The Jeffrey Foucault Band, currently on the road in support of his newest album, The Universal Fire, arrives at Bellingham’s New Prospect Theatre on Sunday, Nov. 10.
After two decades on the road, Jeffrey Foucault has become one of the most distinctive voices in American music, refining a sound instantly recognizable for its simplicity and emotional power.
In September, Foucault released The Universal Fire (Fluff & Gravy), his first album of entirely new material since 2018. A series of high-voltage performances cut live in one room, the album is both a working wake — Foucault lost his best friend and drummer, Billy Conway, to cancer in 2021 — as well as a meditation on the nature of beauty, artifact, and loss.
The Universal Fire sets Conway’s death against the massive 2008 fire at the Universal Studios lot in California that destroyed the master recordings of some of our bedrock American music, to interrogate ideas about mortality, legacy, meaning, and calling. No Depression said, “Foucault is working through grief but the album is also a meditation on the nature of beauty, mortality, and meaning… you will want to immerse yourself in this one-of-a-kind recording.”
Listen to the official music video for “The Universal Fire” by Jeffrey Foucault on YouTube:
Of the album, Jeffrey said, “A lot of The Universal Fire was written in the Great Pause, the double shadow of the pandemic and the illness and death of my friend Billy Conway. If someone had asked me back in 2019 what I wanted most, I might have said I’d like to sit still for a year…by the end I had started to daydream again about the smell of a rental car. I’d been on the road for two decades when everything shut down, and then it was gone, and I lost my best friend, the heartbeat of my band. I spent those years trying to figure out what life on the road meant to me, and to other people, and whether I wanted to keep going. I wrote the rest of the song all in one go, thinking about this crazy job, this life, working on the Nightshift. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and it’s the only thing that makes any sense. The song just tumbled out and by the time I had a demo made, I was ready to call up the band and rent a Ford Transit, go anywhere.”
Stream The Universal Fire by Jeffrey Foucault on Spotify:
After nearly two months on the road, and stops throughout the Pacific Northwest (Portland, Oregon, on Nov. 6, Seattle on Nov. 7, Trout Lake, Washington, on Nov. 8, and Centralia, Washington, on Nov. 9), Foucault and band arrive in the cozy confines of the New Prospect Theatre on Nov. 10. Erik Koskinen will open the show.
For more of Jeffrey’s music, video, and tour information please visit his website here.
Jeffrey Foucault Band
W/ Erik Koskinen
New Prospect Theatre
Sunday, Nov. 10
Show @ 7:30pm
$25/$28
All ages