Stripping Cane (2004)
PURCHASE
A landscape of ghost horses and cowboy elegies, weary lovers and leaving trains; an existential drive-in theater, where memories and icons flicker across lowering skies; with the release of his sophomore record STRIPPING CANE, Jeffrey Foucault presents a collection of bright, spare songs: an Americana bus-tour that moves from Country Blues to Murder Ballad, Twelve-Bar to Gospel.
Helmed by producer/multi-instrumentalist David "Goody" Goodrich (Chris Smither) to bring the range and color of the songs into sharper relief, STRIPPING CANE employs combinations of mandolin, banjo, slide, electric, and Nashville guitars in layered arrangements to create a dimensional, fulsome aesthetic. The album features contributions from touring partners Peter Mulvey (electric guitar, vocals) and Kris Delmhorst (fiddle, vocals), with Boston area veterans Anita Suhanin (vocals) and Kevin Barry (electric lap steel) rounding out the sessions.
The central image in the title track Stripping Cane - of the battering work taken to pry the sweetness from an unforgiving source - creates the context for the record as a whole. With his big and richly-toned finger-style work and poetic economy, Foucault triangulates complex emotions, exploring the polarities of dark and light, right and wrong, leaving and left. With STRIPPING CANE Jeffrey Foucault has created a distinctly Americana record, a hothouse where language, melody and form blend and bloom in delicate variation.
PRAISE FOR STRIPPING CANE
THE WASHINGTON POST:
“Revealing layers of wisdom and wonder… [he] can conjure demons as adroitly as his Americana heroes Chris Smither and Townes van Zandt.”
THE IRISH TIMES:
“Quietly brilliant.”
MOJO:
“Songwriting brilliance.”
PASTE MAGAZINE:
“Jeffrey Foucault’s voice [is] an emotive instrument that reaches an astonishingly wary, intimate place… ”
THE SUN (UK):
“ … a talent cut from the same cloth as Nick Drake or Townes Van Zandt… recommended to lovers of every kind of music.”
THE IRISH WORLD:
“Songwriting at its rawest and best.“
Tracks
1. Cross of Flowers
2. Mayfly
3. Doubletree
4. Stripping Cane
5. The Bluest Blade
6. Pearl Handled Pistol
7. Northbound 35
8. 4 & 20 Blues
9. Don't Look For Me
10. Tropic Of Cancer
11. Lodi (John Fogerty)
12. Every New Leaf Over
Cross of Flowers
There's a cross of flowers at the roadside
Where some fool bought it two years back
There's an orchard gone to hell
Beside a burned out one room shack
There's a thousand sparrows falling
In a thousand shades of black
I'm coming home
There's a steeple on the skyline
Like a single iron nail
There's a windmill doing nothing
And a low moan on the rails
Where the coal train takes the corner
And the light begins to fail
I'm coming home
I'm coming home
There's a red barn in the half light
And a white frost on the shade
And in the bars down off the main drag
They're drinking down what they got paid
And I wonder in all my leaving
If I ever could have stayed
I'm coming home
There's a junked out car in the tall grass
It ain't ever gonna sell
And Jimmy's raising daughters
And Jack's out raising hell
And I always said I loved you
I never said I loved you well
I'm coming home
I'm coming home
I'm coming home
Mayfly
Mayfly mayfly
Dying to get born
Mayfly mayfly
Dying to get born
Oh mayfly
Your wings are tired
And they're torn
Mayfly mayfly
Only last a while
Mayfly mayfly
Only last a while
Oh mayfly
You take your little cup
And drink it dry
Mayfly born in the springtime baby
Never gonna see the fall
One sweet night on silver wings
And never come back at all
Mayfly born in the midnight darling
Never gonna see the day
Take a little time to fall in love
And then he goes on his way
Mayfly mayfly
Life's a sweet little thing
Mayfly mayfly
Life's a sweet little thing
Oh mayfly
Barely time enough to sing
Doubletree
The snow falls on the passes
And it covers up the rails
And the hired men ride up to make them clean
It's a winter camp and a frozen damp
And a shovel in your hand
And a coal train comes rumbling through the seam
That morning came up shining
Clear and sharp as broken glass
We were riding for the tracks at Sugaree
All holler and high spirit
And the devil take the last
And Henry lay a wager then to me
He said "I've got five dollars
and a whiskey at the bar
says I make the tracks ahead of you"
So we touched our horses up
Sent them running down the hill
And I did something I never meant to do
Well I cut hard behind him
From his blind side I come around
Just as we were going down the scree
I only meant to scare him but he tumbled to the ground
And he broke his neck beneath the doubletree
So you take him cut him out in a length of pine
Lay him out in a suit of clothes
Best that you can find
Lay his body gentle in the ground
And say a prayer for Henry
Before you lay him down
The night before poor Henry died
We slept on open ground
The circus of the stars a blaze of white
Henry was the best friend that I ever had
And I slept still as a child that night
Stripping Cane
There's no more room for angels
To dance or even stand
Upon this pin entangled
Bleeding sugar from our hands
Bleeding ashes from our feet
Won't you help me count my sheep
Won't you help me count my sheep tonight
You make your heart a decoration
It's like a broken violin
So carefully made empty
Taking only silence in
Taking saccharine to kill your pain
Won't you help me stripping cane
Won't you help me stripping cane tonight
Stripping cane for something sweet
Stripping Cain a man complete is born
His heart a thing to hold both dark and light
Stripping cane no tongue can tell
The silent ring of this empty bell
Won't you tell me fare thee well
Fare thee well tonight
I've got nowhere to go now
I'm like a bird in an eclipse
And the grammar of our bodies
Breathing poems to our lips
Breathing verses out of rhyme
Won't you help me killing time
Won't you help me killing time tonight
There's no more room for angels
To dance or even stand
Upon this pin entangled
Bleeding sugar from our hands
Bleeding ashes from our feet
Won't you help me count my sheep
Won't you help me count my sheep tonight
Won't you help me count my sheep tonight
Won't you help me
The Bluest Blade
Thrown up against the dying end of heaven
Beating with the zero of my blood
Home to see my baby coming home
Falling like a stone or like a dove
Hard as any stone brought down in wishes
Bright as any flower made to bloom and blaze and
Falling to the ground like China dishes
Our love is only teaching us to fall
Chorus:
And I fall to you
Down from here
Like a shadow thrown
Love the bluest blade
Cuts deepest from the dark
Of all we own
Balanced on a sliver shot through the blacking
Hung up as if by God's unreckoned string
Brave enough for leaving brave enough
For coming home with what my tiny heart can bring
And I kissed onto the concrete from out of dreaming
Pulled the ground against me like a shroud
Fevered as a child my body burning
Burning just to lay your body down
Pearl Handled Pistol
That old one-trick pony
Sat down in the dust
He pawed the air
The gunshots died away
The sun was red as rust
It was red as rust
General G.A. Custer
He was a mighty handsome man
He loved dogs and children
He loved the military band
The military band
Well the vaudeville tramps
And churchbell tollers
Harlequins and holy rollers
Lay their nickel down
To raise the dead
With a tune sung low and wistful
And a pearl handled pistol
And a mirror hung up above the bed
Hung up above the bed
Buffalo Bill he said good-bye to the boys
Said they're spilling blood
And taking scalps
And making a joyful noise
Make a joyful noise
He said I'm off to fight the Indians
And take a little off the top
When I get home we'll all dress up
And ride around the old big top
Around the old big top
Chorus
Sitting Bull was sitting
In his cabin all alone
And the cops they come to fetch him out
They could not leave him alone
Just leave him alone
And that old one-trick pony
He sat down in the dust
And he danced for the ghost of Sitting Bull
Because baby the show must go on
The show must go on
Northbound 35
Northbound 35
Through the iron hills
Under infidel skies
It's two hundred miles to drive
You won't be home
I saw an elsebound train
On the overpass
In the driving rain
Every ticket costs the same
For where you can't go
Mustang horses, champagne glasses
Anything frail anything wild
It's the price of living motion
What's beautiful is broken
And grace is just the measure of a fall
So I rolled into your town
I passed the smokestacks
And the ore docks down off of Main
And the sky spun around
With her diamonds on fire
We fought all night and then we danced
In your kitchen
You were as much in my hands
As water or darkness or nothing
Can ever be held
Chorus
It's just flashes that we own
Little snapshots
Made from breath and from bone
And out on the darkling plain alone
They light up the sky
It's 51 and driving south
Ain't it funny
How things'll turn out
I never even kissed you on the mouth
When we said good-bye
Chorus
4 & 20 Blues
Four and twenty blackbirds sitting on a fence
Four and twenty years and I been trying to make some sense
But it don't look too good mama
Don't look too good for me
I was wading in the water but I only got washed out to sea
Four and twenty blackbirds flying through the sky
Four and twenty years and still I'm barely getting by
But it don't look too good mama
Don't look too good for me
I was toiling in the fields
But the whirlwind is all I did see
Four and twenty blackbirds crowing up above
Four and twenty years and I been in and out of love
But it don't look too good mama
Don't look too good for me
Well my cup runneth over
But it never seemed to satisfy me
It's four and twenty thunder
Four and twenty rain
I just walking on the rails
I just keep grinning at the train
But it don't look too good mama
Don't look too good for me
Oh my cup runneth over
But it never seems to satisfy me
Four and twenty blackbirds crowing on a wire
Four and twenty years that I been caught up in desire
But it don't look too good mama
Don't look too good for me
I got one taste of the apple
And I wanted the whole damned tree
Don't Look For Me
When I left you I was an ocean
But now I am so dry
Don't look for me over the mountains
The mountains are just too high
And don't look inside a bottle
For there I have come and gone
Just look over your shoulder darling
I might be there before too long
When I left you I was righteous
But I've learned now to be wrong
Don't look for me tomorrow
Tomorrow is just too long
And don't look in my old letters
Even diamonds turn to dust
Don't shackle me with those chains of gold
All my gold has turned to rust
All my gold has turned to rust
When I left you I was an ocean
But now I am so dry
Don't look for me over the mountains
The mountains are just too high
The mountains are just too high
Tropic of Cancer
The tropic of the cancer
In every solitary dancer
Is a line dividing dream
From hard devotion
Residing in the heart
It stands destiny apart
From all decision
Though we stumble
Through the motion
The country that we live in
And all the names we have given
A sky called blue and a love
That speaks in English
Stretched out between the poles
This territory rolls
The great blind empty
Between the mind
And whatever love is
Love is
A ring around a rose
The only dance the compass knows
Trains the needle on a thing we cannot find
A rose by any other
Name a thing and soon discover
The finest pin will never hold a butterfly
The heart as it relaxes
Undressed upon its axis
Like a plain girl
With all the paint rubbed off
It whispers to our bones
That we are everyone alone
Of the word and by the word again forsaken
And still my restless tongue
Caring nothing for the sum
Begins the calculus of hope and intuition
Chorus
Every New Leaf Over
Tonight inside the orchard south of town
The petals are still falling and the moon
Is tangled in the branches
The lilac wind where no one goes
Is rolling every new leaf over
Every new leaf over
Every new leaf over into ruin
Nothing I have known
Have I known too very long
In every love the passing comfort
At the bottom of a glass
And I burned all my old letters
But they could not keep me warm
Reading each one by the light
Each one by the light
Each one by the light of the last
I've been all around
This big and broken world
I've been loved and I've been lost
So many times before
But all that midnight wonder
And every jackknife turn
Brought me nearer oh my love
Nearer oh my love
Nearer oh my love to your door
And so tonight I saw the orchard south of town
And it came to me that I'll be leaving soon
Oh and though it hurts me
Still I know that lilac wind
Is rolling every new leaf over
Every new leaf over
Every new leaf over into bloom