SALT AS WOLVES (2015)
PURCHASE
"I first saw Foucault play in a little Missoula theatre years ago, when many of us who grew up spinning our elders' albums—Townes and Dylan, John Prine and Greg Brown—wandered around dolorously wondering when the next real songwriter would come along. Stetson sweaty, that little vagabond spark in his eye, he spun out a long Beam-fueled set and when it was over I walked out into the warm rain and thought, Damn. So that’s where he’s been. Since then Foucault has given American poetry some of its most vital lines and his musical searchings have become touchstones of density and durability. On this new record—his most poignant, honest, even scathing—his cry is a belt of pure blue Wisconsin lake ice with a back of December sunlight angling through bare limbed birches. Not so much penned as lived, these songs—about a show played perfectly to an empty bar, the real ones who die with nothing half the time—offer listeners that rare artistic combination of a voice and a world. And while there’s nothing not lonely about these songs, you can’t hear them and feel remotely alone. Here is our hurricane lamp, the heart whose flame won't go out, whatever the wind. Hold it close."
-Chris Dombrowski (from the liner notes to SALT AS WOLVES)
A show played perfectly to an empty bar. A singer with life and death on his shoulders, swinging a microphone like Samson swung a jawbone. The real ones who die with nothing half the time. With SALT AS WOLVES, Jeffrey Foucault gives us in sound and image what poet and author Chris Dombrowski calls in the album’s liner notes, “that rare artistic combination of a voice and a world”: a tough, spare collection of darkly rendered blues and ballads, like a field recording of a place that never existed. In a series of letters to lovers, friends, heroes, and family, Foucault deftly weaves together disparate strands of sound and experience, raw love, and hard wisdom.
‘Salt as wolves’ is a line from Othello describing boldness; a fitting title to frame a record of blues played bold and loosely, without rehearsal, or cant. With his fifth collection of original songs Foucault stakes out and enlarges the ground he’s been working diligently all the new century: quietly building a deep, resonant catalog of songs about about love, memory, God, desire, wilderness and loss. SALT AS WOLVES gives us Jeffrey Foucault at the height of his powers, fronting an all-star band, turning the wheel of American music.
This album is not an exploration but a statement: here is the man in full, extending his musical reach in the toughness and precision of his electric guitar work (as he distills a modal, hypnotic electric blues reminiscent of John Lee Hooker and Jessie Mae Hemphill), in the mature range and depth of his singing, and in the intimacy and vulnerability of his songwriting. Cut live to tape in three days in rural Minnesota, SALT AS WOLVES moves like a vintage Chess record, with an openness and dimensionality that beckons the listener further in. In language richly simple and profound, Foucault plumbs the implications of a life spent looking for the Real, in a series of epistolary songs that locate the transcendent moment or its seeking, the love we don’t understand, the thing that is lost when a great spirit dies. At the heart of the record the song ‘Slow Talker’ frames the whole in its refrain: ‘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 / And each one is the same.’
SALT AS WOLVES reunites Jeffrey Foucault with legendary electric guitar player Bo Ramsey (Greg Brown) - who produced Foucault's 2006 album GHOST REPEATER - and Cold Satellite bassist Jeremy Moses Curtis (Booker T), as well as longtime drummer and tour partner Billy Conway (Morphine). Caitlin Canty, whose breakout 2015 release, RECKLESS SKYLINE Jeffrey Foucault produced and played on, joins the band on backing vocals. It’s a hand-picked lineup whose natural affinity - Ramsey’s economy of phrase and raw simplicity the perfect complement to Foucault’s elegant lines, and Conway and Curtis's titanic gravity - is evident from first moment, the whole ensemble notable for an instinctive restraint and use of negative space. These aren’t kids copping riffs: these are grown men drawing from the deep, strange well of real American music, and they have nothing to prove.
PRAISE FOR SALT AS WOLVES:
GREIL MARCUS:
“A country plea, a blues reach for facts beyond sound, the sense of immediate doom that only a slide guitar can make in its hesitations, its sense of suspension that seem to hold everything a step behind where it ought to be... scary in the bend of the first note”
NEW YORK TIMES:
“Immaculately tailored… Sometimes his songs run right up to the edge of the grandiose and hold still, and that's when he's best… close to perfection.”
MORNING EDITION (NPR):
“Pure Songwriter”
BOSTON GLOBE:
“A marvelous record full of vivid lyrical imagery — goner’d streets, embered darkness, horizon eyes cast down — bound together by a tough, reverberating, electric sound that is often redolent of the blues, without being quite locatable as such.”
MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE:
“SALT AS WOLVES is slow, sometimes smoldering and always deeply poetic whether Foucault is singing about love, loss or God.”
Tracks
1. Des Moines
2. Rico
3. Left This Town
4. I Love You (And You Are a Fool)
5. Blues for Jessie Mae
6. Slow Talker
7. Jesus Will Fix It for You
8. Oh Mama
9. Hurricane Lamp
10. Strange Heat and Thunder
11. Paradise
12. Take Your Time
DES MOINES
That night in Des Moines
The goner’d streets and dying
Sunset buildings
Cut with Shade
We sent our smoke
Up through the street lights
We sent our prayers out
Through an old P.A.
That night in Des Moines
That night in Des Moines
We were too late for supper
So we sat at the bar
And we drank three beers
And we watched the house
Filling up with no one
But God was listening
He cupped his ear
That night in Des Moines
That night in Des Moines
I picked you up at the airport
I threw your rig in the back seat
And I shook your hand
And the heat from the asphalt
It was liquid and dancing
And we walked to the front door
Like a rock ’n’ roll band
That night in Des Moines
That night in Des Moines
We slept at your Mom’s house
We drove east in the darkness
Toward a whole new day
And the lights on the big trucks
Were like gun camera tracers
On I-80 at midnight
There was nothing to say
RICO
Well I barely knew him
He was your good friend
But I think about him
Every now and then
And how the real ones
Die with nothing
half of the time
I barely knew him
He was a friend of mine
I tried to call him
Once when I came through town
And I saw him walk in the door
Buy by the time I got down
From the stage
He was gone in the night
I never saw him again
I barely knew him
He was your good friend
It’s a quick light and a slow burn
A little wink and a half turn
And gone
Little lion with a broken tooth
The best liar tells the truth
He’s gone
He left a wife
And two kids when he died
Every time I hear his name
It makes me want to cry
He could not afford
To see a doctor
So he died
I barely knew him
He was a friend of mine
I LEFT THIS TOWN
I left this town
With the throttle open wide
The heater was blowing
But nothing inside
Could ember the darkness
Or swallow my pride
When I left this town
I was running
I left this town
With the milk and the fire
A rattling hollow
Itinerant choir
That cut me and called me
And held me entire
When I left this town
I was gunning
You couldn’t understand
What I wanted
No one could hold my hand
And make it alright
Born into the land of the dead
I was haunted
But I could hear the ghosts
Singing on the other side
I left this town
with the blood and the wine
A rooster was crowing
My mama was crying
For everything born
There’s another one dying
When I left this town
I was done in
You couldn’t say my name
You didn’t know it
You thought it was just a game
I was gambling my life
You said you felt the same
I said why don’t you show it
And I left you standing in the dust
By the highway side
I LOVE YOU (AND YOU ARE A FOOL)
You are a fool
And I love you
I love you
And you are a fool
When you tell the truth
You’re always lying
When you lie
It feels more than true
When you laugh
I feel like crying
When you cry
I don’t know what to do
You are a fool
And I love you
I love you
And you are a fool
BLUES FOR JESSIE MAE
The only way I can get to heaven
Is to love everybody
The only way I can get to heaven
Is to love everybody
The only way I can get to heaven
The only way I can get to heaven
The only way I can get to heaven
Is to love everybody
I ain’t giving up nothing
I ain’t leaving nothing
I ain’t giving up nothing
I ain’t leaving nothing
I ain’t giving up nothing
I ain’t giving up
The only way I can get to heaven
Is to love everybody
I’m doing what I want to do
That’s sing sing sing
I’m doing what I want to do
That’s sing sing sing
I’m doing what I want to do
The only way I can get to heaven
Is to love everybody
She stays out where the wind
Blows cold all the time
She stays out where the wind
Blows cold all the time
She stays out where the wind
She stays out where the wind
The only way I can get to heaven
Is to love everybody
SLOW TALKER
Slow talker
I called and woke you up
And I wondered
Who I thought I was
When I knew you
For a little while
Did I know you
Is that just your style?
Deep water
Like a river underground
Speaks thunder
And never makes a sound
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
Is the same
You scarecrow
Your collar turned up cool
Keep on rockin’
I’m right behind you
JESUS WILL FIX IT FOR YOU
(Trad. arr: Jessie Mae Hemphill)
Jesus will fix it for you
All you’ve got to do is call
Oh Lord
When you’re burdened down
Jesus will fix it for you
All you’ve got to do is call
Oh Lord
When your mother is gone
Jesus will fix it for you
All you’ve got to do is call
Oh Lord
OH MAMA
Oh Mama
I’m so sorry
I don’t know how
We fell apart
From the cradle to the curve
Cross to the sheath
I knew you: mouth of hunger
Hand to heart
Born to leave
Oh Mama
I’m your wind-heeled son and driven
Horizon eyes
Cast down
Borne upon the river
Of your body
I was born to shake the world
For a sound
I was born
I was born
And now shepherd
Of cigarettes and gasoline
Miles and fifths
Changes and faders
Oh Mama
The Lord divides us
Rain and river,
River sea.
My sleep is troubled Mama
Will I know you?
Will my child know me?
HURRICANE LAMP
You’ve got a heart
Like a hurricane lamp
You’ve got a heart
Like a hurricane lamp
I see you shine
Anywhere I am
You’ve got a heart
Like a hurricane lamp
Keep your light inside
Keep your light inside
Keep your light
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
Keep your light inside
Keep your light inside
Keep your light
STRANGE HEAT AND THUNDER
Strange Heat and Thunder
Blood in your eyes
Strange Heat and Thunder
Blood in your eyes
Strange heat and thunder
Love and wonder
Strange Heat and Thunder
Blood in your eyes
Like swinging a jawbone
Out in the rain
Like swinging a jawbone
Out in the rain
Like swinging a jawbone
Leaning on a microphone
Like swinging a jawbone
Out in the rain
Life and death on his shoulders
He wasn’t even there
Life and death on his shoulders
He wasn’t even there
Life and death on his shoulders
I felt the night grow colder
Life and death on his shoulders
He wasn’t even there
Strange heat and thunder
Blood in your eyes
PARADISE
Thank you for believing
What I can’t believe in
I’m glad someone’s praying
If it isn’t me
I’m sorry if it brings you
Sorrow coming even
With your little baby boy
And the devil makes three
Thank you for believing
I know that it’s not easy
I tried it for a while
But I was clumsy with my heart
All the things I meant to care for
They never seemed to please me
And you can’t put it back together
Once it falls apart
Can you tell me just one thing?
If love is a longing
Possession won’t kill
What would you own?
Thank you for believing
I wish that I could tell you
Something better than a love song
To ease your worried mind
You know I always believed
It’s like Jesus told the thief
And you will be with me
Today in paradise
TAKE YOUR TIME
Take your time
Take your time
Everything is going to work out
Everything is going to work out
Everything is going to be just fine
It’s alright
It’s alright
Everything is going to work out
Everything is going to work out
Everything is going to be just fine
Forget about the gold rush
Walk away there’s no rush
Walk away there’s no rush now
No back or forward
There’s nothing to lean toward
There’s nothing to lean toward now
Dry your eyes
Dry your eyes
Everything is going to work out
Everything is going to work out
Everything is going to be just fine
It’s alright
It’s alright
Take your time