Doors 7pm // Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $16 Adv & $19 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

JEFFREY FOUCAULT

BLOOD BROTHERS, the much-anticipated follow-up to Jeffrey Foucault’s critically acclaimed 2015 album Salt As Wolves (“Immaculately tailored… Sometimes his songs run right up to the edge of the grandiose and hold still, and that’s when he’s best… Close to perfection” – New York Times; “Pure Songwriter, simple and powerful” – Morning Edition, NPR) is a collection of reveries, interlacing memory with the present tense to examine the indelible connections of love across time and distance. The poet Wallace Stevens wrote that technique is the proof of seriousness, and from the first suspended chord of ‘Dishes’ – a waltzing hymn to the quotidian details of life, which are life itself (‘Do the dishes / With the windows open’) – Foucault deftly cuts the template for the album as a whole, showing his mastery of technique as he unwinds a deeply patient collection of songs at the borderlands of memory and desire.

In 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, a decidedly Midwestern amalgam of blues, country, rock’n’roll, and folk. He’s built a brick-and-mortar international touring career on multiple studio albums, countless miles, and general critical acclaim, being 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 Van Dyke Parks to Greil Marcus, to Don Henley, who regularly covers Foucault in his live set. BLOOD BROTHERS is the sixth collection of original songs in a career remarkable for an unrelenting dedication to craft, and independence from trend.

Cut live to tape in three days at Pachyderm Studios in rural Minnesota, BLOOD BROTHERS reconvenes Salt As Wolves’ all-star ensemble: Billy Conway on drums, Bo Ramsey (Lucinda Williams) on electric guitars, and Jeremy Moses Curtis (Booker T) on bass, joined this time out by pedal steel great Eric Heywood (Pretenders) to unite in the studio both iterations of the band with which Foucault has toured and recorded for over a decade. Charting a vision of American music without cheap imitation or self-conscious irony, the ensemble deploys an instinctive restraint and use of negative space, an economy of phrase and raw simplicity that complement perfectly Foucault’s elegant lines and weather-beaten drawl.

As noise and politics, fashion and illusion obtrude on all fronts, BLOOD BROTHERS takes a deep breath and a step inward, with tenderness and human concern, paying constant attention to the places where the mundane and the holy merge like water. In language pared to element, backed by his world-class band, Foucault considers the nature of love and time in ten songs free of ornament, staking out and enlarging the ground he’s been working diligently all the new century: quietly building a deep, resonant catalogue of songs about about love, memory, God, desire, wilderness, and loss.

ISMAY

Named after a town of 19 in the Northern Great Plains, Ismay represents the work of singer/songwriter Avery Hellman. Just as with the name, Ismay seeks to uncover ways in which the place we live changes us, and how the natural world provides deeper meaning. For Ismay, a life lived in rural California connects them with the landscape, providing a freedom to express gender identity, and the space to create music. Mystical lyricism, ethereal vocals, and dynamic fingerpicking on guitar are the defining features of their music. With works covering wild horses to wildfire, Ismay’s sound is unmistakably connected to the landscape in which they live.

Ismay was introduced to the musical world through the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, created by their banjo-playing grandfather Warren Hellman. An upbringing immersed in roots music shaped a love of the old-time aesthetic and early recordings of American folk music. Ismay learned to write, sing, and play by listening to the songs of Emmylou Harris, Hazel Dickens, Mississippi John Hurt, and Leonard Cohen, as well as Alan Lomax’s field recordings. As Avery grew older, artists such as Cat Power, Lee Hazlewood, Phosphorescent, Captain Beefheart, and Angel Olsen further influenced their work. After a many years of playing music mostly in their bedroom, Warren’s passing in 2011 created a chance for Avery to play Bluegrass music at his memorial, pushing them onto a public stage for the first time. It was there that the seeds of Ismay began, leading to the project’s debut in 2015.

Ismay performs as both a solo artist, duo, and a full band, with a combination of electric fingerpicking guitar drums, bass, cello, and violin. Additionally, Ismay plays a unique set combining storytelling and songs, which debuted at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in October 2019. Ismay has appeared throughout the West Coast at music festivals such as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2016 and Strawberry Music Festival 2017; at renowned venues such as the Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, the Golden State Theater, and the Mystic Theater, and as an opening act for acclaimed artists including Steve Earle, Mandolin Orange, Justin Townes Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express, The Mother Hips and the Brothers Comatose. Ismay is based in the rural area outside of Petaluma, CA, and was raised in San Francisco/Marin County CA.