" data-original-title="" title="">Ruthie Foster has earned every mile. Over a career spanning three decades, the Texas-born singer-songwriter has played every kind of venue imaginable, from tiny clubs to Carnegie Hall. Her Grammy-nominated album Mileage (Sun Records, 2024) marks both her first release on legendary Sun Records and, remarkably, the label's first Grammy nomination in its 70-year history. The album's title emerged from a conversation with her doctor about the physical toll of life on the road.

"He told me, 'It's not age -you just have more miles than most right now,'" Foster recalls with a laugh. "That became the title, and the rest was about my life on the road."

Foster first picked up the guitar as a young girl in Gause, Texas, playing in church and soaking up gospel music alongside her family. After studying audio engineering in college, she joined the Navy, where she performed in a recruitment band.

"I wanted to do something other than music," she says of her Navy years. "I've been playing and performing since I was twelve, and I just turned sixty. That's a long time in music and entertaining, churches, communities, schools. The military was a way to get out of that small pond, see the world."

After her stint in the service, a development deal with Atlantic Records brought her to New York City, but she returned home to Texas when her mother fell ill.

For Mileage, Foster wrote and recorded in Nashville with producer Tyler Bryant and his wife