what’s beautiful is broken
This Wednesday night, we’ve booked Jeffrey Foucault at the Ivywild School in Colorado Springs (with Patrick Dethlefs opening). I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that this song below is one of my favorites of the last good number of years. Please join us.
“Jeffrey Foucault, sings stark, literate songs that are as wide open as the landscape of his native Midwest.” — The New Yorker
If you’re not in Colorado, just listen and love:
Northbound 35 – Jeffrey Foucault
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
past the smokestacks
and the ore docks down
off of Main the sky spun around
with her diamonds on fire
And we fought all night and we danced
in your kitchen
you were as much in my hands
as water or darkness or nothing
could ever be held
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
It’s just flashes that we own
little snapshots
made of breath and of bone
and out on the darkling plain alone
they light up the sky
And 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 goodbye
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
BONUS: Man alive do I love this R.E.M. cover he did with his former band Redbird.
You Are The Everything (R.E.M.) – Redbird
Also, I posted a songwriter session back in 2008 that Jeffrey Foucault did with Peter Mulvey and Chris Smither – that’s still uploaded here if you want to take a listen (wonderful cover of Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain,” to boot).
Foucault / Mulvey / Smither Songwriter Session
Tickets for Wednesday’s show are $10, available here.
Name: Heather Browne
I wish I could make it!! You won’t be disappointed, I saw him in Nottingham UK last year. Excellent show. Looking forward to hearing the show.
John — July 7, 2014 @ 3:03 pm
Looking forward to the show. I love his music and both the covers you noted here (You Are the Everything and Buckets of Rain). I would add his cover of John Prine’s Mexican Home as just an absolutely beautiful cover. I thought Josh Ritter did it well, but Jeffrey Foucault’s version even blows that away.
luke — July 8, 2014 @ 9:28 am
Don’t forget Ships, the Greg Brown cover with Redbird. And. . . . Cross of Flowers, one of my favorites, Americans in Corduroy, Mesa, Arizona. . . . . just to mention a few. Unfortunately, I won’t make the show as it is a bit too long a drive from Santa Cruz, CA.
Beto Byram — July 8, 2014 @ 6:14 pm