Society Hall presents Jeffrey Foucault with Megan Burtt opening

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ALAMOSA — Society Hall, at 400 Ross Avenue in Alamosa, is proud to present an American songwriter and record producer Jeffrey Foucault the evening of May 3rd at 7:30 p.m. with Denver singer Megan Burtt opening. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. with tickets available for $15 in advance or $20 at the door. Tickets may be purchased online at www.societyhall.org or in Alamosa at The Green Spot, 711 State Avenue.

Jeffrey Foucault is an American songwriter and record producer from Butte, Montana whose work marries the influence of American country, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and folk music. He has released four full-length solo albums under his own name and two full-band lyrical collaborations with poet Lisa Olstein, under the moniker Cold Satellite. Foucault has toured extensively in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe since 2001, in both full-band and solo appearances. Since 2013 he has performed as a duo with drummer Billy Conway.

One of the finest songwriters of his generation, Jeffrey Foucault has taken, in his own words, “the small roads;” building a brick and mortar independent international touring career of ten studio albums, countless miles and critical accolades. He’s been lauded for Stark, literate songs that are as wide open as the landscape of his native Midwest (The New Yorker) and described as Quietly brilliant (The Irish Times), while catching the ear of everyone from Greil Marcus to Don Henley (who regularly covers Foucault in his live set), to Van Dyke Parks (who offered to play on Foucault’s 2011 offering, Horse Latitudes, after catching a live radio interview). 

“Salt as wolves” is a line from Othello describing boldness; a fitting title to frame a record of blues played bold and loosely, without rehearsal or cant. With his fifth collection of original songs Foucault stakes out and enlarges the ground he’s been working diligently all the new century, quietly building a deep, resonant catalog of songs about love, memory, God, desire, wilderness and loss. Salt As Wolves gives us Jeffrey Foucault at the height of his powers, fronting an all-star band, turning the wheel of American music. With Salt As Wolves, Jeffrey Foucault gives us in sound and image what poet and author Chris Dombrowski calls in the album’s liner notes, “that rare artistic combination of a voice and a world”: a tough, spare collection of darkly rendered blues and ballads, like a field recording of a place that never existed. In a series of letters to lovers, friends, heroes, and family, Foucault deftly weaves together disparate strands of sound and experience, raw love, and hard wisdom.

Megan Burtt was born and bred in Denver.  “I’ve always written songs,” she says. “I took piano lessons when I was young, but when I picked up my dad’s old classical guitar, things took off.”  Inspired by Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Burtt taught herself to play, dreaming of a musical career. “I didn’t know any girls who played music, but Blue, Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time and the women on the MTV videos I saw, let me know it was possible.”

After high school, she moved to Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music. There she made two EPs she calls her “practice records.” “As soon as I met other musicians, I put together a band and started playing. We took every gig we could get. I loved being on stage with such talented players. It developed my ear, made my guitar playing more solid and made me a confident bandleader and performer.”

When she graduated from Berklee, Burtt moved to Mississippi to investigate the roots of American blues music. While there, she contracted a potentially fatal disease, but she never stopped singing or performing, and eventually found her way to full recovery. She played music in Vietnam for a couple of months, then returned to the states to record It Ain’t Love, a 12 song collection she made with the friends that still make up the backbone of her recording band – Louis Cato, guitarist Adam Tressler and James Williams. One of the songs on the album, “Waiting for June,” won Best Song at the 2010 Rocky Mountain Folk Festival and the 2011 Kerrville New Folk Competition.