Vanessa Collier is a torch-bearer for 21st-century blues. 

With six solo albums, known around the U.S. and throughout Europe, Collier appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival last year in front of tens of thousands. 

At Baker Street Centre on Friday, Feb. 7, she will be making her first stopover in Fort Wayne.

Finding her sound

This singer, songwriter, and saxophonist grew up in Maryland, earned a dual-degree from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and started her solo career in Philadelphia in 2014. 

Since 2017, she’s won four accolades from the Blues Music Awards in Memphis. This year, she’s nominated for Instrumentalist: Horn, Contemporary Blues Female Artist, and Entertainer of the Year. The results will be announced at their annual ceremony in May.

When speaking with her by phone from her home near Columbia, South Carolina, I had to back up a bit and ask: How did a formally trained saxophonist end up as a blues singer?

Starting as a young person, “they put a saxophone in your hand and expect you to play jazz,” she said. “And so I grew up learning that methodology and everything. And there are parts of it that I love, but honestly the academic side of jazz is not — I don’t believe it’s the way to teach music. And so I kind of fell out of love with jazz.

“And, like, the ‘smooth jazz’ thing just has never been my thing. I’ll listen to it. I love Gerald Albright. I think it’s amazing what he does. But it’s just not what drives my heart, you know. I like a little grittier music, a little bit more soulful. Not that that stuff can’t be, but in general, it’s just not how I play and how I speak, you know what I mean?”

So where did singing and songwriting come into it?

“I didn’t start that way,” she said. “I started on the flip side. I was a horn player and then I started singing in college. And then I started songwriting, as well, in college. So it feels like it went backwards for me!

“But that is what I think of the music now. Everything is original, so singer-songwriter and the sax is a big part of it. That’s not the typical singer-songwriter thing, you know.”

Doing it her own way

Her 2024 album Do It My Own Way explains, right there in the title, her approach to life, the music business, and what it means to be a blues artist today. It’s original music with a classic vibe.

This album of concise, carefully arranged songs is a tribute to the ’70s Memphis soul sound from Stax and Hi Records, recalling the heyday of Al Green and The Staples Singers. But there’s a range of other styles as well.

Far from Memphis, at HearStudios in Camden, Maine, Collier brought her favorite guitarist, Laura Chavez, assembled bass, drums and percussion, a backing horn section, and astonishingly, the Rev. Charles Hodges, venerable Hi Rhythm Section organist, who played on those great sessions in the ’70s with Al Green. 

Collier sings lead, and punctuates each song with a searing solo on alto or tenor sax. She stacked up all the harmony vocals herself and even plays flute and resonator guitar.

The songs range from New Orleans funk to more traditional electric blues until we hit “Wild as a Rainstorm,” right in the Hi Records soul zone. “Shoulda Known Better” has a slinky groove with tight staccato horn riffs. Then there’s “Just One More,” with Collier’s saxophone and the guitar leading us into a slow, seductive take on the Afro-Cuban rhumba.

The track that stands out for me is “Rosetta,” a history lesson about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the gospel singer and fierce lead guitarist who was a major star in her day. Tharpe’s recordings in the late 1940s laid the foundation for rock n’ roll, inspiring Little Richard, Elvis, Johnny Cash, and more. 

On Collier’s tribute, her ecstatic vocals, Chavez’s frantic guitar, and that authentic ’40s gospel sound, not far from jump blues, tell the story.

On tour, Collier reinterprets the album’s elaborate soul band arrangements into the tried-and-true blues-rock format: her backing band is just guitar, bass, and drums.

“A lot of these tunes I actually wrote on guitar,” she said. “So, it’s sort of like the (other) parts are surrounded by the guitar part.

“But you know the music is beautiful on its own.”

Referring to the horn section, Hammond organ, and backing vocals on the album, she said, “That’s just sort of what they call the sweetening, you know, in the business. It’s just the icing on top of the cake. So we just we play the roots of the music, you know what I mean, with just the four parts.”

European following

Collier is dedicating 2025 to touring. 

“We’re kicking off 2025 with a whole run, basically, across the country, through Florida and Texas and all the way up the West Coast, and then hitting Colorado.”

However, real career longevity for U.S. blues artists is in Europe. So that will be Collier’s focus in the summer.

“We’re playing a small jazz club in Paris, and then it’s a festival in Germany.”

Last year, “We played a bunch of festivals in Norway and Estonia and all sorts of places, France as well.

“Last year I went to Notodden, Norway. That was my second time back, and they’ve been amazingly gracious. They even gave me a star on their blues walk of fame, which is crazy amazing.”

“We play Spain pretty much every year, and then Brazil!

“In Germany, my name is getting out. The more we go play over there (in Europe), the higher the demand, so hopefully we’ll go back again and again and continue to build.”

But before all that, for our local crowd, one night in a cozy club in Fort Wayne. And then on to the world.