I’m always impressed when an artist writes his own material and has the ability to play an instrument.   As I’ve gotten older, I have come to better appreciate all the subtleties of a song and the work that goes into its creation.  To me, the key to great music is the lyrics. I appreciate the instrumentation and all the musical components, but the lyrics are what draw me in. 

The beauty of a lyric is that it can be a simple, well placed line or it can be the entire composition of a song.  It is the artist’s ability to convey a thought or emotion that connects personally to the listener.  In my opinion, it is poetry set to music.  Witty, quirky, rambling thoughts, scathing sociopolitical commentary, beautiful, fluid observations, or emotionally charged lyrics, in my opinion, are the cornerstone of music.

So, I’ve compiled a list of great lyrics.  This will certainly be a reoccurring topic on the blog as there are so many areas to mine for genius lyrics.

Here is the first installment of great lyrics you should be listening to:

Great music awaits!

Over time, there have many great musical artists and from each artist comes an assortment of songs that become an album. In theory the sum of an album should be equal or greater than its parts (songs).  If only this were true.  Today, with streaming audio, and the ability to buy/download single songs, the allure and importance of the album has waned.  Artists might release several EP’s before they release a full length album. 

Growing up, I had to roll the dice and hope that each album I saved for would be as good as the song I heard on the radio.  Sadly, that was not always the case.  Domo arigato Mr. Roboto!

However, some artists do indeed get it right and below is a list of 25 albums you might not know but you should own.  This collection does not include live albums or greatest hits. 

Also, I do not include any type of review for the below artists/albums.  This is in an effort to allow you to form you own opinion, keep the blog reading to an acceptable time, and selfishly save me time writing the blog itself. 

Twenty Five albums you should own! (In no particular order):

 Great music awaits!

Jeffrey Foucault is a singer/songwriter who creates reflective roots music that wraps you up with a striking intimacy that reveals layers of wisdom and wonder.  A Wisconsin native who seems to be cut from the folk troubadour cloth, Foucault has built an independent career touring extensively in the United States, Canada, and the UK.

 He explores and explains complex emotions through his music which is raw and intimate. 

 Jeffrey Foucault Discography

• Miles from Lightening
• Stripping Cane
• Ghost Repeater
• Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes (A collection of John Prine)

 Of all his releases, “Stripping Cane” is by far my favorite.  This is by no means a slight of the other three, but rather exquisite praise for the greatness of the album.  What holds the album together so well is the way Foucault paints such a vivid picture with his words and phrases.  The title track “Stripping Cane”, “Cross of Flowers”, and “the Bluest Blade” will draw you in and compel you to play them again. He does a great cover of Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Lodi”.

 In addition to his solo career, Foucault also recorded an album with Kris Delmhorst and Peter Mulvey.  The band and the album are called Redbird.  The album is a smattering of cover songs that radically range from Tom Waits to Willie Nelson.  Seventeen total songs on the album and not a bad one in the bunch.  Uncle Tupelo’s “Moonshiner” and R.E.M’s “You are the Everything” are the high points for me. 

 Top 5 Jeffrey Foucault Songs according to Butler (Albums listed to right of song):

1.  Cross of Flowers (Stripping Cane)
2. The Bluest Blade (Stripping Cane)
3. Stripping Cane (Stripping Cane)
4. Miles from Lightening (Miles from Lightening)
5. Dove and the Waterline (Miles from Lightening)

 Enjoy the greatness of Jeffrey Foucault and let me know what you think.  Songs are available to stream for free from his website www.jeffreyfoucault.com

 Jeffrey Foucault’s music is available on iTunes, CD Baby, and www.jeffreyfoucault.com

  Great music awaits!

Greetings and salutations to all,

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and that the New Year will bring tidings of joy. And, more importantly, I hope that you will all continue to read my blog.

My intent, is to provide my unique (musically superior) perspective on music to all those that are kind enough (compelled to because you are my friend) to read my blog. In addition to commenting on music, I will occasionally grace the pages with random things I have written (complete drivel). I will highlight an artist or album each and offer song selections and on special occasions (or when you need something to redeem your bad behavior), maybe even a mixed tape for you to create that something special for the one you love.

I, of course, would just be offering up the list of songs for you to legally download or burn from a CD that you have purchased. Not condoning anything that might be viewed as illegal or more importantly, can get me in to trouble. I tend to do just fine in the trouble department all on my own!

And, the question on everyone’s mind, is what experience or level of expertise might I have to do this? A mighty fine question indeed!  The answer is simple. NONE! I have no formal training in music or the industry. I simply have listened to and loved music my whole life. I have a fairly extensive CD collection of awesome music and a little over 110 gigs of (more awesome) music on my iPod.

I try to attend at least 5-10 concerts per year and have graced the hallowed (sometimes dusty /sometimes muddy) grounds of Austin City Limits Music Festival for the last 5 years. So, clearly you can see that I’m as well suited for this as any hack with a computer and access to the internet.

My musical tastes run the gamut of classic rock (Tom Petty, Skynyrd, The Who), metal (Metallica, Rage), country (Pat Green, Johnny Cash, Willie and the Highwaymen) Rap (NWA, Tribe, De La Soul), alternative (Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins), and more recently the indie (Joe Purdy, Jeffrey Foucault) & Indi (that is a funny line if you know Indi) scene. There are a smattering (love that word) of artist that I am really digging these days and I will spend a good deal of time extolling the virtues of their greatness. I will also dig deep in the vault and dust off some classic albums or songs.
For those that are fans of the 75115, I’ll regale you with songs from the halcyon days of our youth and get you all misty eyed and nostalgic. This might require me borrowing someone’s Bon Jovi collection.

So, sit back, relax and wait for the pure reading and hopefully listening pleasure that is sure to unfold from this lovely laptop.

Also, if you have a facebook page, you can become a fan of the blog.

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#/pages/Music-you-should-be-listening-to/261897107787?ref=ts

Great music awaits!

the seasonal saskatoon trip earlier this autumn became a harvest trip, returning loaded with clover honey and all colours of tomatoes, red and white potatoes, squash and peppers. the combining was not quite done, and the patchworked fields followed the weather patterns in varying stages of undone. some swathes lay waiting, thick ribbons across the hills; some bales sat lonely on stubbled ground; whole stretches fallen to root lodging and stem breakage. in stark contrast to the weather system vagaries, the punctuality of the migratory impulses: on the road, driving east. and, above, thousands of birds in the sky, silent, undulating waves in the sky and rising from the horizon: canada geese, snow geese, sandhill cranes, swans, even pelicans. hundreds of them in the fields, settling in the sloughs, jostling the combines and swathers, picking the fields clean.

this winter is an odd season (i say this every year), even now the days warm like late spring and some grass yet green. i am spending my days waiting for snow.

jeffrey foucault – geese fly by

A couple of weeks ago, I took a road trip to central Pennsylvania in my old Subaru Legacy wagon equipped with a tape deck and two front speakers. For tunes I brought my iPod (full catalog), iPhone (latest downloads) and a cassette adapter to plug into the headphone jack of both.

After listening to to This American Life for an hour, I stuck in the cassette adapter and dialed up Jeffrey Foucault’s Miles from the Lightning which I assumed would be the perfect accompaniment for a trip up US 15 through some of the most picturesque countryside on the East coast.

The sound that came out was muddy, low and incomprehensible. After pulling over and trying both the iPod and the iPhone, I discovered that the cassette adapter was somehow fucked. Fortunately, long ago I had been smart enough to pack an emergency stack of old tapes in the arm rest compartment of the car. I lifted the lid, fished them out and threw them on the passenger seat just as I had done so many years ago when cassette tapes — and not iPods or satellite radio — were what got you though long hauls on the road.

Over the next three-hours, I discovered two things:

1. From “My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue)” through “Powder Finger,” Rust Never Sleeps is as close to perfect as you’re likely to get from Neil Young.
2. Tape cassettes are damn good technology.

I’ll leave Neil Young fans to ponder the first bit, while I expound on the second point. Here’s what cassettes bring to the table:

• durability: You can throw a cassette around, stomp on it, keep it locked in an old Subaru through many seasons and they still work as well as the day you bought them.
• portability: Sure, you can’t get you’re whole collection on something smaller than a deck of cards, but throw six or seven in the bottom of your bag (especially if they’re those 100-minute mix specials) and you have music for the whole day.
• usabibility: A blank cassette is a beautiful thing. You can use it to express your inner most feelings of love and despair, or you can use it to record a once-in-a-lifetime moment. (One of the tapes in the Subaru was a recording of REM’s MTV Unplugged performance, which I had taped off the television through my father’s HiFi pausing for commercials as I watched the original broadcast. I remember very clearly sitting on the hook rug with my finger poised to release the pause button as the commercial ended and the cameras pushed in on Stipe, Mills, Buck and Berry.)
• quality sound: The sound from a cassette probably isn’t as good as it is from a CD, but if you put them both in a quality system, I think you’d find they’re pretty damn close. If you put them both in a shitty system — like the one in my Subaru — I know they’ll sound the same.

Let’s face it, CDs are a regressive technology. They have all the problems of a record — they scratch, break, and warp in the heat — with none of the advantages of holding a big piece of LP art in your hands and experiencing the music in the way the artist intended.  What’s more, before the advent of iTunes and read/write discs, CDs were a locked and essentially inflexible technology.

My guess is that this combination of factors — fragility and the inability to copy and mix — probably made early CD technology the holy grail for the big record companies. In short, we were duped by the record companies into spending millions (billions?) of dollars on what was essentially a flawed technology that would be rapidly replaced by digital downloads.

Now, I’m not advocating stealing and I don’t use bit torrents myself, but… If you own an album on cassette is it really wrong to download those tracks off limewire for free?

These are a few of my favorite things: 

My new kitty Pendana Mara (Pendana is swahili for to love one another, Mara was a favorite area in Kenya, but also means at once in swahili), American Stage in the Park with great friends, visits with dad, having other peoples money to blow at the casino, Redbird and Jeffrey Foucault (don’t miss the video link below…I can’t stop listening to this guy), sunrises while driving in my convertible across the bridge, smiling to myself so much today I can’t remember all the reasons why, driving off the road laughing at Karalee’s advice about “getting under to get over”, daydreaming on a long drive, good coffee after work, not yo momma’s banana pudding, Julia eating ice cream, Sydney’s happiness with little Jimmy, grilled steak, roasted corn, gourmet slow baked beans, new plants, honesty, too expensive beers (microbrews and rare imports) banana bread beer is highly reccomended as is Midas Touch, the sun shining on my face, refusing to work out once again, free online courses in cultural anthropology from MIT, being able to give away money to innovative STEM programs, getting what I want when it really matters (like staff), documentaries, windfarms, planning an upcoming camping trip, the purple flowers on the side of the interstate, and witnessing the cab driver stop to pick them.

I’ve always been a sucker for American folk (and alt.country/variations on that theme) since my dad raised me on Emmylou Harris and I discovered Ryan Adams just before I went to uni.

Alela Diane and Justin Townes Earle have been diverting me recently (as well as Jeffrey Foucault’s new album – I’ve been a massive fan of his since I picked up Ghost Repeater in 2006), but I’ve just come across a band called Great Lake Swimmers and they’re great.

Their new album comes out on Monday here, I think, and they’re playing The Borderline soon – will definitely have to make a trip.

Het komt niet meer zo veel voor, maar af en toe kun je nog eens iets ontdekken. “Een deur die plots opengaat” en een heel nieuwe wereld toont.

Onlangs legde ik Ghost Repeater van Jeffrey Foucault nog eens op. Een prachtige cd en een van mijn favorieten van de laatste jaren. Ik las dat de cd geproducet was door Bo Ramsey. Nu had ik dat al eerder gelezen, maar er verder nooit bij nagedacht.  Ramsey kende ik natuurlijk ook als producer van Lucinda Williams‘ Essence.

Maar deze keer ging ik Bo Ramsey eens googelen. Zo kwam ik terecht bij Greg Brown, een man waar Ramsey al jaren mee samenwerkt.

Ramsey is blijkbaar zelfs getrouwd met zijn dochter: Pieta Brown. Daar kan hij moeilijk een bezwaar tegen hebben, want zelf is hij niet lang geleden getrouwd met Iris DeMent.

Soit, Greg blijkt al jaren prachtige platen te maken. Allmusic geeft ze haast allemaal vier sterren of meer. Waarom ken ik die dan niet?

Daar heb ik dus even iets aan gedaan. Over And Under, If I Had Knwon, Further In en Honey in The Lions Head blijken allemaal zeer de moeite waard.

Een uitstekend excuus om wat filmpjes te plaatsen.

Pieta Brown met Bo Ramsey brengen ‘How Many times’ van Muddy Waters.

Bo Ramsey met ‘Living In  A Cornfield’

Greg Brown met ‘Hey, Baby, Hey’

Iris DeMent met Emmylou Harris: ‘Our Town’.
Let ook even op Jerry Douglas’s lap steelspel op een dobro.  

Jeffrey Foucault met ‘One For Sorrow’

Jeffrey Foucault

On February 17th, Jeffrey Foucault will release an album of songs by one of his musical heroes, the great singer-songwriter John Prine. The collection entitled Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes: Jeffrey Foucault Sings The Songs Of John Prine features 13 Prine originals from all stages of his long career, including a number of lesser-known songs. The supporting cast includes Mark Erelli, David Goodrich, Eric Heywood and Kris Delmhorst. This release won’t be sold in stores and will be available only from selected websites and as a digital download.

Submitted by Signature Sounds

Americana Treasures is een mooi initiatief: gevestigde namen uit het genre touren samen met jonge talenten langs een aantal theaters in de Lage Landen. Al is dat wel erg relatief want in Vlaanderen is er blijkbaar maar één cultureel centrum dat er aan deel neemt: het CC van Leopoldsburg.

Eerder zag ik er al Slaid Cleaves met Jeffrey Foucault en Caroline Herring en een andere keer veteraan Chip Taylor met zijn protégé Carrie Rodriguez.

Zaterdag stond Oh Susanne geprogrammeerd, met Luke Doucet en special guest Melissa McClelland.

Er stonden vier microfoons netjes naast elkaar op een rijtje. Vier, want ze hadden ook nog een bassist meegebracht: Rich Levesque.

Het werd een verrassend concert. Ik had verwacht dat elk om zijn beurt een set zou spelen, waarna ze allemaal samen eventueel wat bissen zouden brengen. Zij hadden er echter voor gekozen om iedereen gelijkwaardig te behandelen. En terecht, zo bleek.

Beurt om beurt brachten de drie singer-songwriters ieder één song, zowel instrumentaal als vocaal begeleid door de drie anderen. Zo maakten ze drie rondjes voor en drie rondjes na de pauze.

Melissa mocht openen. Met haar rode kleed, elektrische dobro en mooie, warme stem wist ze meteen de aandacht te vatten. Volgens het foldertje is ze in haar thuisland, Canada, een grootheid, maar ik had zelfs nooit van haar gehoord. Het blijkt dat haar cd’s hier ook nog niet verdeeld werden. Daar zou pas volgend jaar verandering in komen.

Niets te vroeg, afgaand op Thumbelina’s One Night Stand, dat ik in de pauze kocht.

Die cd is geproducet door Luke Doucet. Die heeft er al een hele carrière opzitten: een zevental platen, waarvan de helft met de band Veal – een soort Canadeese Flaming Lips. Zijn solowerk is wat folkier, met een stevige scheut country. Denk aan Ryan Adams, Ron Sexsmith of Ray Lamontagne. De klank wordt vooral bepaald door zijn prachtige Gretsch White Falcon, waar hij – terecht – uiterst trost op is. Het is de rockabilly gitaar bij uitstek, maar ook Neil Young maakt er graag gebruik van: hij staat er mee afgebeeld op de binnenhoes van Decade.

Uit songs als ‘Long Haul Driver’ blijkt dat Doucet een uitstekend verhalenverteller terwijl hij met het cynische ‘I Wish I Was American’ zijn  politieke standpunten duidelijk maakt.

Suzie Ungerleider verstopt zich achter het pseudoniem Oh Susanne. Met haar donkerbruine rok en blouse en bruine akoestische gitaar leek ze zich zelfs op het podium een beetje te willen verstoppen. Gelukkig heeft ze wel een stem. Daarmee bracht ze eigen songs als ‘Greyhound Bus’, maar ook een prachtige cover van Dylan’s ‘Billy’ uit de soundtrack van Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. 

Voor de bissen nam Luke het voortouw. Eerder had hij al de namen van The Band en Neil Young laten vallen, maar nu wou hij even een eerbetoon brengen aan de mensen waar zij hun mosterd halen: eerst ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ van Johnny Cash en daarna een sfeervolle versie van Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’. Bij deze covers namen ook weer alle zangers om beurt een strofe voor hun rekening en zelfs de bassist werd deze keer niet vergeten.

Het was kermis in Leopoldsburg en buiten was er vuurwerk. De knallen waren tot in de zaal te horen. Maar ook binnen was er veel moois te beleven voor het driehonderdtal toeschouwers.

Het hadden er gerust nog wat meer mogen zijn, maar de radio en gedrukte pers hebben het veel te druk met andere dingen. Daarom zal ik hier maar even wat promotie maken: op 28 november komt Steve Forbert naar het CC Leopoldsburg.

Er zijn nog tickets.

Luke Doucet – It’s Not The Liquor I Miss

Melissa McClelland – Passenger 24

Oh Susanna – Right By Your Side

En om je een idee te geven hoe het er tijdens het concert aan toe ging:

Melissa McClelland & Luke Doucet met Cidne Treen

(ze droegen zelfs dezelfde kleren)

2006:

Ghost Repeater (CD + Bonus CD)

Design: Christian Helms @ The Decoder Ring DesignConcern, Austin TX

Photography: Sandra Dyas

Cover Images: LOC Archives

Okay, if you haven’t heard of Jeffrey Foucault then please take a listen to Americans in Corduroys.  The second I heard Americans in Corduroys I fell in love with it and continue to be almost a year later.  I believe most of the songs on Ghost Repeater are written about his wife, their wedding & honeymoon.  Another favorite of mine is “One for Sorrow”.  Take a listen!   

To listen to Americans in Corduroys visit Jeff’s music page via the link below: 

http://www.jeffreyfoucault.com/music.html