Jeffrey Foucault finds meaning through music

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jeffrey Foucault didn't quite take to the stringed instrument right away. "Dad brought home a cheap guitar and showed me a few chords when I was twelve or so," said Foucault, "but he wasn't patient, and I wasn't patient. It didn't work out." Still, later in his late teenage years, folk singer John Prine's hit "Hello in There" would inspire Foucault to pick the guitar up once again. "Prine's a hell of a gateway drug," he said. "Dad brought home Prine's first album. I put it on the turntable, grabbed my dad's old Japanese mail-order flat top [an acoustic guitar], and I spent a month staying up half the night to learn those songs." Now, and always with his acoustic guitar at the ready, he comes to the Monadnock Center for History and Culture's Bass Hall this Saturday, April 18 at 7 p.m. as presented by Peterborough Folk Music — certainly proving that his talent has beaten out his patience in the long run. With a discography that spans 16 albums and recordings, Foucault has become a recognizable and distinct voice centered and evolving from American folk and country music and traditions. "A writer learns to write by reading, and then by writing. A songwriter does much that same," said Foucault when asked about his style as an artist. You listen widely, absorb the influence of the things that move you, and then use them as scaffolding. Eventually the scaffolding falls away, and what's left is your own deal." His own deal is very often lauded for emotional vulnerability with simple flare; an evocative style and tenor that interconnects what so many people experience and feel on both an emotional and a sensory-memory level. Foucault cites the mysteries of life — what the individual deals with and makes sense of — as an important source for his songwriting and producing: "My process for writing is a moving target," he said. "What's interesting is the approach to mystery. That means showing up every day with a pen in your hand, waiting to write the thing you don't understand. With luck, you discover the subject somewhere in the process." His most recent album, 2024's The Universal Fire, holds a bit more meaning for the artist. Foucault noted that the album was an "attempt to process the death of my best friend and longtime drummer, Billy Conway, and to do it by thinking about loss, artifact, and memory." The album, reflective of the energy he and his bandmates give on stage, is a brash performance that was cut live in one room. This time around, in Peterborough, he's on his own with a solo performance. More intimate shows tend to give way to experiencing a few more layers of Foucault, i.e., more stories, jokes, laughs, instruments, and a variety of songs to surprise fans with (after all, he's got over 30 years of songs he's written at the ready). "When I play a show in a small room in a small town, which is what I love most," he said, "I try to play the kind of show I saw and loved as a youngster. The lights go down, and someone offers you a voice and a world — a kind of magic trick — where the sense of being alive is amplified and heightened in the compression of experience. That, and good lighting goes a long way." Tickets and information: Peterborough Folk Music | pfmsconcerts.orgLearn more about the artist: Jeffrey Foucault | jeffreyfoucault.com