ABOUT THE EVENT

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. With a string of critically acclaimed

studio albums – “Stark, literate songs that are as wide open as the landscape

of his native Midwest” (The New Yorker), "Beat-up troubadour folk whittled to

dolorous perfection” (Uncut), “Songwriting Brilliance,” (Irish Times) – he’s built

a brick-and-mortar international touring career and a devoted following, one

that includes luminaries like Van Dyke Parks, Greil Marcus, and Don Henley.

In September of 2024 Jeffrey Foucault will release THE UNIVERSAL FIRE

(Fluff & Gravy, 9/6/24), his first album of entirely new material since 2018. A

series of high-voltage performances cut live in one room, the album is both a

working wake – Foucault lost his best friend and drummer Billy Conway, to

cancer in 2021 – and a meditation on the nature of beauty, artifact, and loss.

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.