Jeffrey Foucault {Visit}

Mark Erelli {Visit}

Jeffrey Foucault and long time friend Mark Erelli have murder in their heart.  And in their latest collaborative album.

So I felt I had to post this because it was like I was meant to, I basically had to.  I don’t normally hear too much from either artist despite being a big fan of Foucault and slightly more than average fan of Erelli.  Then, last weekend I get an email from fellow blogger Laura at You Crazy Dreamers to check out a b-side/demo from Foucault (listen: “Geese Fly By“).  I realize later that she was getting ready to see the show last week out in Chicago that ended up being her favourite concert this year.  And she has seen more than a few so far.  She purchased the Seven Curses album and immediately sent it over to me and I have been playing non-stop…well, lots.

Then I notice on one of my regular reads, Cover Lay Down, that this album gets a mention as essentially the album is a collection of murder ballad covers – hence the mention on Cover Lay Down.  Okay this is getting weird, so I decide in order to get my aura clean I had to post on the album and here we are.

So basically, I really like the album – but people, you have to be ready for the (alt) country in you to be represented.  The album could be considered a country album if this was 10 years ago, so now a days I would call it folk-country or so.  Both Erelli and Foucault are singer-songwriter/troubadours in the full sense of the word – these two would feel just as comfortable in a whiskey soaked stage at midnight just as easily in the back woods of Colorado when singing to whomever is around.  The covers range from the full on country version of Woody Guthrie (Philadelphia Lawyer) to the honky tonk version of Bruce Springsteen (Johnny 99) to a mellowed out Steve Earle (Ellis Unit 1) and the below version of Richard Buckner’s version of a Edgar Lee Masters Poem called Tom Merritt (from what I can tell).  Essentially, this is a great country cover album that possibly gets a bit too country for me at times, but it always pulls itself back with a stunning track that keeps me listening.  Recommended.

“Tom Merritt” – Jeffrey Foucault & Mark Erelli, from 2010’s “Seven Curses”
(you can also visit Foucault’s site for 2 more tracks, here)

Purchase:

~Smansmith