New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Jeffrey Foucault will release The Universal Fire on
September 6 via Fluff and Gravy Records. A series of high-voltage performances captured live in one room, the album is a kind of working wake - Foucault lost his best friend and drummer, Billy Conway, to cancer in 2021 - as well as a meditation on the nature of beauty, artifact, and loss.
Foucault shared the title track to announce the impeccable album last month and now releases 'Solo Modelo', referencing the lone beer he would have after losing the friend he always shared it with.
"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 mic'ing the suitcase, but he got more sound of out 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 s 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."
Augmenting Foucault's all-star band with members of
Calexico and
Bon Iver (drummer John Convertino and producer/saxophonist Mike Lewis), The Universal Fire sets Conway's death against the massive 2008 fire at the Universal Studios lot in California that destroyed the master recordings of some of our bedrock American music, to interrogate ideas about mortality, legacy, meaning, and calling.
With the album, Foucault will circle the country in the Autumn with his incomparable band featuring Eric Heywood on steel, Jeremy Moses Curtis on bass, John Convertino on drums, and Erik Koskinen on guitar. Koskinen will open the two shows to start the tour and tickets are on sale now at Jeffreyfoucault.com. A full list of dates can be found below with more to be added.
JEFFREY FOUCAULT TOUR DATES:
Sep 05 - Exeter, NH - The Word Barn *
Sep 06 - Northampton, MA - Iron Horse
Music Hall *
Sep 07 - Fall River, MA - Narrows Center for the Arts *
Sep 08 - Cotuit, MA - Cotuit Center for the Arts
Sep 11 - Galway, NY -c'n Bull *
Sep 12 - Harvard, MA - Fruitalnds Museum *
Sep 13 - New York, NY - The Iridium *
Sep 14 - Gloucester, MA - The Cut *
Sep 20 - Washington, DC -
Millennium Stage
Sep 26 - Bozeman, MT - Live from the Divide *
Sep 28 - Missoula, MT - Wilma Theatre (An Evening with the
Black Ram Guitar)
Sep 29 - Missoula, MT - Monk's Bar *
Oct 03 - Boulder, CO - Gold Hill Inn *
Oct 04 - Hotchkiss, CO - Delicious Orchards *
Oct 05 - Denver, CO - Mercury Cafe *
Nov 01 -
Santa Monica, CA - McCabe's *
Nov 03 - Mill Valley, CA - Sweetwater
Music Hall *
Nov 06 - Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios *
Nov 07 - Seattle, WA - Tractor Tavern *
Nov 08 - Trout Lake, WA - Trout Lake Hall *
Nov 09 - Centralia, WA - Juicebox Public House *
Nov 10 - Bellingham, WA - New Prospect Theatre *
Dec 06 - Iowa City, IA - The
James Theatre *
Dec 11 - Evanston, IL - Evanston Space *
* w Erik Koskinen supporting
The Universal Fire track listing:
1 - Winter Court
2 - The Universal Fire
3 - Solo Modelo
4 - Monterey Rain
5 - Moving Through
6 - Crushed Ice and Gasoline
7 - Night Shift
8 - East of the Sunrise
9 - Sometimes Love
10 - Woodsmoke
