Monday 06th May 2024
Location: THE PUMPHOUSE
In two decades on the road Jeffrey Foucault has become one of the most distinctive voices in American music, refining a sound instantly recognizable for its simplicity and emotional power, a decidedly Midwestern amalgam of blues, country, rock’n’roll, and folk. He’s built a brick-and-mortar international touring career on multiple studio albums, countless miles, and general critical acclaim, being lauded for “Stark, literate songs that are as wide open as the landscape of his native Midwest” (The New Yorker), and described as “Quietly brilliant” (The Irish Times), while catching the ear of everyone from Van Dyke Parks to Greil Marcus, to Don Henley, who regularly covers Foucault in his live set. BLOOD BROTHERS is the sixth collection of original songs in a career remarkable for an unrelenting dedication to craft, and independence from trend.
Foucault released Deadstock in 2020, a followup to 2018’s Blood Brothers —“…Densely layered tales of longing and loss, beauty and simple pleasures.” (Chicago Sun-Times). Gathering fifteen years of unreleased studio work, Deadstock: Uncollected Recordings 2005-2020 (December 18, 2020 Blueblade Records) unites for the first time sixteen songs culled from six studio releases and scattered sessions, to offer a vital document and an alternate history, illuminating the process of an exacting writer and artist. Introducing seven new original songs – and two released only in Europe – along with full band reimaginings of back catalog favorites like ‘Mesa, Arizona’ and ‘Ghost Repeater,’ Deadstock displays the arc and swagger of an album, making a coherent listening experience from the harvest of years and seasons.
In His Own Words
I take the small roads when I can. I hit the small rooms with a couple old guitars and a 5-watt Skylark amp. Sometimes with a band, and then I stand up. Mostly it’s just me and my friend Billy Conway, the best drummer I ever heard. Then we both sit down and I stomp my foot. I own a Smith Corona typewriter and a Western Bell rotary phone, and I use them both. I wore a pearl snap cowboy shirt in my Kindergarten school picture. Irony isn’t my thing. I try to write the kind of songs Johnny Cash would cover if he was still around.
I grew up in Wisconsin. My Dad wore a tie to work and played a knock-off Gibson with a chunk of the headstock missing where he’d backed over it with the car. Mom sang along. I knew all my Grandparents well into my thirties, and both my Great Grandmas. Winter Sundays were for church or ice-fishing, and summers we hauled an old travel trailer up to the north woods. School was a drag, and I mostly drew pictures. When I was 11 I bought a cassette copy of Little Richard’s Greatest Hits. At 17 I learned to play all the songs on John Prine’s 1971 debut in my room with the door locked and subway posters of British New Wave bands looking morbidly on. At 19 I stole a copy of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Live & Obscure’. At 24 I made a record and start traveling around the country. I have two older brothers. They don’t sing but they both fish.
I live out in New England in a little town with a river through the middle. I can’t get home without crossing good water and it fairly makes up for living east, which isn’t in my blood. We have a chicken coop and a little barn and an old truck that runs. I like to listen to records real loud when I do the dishes, and I do most of the dishes.
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