From the fabled crossroads to Fort Myers, a rock 'n' roll life

Stephen Foster COURTESY PHOTO Stephen Foster began his career at Broadway Sound, one of several nowlegendary recording studios located near Muscle Shoals, Ala., where he grew up. He was a wide-eyed 19-yearold and there was plenty to see. The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, Traffic and Willie Nelson were among the parade of recording artists who came through Muscle Shoals to cut songs.

He had been hired to play rhythm guitar for Percy Sledge, who wrote "When a Man Loves a Woman." Mr. Foster, now 59, remembers Aretha Franklin calling him "honey."

Three years later, he was traveling the southern United States with his band. It was a life full of the myths and hardships associated with rock 'n' roll. He visited the crossroads near Clarksdale, Ala., where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his blues genius. And Mr. Foster's band played in rough roadhouses, often behind chicken wire to protect them from beer bottles thrown at the stage.

"Most of the clubs wanted country music of some sort," Mr. Foster said, speaking on the phone from his home near Venice. "And what we did, we went in and we'd take Hank Williams and we'd rock it up. We were rock 'n' roll players, not really country players. In later years, people called that swamp music. It's a mixture of blues, rock 'n' roll and country. It's kind of just a mish mash of it. Elvis did some of it. I guess you'd call it roadhouse music."

His adventures on the road included losing his hand when he tripped in the shower ("It was hangin' on by one little piece of skin," he remembers, laughing). He had it reattached, but switched to slide guitar and piano. Later in the 1980s, he had a brief stint at the University of Notre Dame as a teacher's assistant for graphic design in the journalism department.

After that, Mr. Foster continued to record and tour with his band, Howler. He moved to Southwest Florida, near Venice, with his wife in the late 1990s. He also got into the mortgage brokerage business, earning enough money to become fairly well off. The money went to record an album in 2007 that made it to No. 37 on the Americana charts, two spots above Eric Clapton and J.J. Cale.

"They were two of my favorite players of all time," Mr. Foster said. "I wanted to say, 'let me just trade with you because I feel embarrassed being higher on the charts.' (But) it was a good feeling after all those years. Thirty-seven years of trying to get a record charted. I finally did it and it cost me a bunch of money."

Then in the last couple of years, after the housing crisis, Mr. Foster, like many people, lost it all.

"I lost my home, vehicles, credit," he said. "Over the last two years, I've lost everything I've built up. My recording studio, everything, just gone."

But this isn't the first time he lost everything. After having his hand reattached, Mr. Foster sold a guitar collection he estimates was worth $70,000 and fell into a deep malaise for years.

Although Howler has disbanded, he recently went back on the road as a solo act. You can often catch him around Punta Gorda venues like Fisherman's Village and The Wyvern Hotel. Mr. Foster canceled a July 11 show in Fort Myers due to a heart attack, but called from the hospital to say he was OK and will be coming in August. Go to www. howler.biz to hear his music and find out where he's playing.

His songs are all original and as varied as his career; a mixture of blues, rock 'n' roll and country — swamp music. The influence of Neil Young's angry growl is apparent on songs like "Mad as Hell," about his anger over gas prices, CEOs with huge bonuses and President George W. Bush. Other songs are sweet stories, reminiscent of James Taylor's story-telling.

"I write songs that go to your heart, that will wrench your soul out if you listen," Mr. Foster said. "The songs are real. There's a whole world that's existing while that one song is going on. And I go to that world and I'm completely committed to living that song while I play it."

Currently, he's in a productive mode, compelled by a sense of urgency he never felt when he was younger.

"I can kinda see the end of the road," he said. "At 50, you start noticing there's something going on down the road. At 60, you start to see the yellow tape across the barricades."

His inspiration comes from what he calls "the Radio in The Sky," sort of the mass-consciousness of music lovers.

"In the middle of the night and when I wake up I hear songs in my head," Mr. Foster said. "You know the words to the chorus before and that's because you heard the song in your sleep, in your dreams. I'm convinced that everybody hears that radio to some degree. Everybody's already heard 'em and finally somebody wrote it down."