college dormitory, on a matchbook. Two weeks later he got a note on his door with a Nashville, Tenn. area code with a note to call Brown Bannister. Foster said he recognized the name from an article he recently read in Rolling Stones with him producing for Amy Grant.

“I called up Brown and we met and I played him four or five songs and he said, ‘Man, you need to have a serious talk with your mom and dad about doing this for a living,’ and I am like, ‘What,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you really do,’” he said. “And so that is how I ended up loading a Volkswagen full of everything I owned to move to Nashville and I slept on Brown’s couch until I got together a place to live.”

Foster said he struggled for four or five years until he signed with Mary Tyler Moore’s publishing company where he met Bill Lloyd and started the band Foster & Lloyd. He left the band after writing multiple hit singles and in 1992 put out a record “Del Rio, TX 1959,” which he said was very successful.

“I have been out on the highways and byways ever since putting out records and now books,” he said. “I wrote a book of short fiction to go with my latest release and it done crazy good, just absolutely crazy good.”

Foster will play at Memorial Auditorium Tuesday, Nov. 5, for the third performance of the Graham Concert Association’s 75th season. Doors will open for the performance at 6:30 p.m. and the show will begin at 7 p.m. Individual performance tickets will be available at the door and online for $20.

For the rest of the story, see the Saturday, Nov. 2 edition of The Graham Leader.