Check out “Solo Modelo”, the latest single from the New England based Jeffrey Foucault. A gifted wordsmith with a clever yet welcoming disposition, Foucault blends Americana moods with a tasteful low-end drive and poetic eagerness. The song is an homage to an old friend (Billy Conway) that Foucault lost to a battle with cancer, a true dedication with upbeat swagger and a lively low-end cushion. Foucault may clearly be a gifted lyricist, but beyond that he possesses a warm and rich vocal disposition, a potent combo in the world of alternative country. Foucault is set to release his new record, “The Universal Fire,” on September 24 via tastemaker Portland-based indie label, Fluff & Gravy Records.
“For most of a decade I spent a hundred nights a year on the road with Billy Conway,” reflects Foucault. “When we were out as a duo he played a suitcase drum kit: snare drum with a Remo conga head, a ride cymbal, a low-boy (sock cymbal) from the 1930s, and an empty suitcase that carried all these things and served as the kick drum. He used to laugh when the sound tech would ask him if there was a ‘sweet spot’ for micing the suitcase, but he got more sound out of that rig than most drummers could get out of a full kit. I’d bring a couple guitars and an old five-watt amp and between us, we could cover all the territory in a real lean, powerful way.
“Billy was my best friend. He’d done the big dance, found fame with Morphine and before that Treat Her Right, met or played with everyone from Dylan to Bo Diddley, and then walked away from that life. He was gentle and curious, with a horizonless mind. He was literate and funny, philosophical in the sense that he wanted to understand not one thing alone, but everything together. He was kind to everyone, and patient, and I learned a lot about how to play music, and how to be a person, simply by being in his company. We spent so much time together on the road, talking about this and that, that after years it was hard for me to know where my own ideas ended and his began. It was an endless, meandering river of talk that we camped beside at night and plied again the next day.”
“We only had four things on our hospitality rider, four adjectives and four nouns: black coffee, tap water, French wine, and Mexican beer, increasing in quantity as we scaled up to trio or full band. If those things were available we could generally take care of the rest. We always used to take the last Modelos back to the hotel and shoot the shit before we drifted off to sleep, and there were a lot of mornings where the tableau at daylight was two near-empty beer cans, a clock radio, and a handful of coins.”
“Then Billy got cancer, and I was on the road alone for the first time in a long time. Long enough that it was hard to remember how to do it, and for some reason, my people sent the full band rider out, so that everywhere I went the clubs gave me a bottle of French wine and a twelve-pack of Modelo, and I wasn’t even drinking. The trunk of the rental was just swimming with beer and wine, and I was making these long quiet drives alone, seeing the country again, feeling the rhythm of my life – rise and shine to airport to rental car counter to hotel to green room to stage to gas station to interstate – for the first time without Billy to help me see it. I wrote this song and sent it to him in Montana like a letter.”
