We’ve come here tonight to West Seattle’s Youngstown Cultural Arts Center to watch one of the most prolific and poetic young singer/songwriters to come out of an area of the country where prolific, poetic young singer/songwriters seem to grow on trees.
Up the hall, there are auditions going on for a musical theater production. Beyond that, a room features a local group of Native Americans performing a traditional ceremony in a space the size of a small classroom. But here in the theatre, the lights are low, and a heaping handful of local folk and acoustic music enthusiasts sit quiet and patiently, celebrating the release of Jeffrey Foucault’s latest album – Ghost Repeater (Signature Sounds, 2006).
The Show Begins
He kicks the night off with a warm-up rendition of the album’s title track – an observational song that feels like part small-town commentary, part circus music.Foucault is joined by pedal steel and electric guitarist Eric Haywood. Haywood’s large, husky presence hangs out in quiet contrast to Foucault’s unshaven sensitive songwriter energy.
The two move further into their first set with one of the strongest songs from the new record, “Americans in Corduroys.” Suddenly what had initially felt like a bit of an awkward evening in a strange venue, turns into an intimate gathering of music fans being entertained by a man with a great talent for narrative songwriting.
While singing, Foucault’s face scrunches up, as if he’s describing a scene so far away that he can only see it if he squints. His mouth purses, curls, and then widens around his lyrics – waffling all the while between a smile and a sneer.
Warming up the Crowd
Between songs, the room is silent and still, and he comments on it early in the set. “The worst,” he says, “is when you play in a church, which happens occasionally. People sit up really straight … [the] temptation to fall asleep is almost overwhelming. A Pavlovian response.”With the audience more relaxed and laughing at his sly wit, he moves into another bright song from his new record, “Train to Jackson.” This song is so strong, with Foucault powering his Martin like a train engine, before falling back into whispered strums and fingerpicking. The kid sitting next to us spins around as soon as the song is over and tells his mother, “I like that one and the first one.”
After a few more great songs (“Miles From the Lightning,” “Northbound 35,” which he says he thinks Richard Shindell may be covering on his upcoming album, and “One for Sorrow”) and a short break, Jeffrey returns for what proves to be a rather short second set.
More From Ghost Repeater
He’s on a roll with the new material, and pulls “One Part Love” out of the bag early in his second set. This song about the wealth of experience between solitude, loneliness, and hope, seems to strike the audience. Despite the fact that the pedal steel overpowers Foucault’s vocals from time to time throughout the song, the audience responds with enthusiastic appreciation.He chooses to close the show with “a song [they] always close with … I guess not always.” “Four and Twenty Blues” definitely stands out as characteristically different from the other, more introverted story-songs, and therefore seems like apt punctuation for the evening. Naturally, however, the audience doesn’t let him off that easily.
When called out for an encore, Foucault returns saying, “It just happens that we know one more song. It’s sort of a country love song and I wrote it in Mesa, Arizona. It’s called … ‘Mesa, Arizona.’” Quite possibly his best performance of the evening, “Mesa, Arizona” features some of Haywood’s best pedal steel work of the night, as well.
From the first moments to the final chord, Foucault doesn’t hesitate to showcase his wealth of talent. He often speeds up and slows back down in the middle of the song, driving through his songs as if in a small boat on a large ocean, much like the stories his lyrics tell.
