Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 5, 1993 TAG: 9308050019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Back home in Del Rio, Texas, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all lawyers. So, it seemed only appropriate that Foster would be destined for seersucker as well.
Instead, he went to college to become a forester and geologist.
And he became . . . a country singer.
Foster will open for Hank Williams Jr. on Friday at the Roanoke Civic Center.
Not only that, but for awhile it looked like he might not make it past waiting tables. For five years after college at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., Foster worked as a waiter in Nashville.
"My graduate school was the hillbilly school of hard knocks," he said in a telephone interview last week from New York. The night before, he had played Radio City Music Hall as an opener for Dwight Yoakam.
He even turned down a job with the state, as Tennessee's liaison with the Environmental Protection Agency that started at $25,000 a year and included a state car.
If he had wanted a real job, he said he would have gone home to Del Rio. Maybe he would have tried law school after all. But he wanted to write songs.
He said his wife, a teacher, was understanding.
Waiting tables wasn't all bad, either. He didn't feel alone. "In Nashville, you can't swing a stick and not hit a songwriter," he said. Also, the tips were decent, and it was mindless work, leaving him free to concentrate on his craft.
Still, five years was a long stretch.
The seersucker suits back home must have been getting nervous, especially when, to earn some extra cash, he worked a Nashville Fan Fair one year dressed up like - a firefighter.
He played firefighter to an aspiring singer whose "two biggest attributes probably were on her chest." She wore red leather. He passed out red hots and records for $75 a day.
It was hot, he said. It was June.
"And I'm dressed in asbestos."
That low point gave way eventually to a job as a staff writer for a song publishing company. No state job, it paid about $200 a week before taxes. "I was as happy as a clam," he said.
There, he wrote or co-wrote material that ended up on records by Tanya Tucker, Holly Dunn, T. Graham Brown and Sweethearts of the Rodeo. He also met Bill Lloyd.
Together, they became Foster and Lloyd and recorded three albums for RCA. They scored well with the alternative country crowd but never really reached a wider audience.
In 1990, the pair split. Foster said it was more his decision to break away. He had started writing more personal songs with more traditional country arrangements. Foster and Lloyd always were less than traditional.
"The songs just didn't fit the vehicle of the duo."
They parted on good terms, although he said they don't talk often. There just isn't time. "I don't talk to anyone on a regular basis," he said. With the exception of reporters. He said he talks with reporters more than his own brothers and sisters.
None of them are lawyers either, by the way.
Foster, 34, is particularly busy these days. His debut solo album, "Del Rio, TX, 1959," has sold better than all three of Foster and Lloyd's albums together. By year's end, he will have logged 200-plus concert dates.
"Now is the time for me to make hay while the sun shines," he explained.
He also has a 2-year-old at home in Nashville.
Mostly, Foster has been opening for Vince Gill, Mary-Chapin Carpenter and Yoakam. "All people that I would actually go out and buy their records," he said.
The Hank Jr. date is an unusual one for Foster. It will be interesting to see how the Hank Jr. crowd greets him. This might not be the perfect match, if Foster's rimmed glasses and decidedly anti-bad boy look is any indication.
No matter. The alternative could be worse.
He could be a lawyer.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB