Miles from the Lightning (2001)

PURCHASE (Reprint, 2019)
 

“I wrote these songs between 19 and 24, when I dropped out of college and went back, fell out of love and went back, left home and went back. Somewhere there’s a picture of me leaning against the grill of my ‘84 Suburban with a borrowed guitar, squinting against the sun in my dad’s old wool jacket on the morning I started. Clean-cut with a high fade, I look like I’m in the army.

When I listen now I hear that time and those towns: corn fields whispering, red-winged blackbirds singing by the Bark River, the radiator knocking in my little walk-up flat. I hear my friends laughing around a case of beer. I smell the inside of that truck.

My grandparents on both sides gave me a grand to get started, and when I finally had the master in hand I drove straight to my folks’ house, where we stood with folded arms in the kitchen after supper and listened to the whole thing, front to back. Dad said it was good.

What’s here is everything I knew how to do at the time, and a few things I didn’t know how to do. I still play some of these songs, but they’re not mine anymore and they’ve made friends of their own.”

- JF April 2019

PRAISE FOR MILES FROM THE LIGHTNING

MOJO:

“A striking debut. [Foucault] comes out sounding like the love-child of Chris Whitley and Kelly Joe Phelps… strong songs, a voice and blues guitar that sound wiser than his years.”

NO DEPRESSION:

“Jeffrey Foucault is the bard of small-town anywhere, his poetry rich with details… worn-in voice like an old down jacket, frayed and gritted… delivery so raw and real it fairly throbs.”

Tracks

1. Ballad of Copper Junction (A Journeyman’s Lament)
2. Dove and the Waterline
3. Walking at Dusk  (The Liberty Bell)
4. Thistledown Tears
5. Californ-i-a
6. Highway and the Moon
7. Battle Hymn (of the College Dropout Farmhand)
8. Crossing Mississippi
9. Secretariat
10. Sunrise in the Rearview
11. Street Light Halos
12. Buckshot Moon
13. I'm Alright
14. Miles from the Lightning

Ballad of Copper Junction (A Journeyman's Lament)

My father laid the trees down
He broke them with his hands
Last year he died and left me nothing
But this frame I fill
A union card
And a pair of workman's hands 

And I was brought up in the north of here
In Copper Junction town
Where there ain't no longer
Any copper in the ground
Just the reservation land
Empty logging towns
Paper mills
And drawers of hand me downs 

In 1964 I was seventeen years old
I got caught up in the draft
I did like I was told
And spent a pair of too long years
Too young to be so old
Well it don't take too much sense
Just to come in from the cold
But I guess I never did
I guess I never did 

Back home it was the bottle
Back to work with my old man
But we didn't get on so good
It wasn't like we planned
And the last I saw of him
He's so drunk he couldn't stand
And that wagon's rolling empty 

So I got myself cleaned up
I was married for a while
But that ring it just kept falling off
And sometimes I wonder why
But now it's years ago and faded
From whiskey and from rye
And I wonder if it matters 

My father laid the trees down
He broke them with his hands
And now I'm just like him
I got nowhere left to stand
And that wagon's rolling empty
And I've got nothing but the frame I fill
A union card
And a pair of workman's hands
 

Dove and the Waterline

I wrote you a song from under the sky
From the field where the snow fell down
And the town threw up its light
Against the clouds into the night
Like a wall to keep the flood from bearing down 

And I said hello can you help me
Do you know
What I'm doing can you tell me
Where I'm bound
The stars all have names
And the angels have the same
But I'm lost and so much want
To be found 

I wrote you a prayer from inside the walls
Of this country where the cold wind blows
And a storm into the sea
Rang out against man's every plea
To rouse my soul and steal my body down below 

And I said hello can you help me
Do you know
What I'm doing can you tell me
Where I'm bound
I'm cast away
Into the deep and compassed there
No soul to keep
A fire to the water burning down 

And I said hello can you help me
Do you know
What I'm doing can you tell me
Where I'm bound
The stars all have names
And the angels have the same
But I'm lost and I so much want
To be found
 

Walking at Dusk (The Liberty Bell)

I've been walking at dusk

Just walking
With these lonely man's blues on my back
I've been down to the well
And I've been to the Liberty Bell
But it looks to be
Getting a crack 

And I've been talking about love

Just talking
And it seems like I don't get nowhere
So maybe I ought to go
To just where I don't know
But it looks to be
Other than here 

And if I was a lighthouse

I would shine out on the ocean
If I was a train

I would always run on time
Safely on their way

I would send God's weary travelers
And when my time was done

I would leave it all behind 

Well I've been thinking about war

Just thinking
I've been beating my plowshares thin
I sought my own redress
I read the Gettysburg Address
But old Abe it seems
A hard road to win 

And I've been playing my guitar

Just playing
And I'm running out of good things to say
I saw what there was to see
They gave me a Bachelor's degree
I think it's time now
That I was away 
 

Thistledown Tears

Take me down to the bottom land
Good as any and we'll make our stand
Hide our money in the bucket of the well
Keep your head low it's blowing like hell

Reverend said it's Judgement Day
Land turned to dust where it used to be clay
There's a darkness coming and it's well past dawn
Roomful of candles and the lights all gone 

Don't cry your thistledown tears
Blood and water both run clear
The time to wrestle the angel is here
And the night is quickly passing 

Hymn songs drum in the dusk of the rooms
Glory go marching in the thread of a tune
Light up your lanterns and lay down your cares
Saint John’s riding the four white mares 

Church bells ring in the pounding wind
Ringing the dead men to rise up again
Dust coming in at foot of the door
The moon and the tide and the earthly shore
The pull and the spin of a timed out reel
Hearts made of flint words made of steel
Wind comes down off the Texas plain
Abel's calling to raise up cane 

The dawn rolls under the fence-line wires
Oily and cold but breathing of fire
The cock he's crowing the daylight of dreams
For Judas and mercy and every in between

Californ-i-a

Well I guess you're gone
To Californ-i-a
And I dont expect you'll be
Coming back this way
Real soon
Real soon 

It was in the Spring
A couple of years ago
We fell in love
But I let you go
So soon
So soon 

If I had the stars
I'd throw them on the ground
If I had the sun
I'd take and burn it down
Because I just can't leave
Well enough alone
I just can't leave
Well enough alone 

So I wrote this song
To tell you that I am
So sorry and I hope
That you understand
How much I never meant
To make you cry
How much I
Never meant to make you cry 

And I guess you're gone
To Californ-i-a
And I don't expect you'll be
Coming back this way
Real soon
Real soon
 

Highway and the Moon

It was a preface to motion
Rolling down the Oklahoma highway
Highway and the moon
The moon beat down
With cloudless devotion
It seemed like all heaven
Was going my way

It was a preface to waking
The smell of gasoline
A dream of milk and honey
Honey how are you?
You were there
In the dawn before the daybreak
Rising before Venus
The morning star and humming
A tune I could not name

Swallows were tumbling
Over our heads they were
Falling by turns
By turns rising again
Seamlessly tracing
The profile of night
In a balance of meaning
And motion and light
And there on the water
Passing below
I saw our bodies reflected
As a palindrome 

We go tearing our love down
To build it up again
From different directions
We mean the same
We are the same as we've always been 

It was a preface to knowing
Throwing down

The dreams of my own making
For making better time
And time rolls on
Heedless of our holding
This momentary franchise
The kingdom I have made
Of your bloodshot smile
 

Battle Hymn (of the College Dropout Farmhand)

The humble sky is falling down
On golden mother May
The sun in shadows rising
Paints the dawning break of day
And you could ask ten thousand times
Why I left that day
But the answer it won't change your mind
And I've got nothing else to say 

Mine eyes have seen the glory
Of that ragged flag unfurled
And I wonder when the light of the last
Honest man passed from this weary world

They say home is where the heart is
My home ain't in this town
I build walls and just to climb them
Climb them just so you can help me down 

Hear me oh hear me
These times will grow faint
And the years spring up new like the Indian paint
Our dreams they succeed us
Our children we taint
Pray for my soul these times will grow faint 

Crossing Mississippi

Empty barns falling down to the ground
Ground falling down to the sky
In the country where I left you
The river never sleeps
She just keeps on rolling south in the night 

And your beauty finds me there as I leave you
Seeks me out and calls me by my name
You are a temple where I take
Religion like water
Never in my life to forsake

I woke up in the morning
Stumbling with my head bowed low
My hands made into prayers

For every mile left to go
Every next time that I leave you
With only half a soul
But praying hands can’t hold you

The river can only roll
 

Secretariat

I need a woman with a heart like Secretariat
To outrun my lonesome ways
I'm going to take this extra rib I've got
I'm going to bury it down in the dust
She does not raise 

I need a woman with eyes like Rodin
To see the body caught within the stone
I'm going to take this bronze star heart
I'm going to melt it down
Wait for love to cast the metal into bone 

I'm the blue eyed son of hurricane
I'll twirl you so sweetly so around
But be careful you know Atlanta
Never looked the same
After she burned to the ground

I need a woman with a heel like Achilles
So I know there's always one way I can win
Love is patient, love is kind, but let's be honest
Love is a catalogue of deadly sins 

I need a woman with a chin like Joe Frazier
To stand inside when I am swinging at the wind
Let's you and me take the gloves off darlin
I'll tell you exactly where I've been 

I need a woman with hands like John Henry
Hard enough to break the rocks down into sand
And when we died we'd lay down side by side
With our hammers in our hands 

I need a woman like I need a hole

In my head
 

Sunrise in the Rearview

Sunrise in the rearview
Falling down before
Go west young man it's something
You never done before 

Morning fog out on the meadow
Corn at four foot high
And every fountain of my youth
Is just a well gone dry 

Now is the time of collection
Now is the season undone
Now is the winter of my discontent
Made glorious summer
By your sun 

Pretty like a well worn bible
Pretty's just a word she's
Golden to the sun in September
She's golden to the sun 

And it seems like I remember
Her hair was long and brown
And sometime she put on lipstick
When we went into town 

And Iowa in Springtime
Throws shadows on the ground
Where the Mississippi River
Follows the railways down 

And I'd follow you down to water
Just to see you wet your hair
I'd buy for you all the ocean
All its glories you would wear
And I'd follow you into the blue sky
Just to see your angels shine
I'd buy for you all that wild blue and yonder
Just to make you mine 

Sunrise in the rearview
Falling down before
Go west young man it's something
You never done before 

There's new mown hay at the roadside
And straw bales piled up
They'll be dry by mid-September
So will I with any luck
 

Street Light Halos

Goodbye I'm leaving
This house and this country for home
And a heart full and aching with wonder
To reap every seed I have sown 

If the time were not now I think I might stay
Right here with my feet on the ground
But the sunset is flown away to the west
And it's her I must follow on down
Her I must follow on down 

In my heart I run down to December
Late night lonely the clouds are all gone
And the stars like pinpoints they shine through
Streetlight halos for angels unborn 

And alone in my room as I am right now
I can almost see calling your name
And as memory fades into intention
They seem to be one and the same

Maybe every man's heart is a graveyard unkempt
And the lines on his face mark the stones
But I saw in your eyes some part of my soul
And I swear I will make you my own
 

Buckshot Moon

Buckshot moon bloodshot heart
When are the good times going to start
Burned out mouth turned out light
It's a downhill road it's an uphill fight 

Smoke on the glass twilight town
Needle says empty but it's still going down
On a five bar street in a one church town
Twelve bar blues frost on the ground 

How long how long
Until anything sets me on fire
How long how long
Until I know
Possession from desire

Hard time wind on the hill tonight
Main streets shining with Christmas lights
In the skyline dusk in the dark come down
The seconds are broken but the hands go around 

And the snowfall comes with nightfall black
Ice on the banks dust in the tracks
Sere and gray as embers and cold
But burning the branches are dreaming of gold 
 

I'm Alright

The American flag at 1:05
In the morning in my town
Is hanging above Main Street
Stock still above a spot light
Like a dare to keep the moon from going down
And I am walking home with beer breath
Under street lights that are useless
There's no one here
No one to hear the sound
I'm alright 

In the tent sale of my dreams
I had marked so many down from what I paid
Growing up and growing older
I thought man there ain't no profit in this game
And then my friends began to own things
And make thirty five a year
They got jobs with health insurance
They got cars with second gear
But I'm alright 

At the corner of Third and Edward
In the lot across the street from my front porch
Where the Mexicans play salsa
From the cars that got no hubcaps
In a parking lot that used to be a church
And they dance sweet and close together
Where the light shines off the chrome
The reflection of the homeless
Who know what it means
To be home
And I'm alright 

There are stars in the daylight
But no one can ever tell
You can only see them
From the bottom of a well
And I have been down to the bottom
I appreciate the view
But I am on my way up
And I am coming to tell you
I'm alright 

Now as I sit here at my desk in my apartment
Smoking cigarettes tonight
Drinking Rhinelander beer in my bare feet
And toasting everything in sight
Here's one for Townes Van Zandt
And here's one for Geronimo
Here's one for all my good friends
One for a girl I used to know
I'm alright
 

Miles from the Lightning

Darkness on the fence posts
And a whistle from a train
Water in the corn rows
And a window to the rain
Count your miles from the lightning
Lay your money down
Count your blessings against the thunder
Take the thorns out of your crown 

Well it's no more highway rolling
No more sundown ride
No more Carolina
No more great divide
The words to keep from dying
There ain't a man can find
But the words to keep on living
Is what you left behind 

Songs on painted shadows
Bleed on broken roads
Paved from here to heaven
With anything but gold
And anything but simple
It always was your kind
From the straight and narrow running
Along the straightest line 

Darkness on the fence posts
And a whistle from a train
Water in the corn rows
And a window to the rain
Count your miles from the lightning
Rest your tired eyes
Count your blessings against the thunder
Kiss the years goodbye