“Jeffrey Foucault is a young man with an old soul,” says the New York Times, “contemporary and timeless.” He grew up in a small town in Wisconsin. His father played a plywood guitar and his mother liked to sing. Winter Sundays were for church or ice fishing. He went to college and dropped out, took a job on a fruit farm, and started writing songs about a girl from Iowa. He finished school, roofed houses, drove a snowplow, and home-schooled the son of the local bar owner in exchange for beer. He cut his first album in the winter of 2000, and has released nine more since then, including two with his band Cold Satellite, and his music has won praise just about everywhere.

The Irish Times calls him “quietly brilliant,” Mojo praises his “songwriting brilliance,” and No Depression describes him as “one of our most truly poetic songwriters.” His music, says the Washington Post, is “rock-and-roll in the key of country-noir: bleak visions of departed lovers, flickering TVs, and empty landscapes.” He does a great version of the Creedence song “Lodi” and he released an entire album of exquisitely arranged John Prine songs, but he’s at his strongest on his startling originals. “What’s beautiful / is broken / and grace / is just the measure / of a fall,” he sings on “Northbound.” For an evening of music filled with grace and beauty, catch Jeffrey Foucault at the Freight.

Blackie Farrell might not be a household name, but among his peers he’s no unsung hero. His songs have been recorded and performed by artists ranging from Leo Kottke, Tom Russell, Robert Earl Keen,  Dave Alvin and Michael Martin Murphy, to Bill Kirchen, Commander Cody, Ray Campi, Jerry Lee Lewis,  Asleep at the Wheel, and Chris O’Connell. Writing his first song at the age of 13, Blackie was inspired by the music he heard blasting from car radios and local music clubs in Oakland, California – everything from Jimmy Reed, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and John Lee Hooker to Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and Marty Robbins. It was their gritty story-telling that influenced him. At his core, Blackie is a story-teller, cutting a straight line right through life’s jagged edges, not smoothing them over but illuminating their points. Some haunting, some heroic, his tales stick to your bones and conjure up lost spirits and the longings of a well-worn heart.

visit the Jeffrey Foucault website

visit the Blackie Farrell website

Listen to tracks from Jeffrey Foucault: