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SF: Well, Guitar Woman has been the title of a book I've been working on for a while now, based
around my interviews with women guitar players. At this point it's kind of a trademark. So Guitar
Woman was just the working title of the book when I was doing interviews with female guitarists
and since this is a solo album, “One Guitar
Woman” is like me, solo, as one woman.

BiTS: Tell me, did you have any difficulty selling
it to Stony Plain at all?

SF: No, actually, they were very receptive to it.
They didn't know what exactly it was going to
be, but I think everybody's really happy.

BiTS: [Laughs] And the next question is, tell me
how you went about selecting the songs. They
are obviously songs that you've known for years
and probably grew up with.

SF: Yeah, most of them. I mean, a lot of them are
sort of a mixture of things.

BiTS: Do you have a favourite song on the album?

SF: I don't know. No, I like all the material. I
picked the material because some of the pieces
were sort of the trademark songs of certain artists, for instance, ‘Freight Train’ by Elizabeth Cotten
is her most famous song. ‘Mal Hombre’ by Lydia Medoza, that's her most famous song. Geeshie
Wiley and Elvie Thomas, those two songs I picked by them are kind of their trademark pieces.
And then even in ‘Maybelle's Guitar’, I referenced the ‘Wildwood Flower’, which is one of the most
familiar melodies from Maybelle Carter. Otherwise, I just picked songs that I found resonated with
me, like ‘In My Girlish Days’ from Memphis Minnie, that sort of speaks of her childhood, and I
thought that was a very compelling piece. Yeah, the other stuff is kind of random stuff that sort of
speaks to me and I felt like I could execute well.

BiTS: Two from Elizabeth Cotten. Are you a fan of hers?

SF: Oh, I'm a huge fan. I'm a fan of all these women.
BiTS: [Chuckles] Yes, of course.

SF: Huge fan, yeah.

BiTS: What is it about the music from Elizabeth Cotten that you like?

SF: Well, I love that style of guitar Piedmont finger picking, first of all. I've loved it my whole life,
and I've been working on Piedmont finger picking since I was a teenager, so it wasn't something
I was unfamiliar with. Elizabeth Cotten, they're all compelling figures all these women, but she
was an interesting figure in the history of American music and folk music. She was just such a cool
lady. She had a cool guitar style and an unorthodox way of playing, so she was just sort of unique.
I speak of her, but it speaks of everybody that they're all unique people who did interesting things
and in interesting ways and they definitely made their mark on the history of guitar in their own
cultures.

BiTS: You clearly are a very accomplished guitar player. I don't mean that only in the acoustic
sense, but because of picking as well, and the stuff that you do with that, but when did you first
start playing acoustic guitar?