Show Review: Jeffrey Foucault at The Rockwell, Somerville, MA (2/26)

Apparently, sometime Saturday night, Jeffrey Foucault and his drummer, Billy Conway, said to each other, “Hey, let’s call Dana,” and invited Dana Colley, Conway’s former Morphine bandmate, to play with them at The Rockwell. Colley joined the band for the last 5-6 songs of the set on baritone sax and it topped off what was, from start to finish, a masterful show. The set featured most of the basically perfect 2015 album Salt As Wolves and plenty of other gems from Foucault’s catalogue. I got to talk recently with Jeffrey, and he praised Conway for always being “in service to the song.” This ethic was evident in every member of the band, starting with Foucault himself. Trading glances and grins with Conway, bassist Jeremy Moses Curtis, and guitarist Zak Trojano, Foucault shifted effortlessly from gritty blues to understated ballads, in constant and appreciative communication with his bandmates and with the appreciative crowd at the newly renovated Davis Square venue.

The show opened with “Last Night I Dreamed of Television,” from Horse Latitudes (2010), a stunning elegy for what we have lost, and will lose, through our impoverished contemporary definitions of being “connected.” He followed up with “Des Moines,” the first track from Salt As Wolves, which is framed largely around mundane aspects of life as a musician on the road, and an unremarkable night. “And we watched the house / Filling up with no one. / But God was listening, / And he cupped his ear.” This line stood out to me during the show, in conversation with the performance we were witnessing: there was the feeling that this group would have played with the same dedication and joy regardless of how many people were in the room; that they’ve honed their craft by persisting through nights when it may have felt like God was the only one listening.  

During the “union break,” where Conway, Curtis, and Trojano stepped off stage, Foucault unplugged and stepped in front of the microphone for a beautiful tribute to his father. (I don’t know the name of the song, and couldn’t find it, but it has a line about a “knock off Gibson,” so if anyone out there knows this tune, please clue me in.) He then invited Trojano out to play one of Zak’s songs, “Get Me Right,” with Jeffrey backing him up on harmony vocals and slide guitar. Trojano opened the show as well with a fantastic set; if you join his mailing list, he’ll send you a new song every month.
Sharing the “mission statement portion of the show,” the band launched into “Slow Talker,” a song that is framed mostly around two chords for the verses and uses this space to build tension toward the chorus: “There’s one note, if you can play it. / There’s one word, if you can say it. / There’s one prayer, if you can pray it. / Each one, each one is the same.”

 

 Colley’s addition to the line-up for the end of the show was incredible, mostly for the way he joined the “service of the song.” You would think that a baritone saxophone would dominate the sound, but Colley played with such subtlety, even playing the harmony part on “Hurricane Lamp,” and “Paradise,” that he simply became another voice in the conversation. Of course, he did open it up on “Oh Mama” and the encore, “4 & 20 Blues,” but that’s what the conversation was about in those songs and he delivered. I was very moved by Foucault’s introduction to “Hurricane Lamp.” He began by commenting on our current political state, in which we tend to find ourselves in rooms filled with people we agree with; after commenting that no parent would allow their child to behave like Donald Trump, he received a warm ovation. “But,” he said, “there’s a lot of people in this country without a lot of money, and no way to make money. This song goes out to them.” This empathy is what comes through most strongly from Foucault, both in his albums and his live show: he expresses such clear values of paying attention, of listening. The second verse of the song, for its darkness and its hope, seems appropriate for the times we’re living in right now: “It’s a long black night / Coming down on you / The one that howls inside / Where the wind blows through / I know you feel like you’re dying / For anything true / But you’ve got a light / And it shines in you.”

 

 I’ve missed too many Jeffrey Foucault shows over the past few years. Every time he was in town, I wasn’t. Sometimes when you’ve wanted to see someone live for a while, they can’t possibly live up to the hype you’ve created in your mind. But Jeffrey more than lived up to it–it was one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long while. In a recent interview, Jeffrey said that he and his band, “walk into a dark room and sit in a brightly lit place and tell the truth for about 75 minutes. That’s our job and we like it fine.” That’s the most accurate description I can think of for the show: honest, humble, joyful, and true. Jeffrey heads back to his home state of Wisconsin for a run of shows in April but I hope he comes back to Boston real soon. I’m ready for another Jeffrey Foucault show tomorrow.
Photo courtesy Dan Tappan photography