JEFFREY FOUCAULT: 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. He’s built a brick-and-mortar international touring career of multiple studio albums, countless miles, and general critical acclaim, 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” (Irish Times).
In April 2020 Jeffrey Foucault will tour the United Kingdom in support of BLOOD BROTHERS (Blueblade Records, 2018) his sixth collection of original songs. Eric Heywood (drums) will be accompanying Jeffrey. Eric is an amazing pedal steel player who has toured with The Pretenders for years as well as Ray Lamontagne, The Jayhawks, and Alejandro Escovedo amongst others.
Since 2013 Foucault and Conway have toured relentlessly together, refining a primal, stripped-down stage show: two men, two chairs; a beat-up Gibson J-45 and an electric guitar tuned low and played through a 5-watt amp; a suitcase kick drum, a low-boy cymbal, a snare drum. The pair plays only what they can carry into the club alone in one trip, and cover all the territory from blues and country, to rock ‘n’ roll and folk, with a laconic ferocity and timeless cool. Their dynamic partnership – as nimble as it is sonically powerful – is the bedrock on which BLOOD BROTHERS builds its nuanced and poignant lament.
THE NEW YORK TIMES:“Sometimes his songs run right up to the edge of the grandiose, and hold still, and that’s when he’s best… Close to perfection.”
MOJO: ”Songwriting brilliance.”
UNCUT MAGAZINE (UK): “The music of Wisconsin native Foucault is the kind so many aspire to but never attain: beat-up troubadour folk whittled to dolorous perfection…”
KRIS DELMHORST: You don’t have to believe in anything mystical to feel the molecules around you shift just a little when you listen to Kris Delmhorst. Her songs transmute like breath turning to mist on a cold, clear night; the inner made visible. Her voice holds memories, like smoke lingering in a sweater from last summer’s campfire. Twining through every layer of consciousness, her music weaves together the magical and the mundane with the strange logic of dreams.
Called “bold and brilliant” by the Boston Globe and “transcendent” by the LA Times, Delmhorst is a veteran of the indie Americana world, with vivid songwriting, soulful delivery, and adventurous arrangements that stretch the limits of genre. She’s been compared to artists as various as Anaïs Mitchell, Lucinda Williams, and Juana Molina – though she cites Rickie Lee Jones, in all her fearless joy and complexity, as an artistic north star.
With Long Day in the Milky Way, her eighth album, Delmhorst takes a surefooted stride forward. Lush with layered vocals and immersive instrumentation, it finds the gifted lyricist at the height of her craft and working with a strong sense of purpose. Worldweary but hopeful, the songwriter responds to a time of global anxiety with a missive straight from the chest. Delmhorst invites the listener to look both out and in, to take in the full kaleidoscope of life’s contradictions – persistence, frustration, heartbreak, love – and to locate the grace within the struggle, the beauty in the dark.
