One of the finest songwriters of his generation, Jeffrey Foucault has taken, in his own words, ‘the small roads;’ building a brick and mortar independent international touring career of ten studio albums, countless miles and critical accolades. He’s been 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 Greil Marcus to Don Henley to Van Dyke Parks.His latest release is Salt As Wolves. It's a line from Othello describing boldness; a fitting title to frame a record of blues played bold and loosely, without rehearsal or cant. With his fifth collection of original songs Foucault stakes out and enlarges the ground he’s been working diligently all the new century, quietly building a deep, resonant catalog of songs about about love, memory, God, desire, wilderness and loss. SALT AS WOLVES gives us Jeffrey Foucault at the height of his powers, fronting an all-star band, turning the wheel of American music.
Foucault was 17 when he learned to play all the songs on John Prine's eponymous debut on his father's mail-order guitar, spending long evenings in his bedroom spinning piles of old records on a hand-me-down turntable, lifting the needle to transcribe every line of ‘Desolation Row’. At 19 he stole a copy of Townes Van Zandt: Live and Obscure from a friend, and a few years later, having quit school to work as a farm-hand and house-carpenter Foucault began writing the songs that became his first record (2001’s Miles From the Lightning). Since that release he’s been everything from solo country-blues troubadour to frontman for a six-piece rock 'n' roll band, along the way compiling a discography remarkable for its visceral power and complex poetics. Yet it wasn’t until he paired with former Morphine drummer Billy Conway that the final piece fell into place and Foucault found the Luther Perkins to his Johnny Cash: the truly sympathetic collaborator to both frame and fire his terse brand of minimalist Americana.
