September 2021

Yesterday I knocked out a little desk work and then went fishing, knowing the remnant of Ida would swing north today and the brief window of dry, cool sun would close. I debated – I frequently do while fussing gear in the barn, or pulling on my wade shoes, as the desire to simply go overmasters anything like rational calculation – what part of the watershed to fish, and decided to head north. Years ago I realized that confronted with a choice, I will always go north before south, and west before east, in all things, unless there are compelling reasons (marriage, for instance) to do otherwise.

I fished a beautiful long pool cross-hatched in diamonds of light, deceptively deep, and almost wholly screened by late summer foliage and a trick of the terrain, hidden in a dogleg bend behind an ugly old factory. It's a beat of river that requires trespassing and minor bushwhacking, and this keeps it proof from either well-heeled codgers or meat fisherman. I caught five big healthy rainbow trout and let them go, watching them recover briefly in the shallows, then passing my hat gently overhead to watch them evanesce into the current. I lost two more, which provided the enterprise with a sweet tension, and after covering the available water I hiked out. I drove north again, following the river up through a small village and a few miles past it, where I crossed over a one-lane bridge, to continue on a gravel road along the opposite bank.

Driving, I idly flipped on the radio to the classical station that plays what I think of as a sort of aural wallpaper, resembling spiritually the kind we removed from our dining room when we bought the house: pink, with flowers, in a relief of dimly metallic vertical stripes. But this time I caught the beginning of the adagio of a violin concerto, covered in a patina of light static – lyrical, impossibly sentimental – and it, and the sailing clouds, and the summers-end dusty green, tall corn, and third cutting of hay, with the river light still printed on the backs of my eyes, all caught in my throat together.

Once I helped the poet and author Jim Harrison across a parking lot in Livingston, Montana, holding on to his elbow as he slowly negotiated the uneven landscape between the truck and the bar, after a day spent fishing the Yellowstone together with our friend Chris Dombrowski. I had asked him a question about music, and he was surprisingly deep in his knowledge of various composers, a whole arena of erudition that never found its way into his work. Then he told me that years prior, driving across Wisconsin, he had heard Robert Johnson for the first time on some little public radio station, and not knowing what he was hearing, it had spooked him so badly that he had to pull the car over.

Which is what I did, on a slight bluff above the river, where it cuts into a ledge of gneiss, and turns. I pulled into the tall grass of a small turnout, cut the engine, and listened through the finale, the allegro energico, with all its changes of time and recapitulations of theme, its teasing false endings, and impossibly frail human joy and pathos, while looking out through the dark pines screening the river, and over a field to the far hills across the valley. In the silence after the last note, I turned the key backward in the ignition, and there was only the river.

TOTAL REQUEST LIVE (9/26) – If I can't tour Montana in September (see below) I'll have to do something else, so we're going to dust off the livestream format for an all-request show. I wrote down a pile of requests back in the spring, and I still have them, but here's the deal: I want to know why. I'd like you to send along the story of the song in your life. I've been on the road a long time, and I've met or got letters from everyone from pro-wrestlers to military vets, Rhodes scholars, and animal communicators, telling me about a song or an album that meant something in their life. I love those stories, and I'll go through them and share as many of them as I can when I play the show. That'll be more fun for everyone. You can send them to my team at info@jeffreyfoucault.com, with TOTAL REQUEST LIVE in the subject line, five hundred words maximum, and spelling and grammar will count against your final grade.

NEW MERCH – I keep a bandanna in the gearbox of my guitar case and it comes on stage with me every night along with my brass slide and picks, and there's always one in the glove box of the truck, and another in my fishing rig. They're handy for wiping down a side-mirror, keeping the sweat out of your eyes, or the sun off of your head. Like everything else in my life, I like them best when they get a little faded. There are three new bandannas for sale in the STORE, designed by the fantastic Toronto visual artist Jordanna Rachinsky, and featuring designs of swallows, and brook trout, which are things I can endorse without reservation. Jordanna also created a limited edition screen print poster, printed on French Kraft-Tone paper, suitable for framing and hanging say, directly over your bed. Like the shirts already on sale, these new items are printed and fulfilled by the aces at Ambient Inks in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and you can rest assured they are ethically and sustainably sourced, produced, packaged, and shipped.

MONTANA – When a show or a tour gets cancelled, people lose money. Clubs lose revenue from tickets and drinks, local restaurants, gas stations, and hotels lose patrons. Bartenders and waitstaff lose tips. Even babysitters get hosed. But that’s just money. Towns lose some vitality, and we all lose the chance to get together and feel a little more human. The Montana legislature recently passed a law so that venues can't require either proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test. Promoters, many of them with young kids at home or vulnerable people in their lives, want to do right by their community, and so do we, so we pulled the tour. Montana's one of the places I love best, and it hurts to miss the chance to play there even one time. Sorry to the folks who bought tickets and made plans. I’ll come back and play as soon as it’s reasonable to do.

In the meantime, I'll hope to see you out there, somehow, sooner than later.