Jeffrey Foucault & Erik Koskinen
Friday, April 1, 2022
7 pm Doors // 8 pm Show
$35 VIP
$27 Preferred Reserved Seating
$20 Advance General Admission
All Ages
Tickets sales are final & non-refundable
*The Parkway Theater requires Proof of COVID-19 Vaccination or Negative Test Result for entry to all events.*
A co-bill for the ages!
Considered one of the most distinctive voices in American music, Jeffrey Foucault's craft is 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.
Acclaimed Minnesotan Erik Koskinen is renowned in his own right, deftly mixing American folk, country, rock-n-roll, and blues — showcasing his master guitar skills and gift for storytelling songwriting.
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.
Blood Brothers is the sixth collection of original songs in a career remarkable for an unrelenting dedication to craft, and independence from trend. 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 December 2020, Foucault released the retrospective Deadstock: Uncollected Recordings 2005-2020.
A country plea, a blues reach for facts beyond sound, the sense of immediate doom that only a slide guitar can make in its hesitations, its sense of suspension that seems to hold everything a step behind where it ought to be… scary in the bend of the first note — Greil Marcus
Jeffrey Foucault… clocks modern culture about as good as I’ve ever heard anybody clock it — Don Henley
Jeffrey Foucault sings stark, literate songs that are as wide open as the landscape of his native Midwest — The New Yorker
Songwriting brilliance — MOJO
Quietly brilliant — The Irish Times
The music of Wisconsin native Foucault is the kind so many aspire to but never attain: beat-up troubadour folk whittled to dolorous perfection — Uncut
Erik Koskinen is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, whose music is not categorized by sub-genres. Stylistically he is on his own. Influenced by roots music of the Americas and the world, the rhythmic integrity and musical tone is as important as the lyrical content and the artistic intent.
Erik is very much his own man stylistically. Sub genres are no use at all in describing Erik's music and perhaps a new genre is more appropriate. — American Roots UK
As dazzling a guitarist as he is an evocative storytelling songwriter. — Minneapolis Star Tribune
Koskinen’s newest album, Burning the Deal, is steeped in American roots traditions. “It’s not only Americana music, “ he says. “I learned how to play blues music. I learned how to play country music, and how to play folk, bluegrass, jazz, whatever. I learned how to play American music.”
The nine songs share a stripped-down, almost naked quality, but complexities lie just under their skin.
Burning the Deal has a moody, shadowy vibe — an occasionally unsettling sense that evil lurks a little too close by. You can hear its murky threat in the slinky, bayou-drenched minor-key drone thrumming under Leisz’s mandolin notes on “Down in the Factory,” or in the gut-bucket-blues meets second-line- syncopation of “Sell Out” — both of which would have been at home in a “True Blood” episode — or in the quiet whisper of “Crazy,” in which Koskinen sings, “It’s easy going crazy but it’s hard staying sane enough.”
If something wicked this way comes, it might take the form of the protagonist in “Gun,” so down and out, he’s driven to commit a desperate act — and receives a punishment far more serious than the crime. It’s loosely based on the saga of a high-school friend whose third strike sent him to prison for life, Koskinen reveals, adding that the character in “Down in the Factory” — where they manufacture jealousy, apathy, gluttony, and anxiety — could be that guy’s brother.
Maybe “my kind of music” is the kind that requires patience. Nowhere is that quality more evident than on “Ordinary Fool,” a gorgeous, slow shuffle that unwinds gently, its longing ache a gradual dawning.
“I could have made a country record, but I don’t want to make a retro-sounding record,” he explains. “I like old music. I like old sounds, and I play old instruments through old amps.
But I'm not trying to sound like a Chuck Berry record or a Waylon Jennings record.”
No, Koskinen is not trying to sound like anyone else at all. He’s one of a kind. An American original.