The Cedar and KFAI Present
JEFFREY FOUCAULT + PIETA BROWN
Friday, December 15, 2023 / Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
All Ages
Seated
$23 Advance, $28 Day of Show
This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request access accommodations, please go to our Access page.
General Admission tickets are available online.
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Two artists dedicated to the craft of songwriting and the delivery of these songs via lucious instrumentation and vocals in one place, on one evening. The Cedar is honored to present this co-bill of PIETA BROWN and JEFFREY FOUCAULT.
PIETA BROWN
The daughter of two preacher’s kids, Pieta Brown’s early upbringing in Iowa was in a rural outpost with no furnace, running water, or TV. There, she was exposed to traditional and rural folk music through her father, Greg Brown, the now beloved Midwestern folk singer. But Brown’s parents separated when she was very young and by age 8 she moved to Birmingham, Alabama with her single working mother. Pieta spent a very disjointed childhood living in 17 different residences between Iowa, Minnesota, and Alabama. While living with her mother in Alabama, Brown began writing poetry and composing instrumental songs on piano which planted the seeds for both following the family musical tradition and carving her own fiercely independent path. Continually revealing new layers as both a songwriter and performer, Pieta is being recognized as one of modern Americana’s true gems. In recent years Pieta has released multiple highly critically acclaimed albums, with much attention being paid not only to her distinct sound and style, but also the power of her singing and songwriting, including fan favorite, Paradise Outlaw (2014 Red House, which Bon Iver mastermind, Justin Vernon, called his “favorite recording made at our studio.”) Pieta has toured North America with Mark Knopfler, and toured various regions of the U.S., Australia and Canada with John Prine, Amos Lee, Brandi Carlisle, JJ Cale, Ani DiFranco, Mavis Staples, and Calexico, among others. She has co-written songs with and made recent guest appearances on albums by Calexico, Amos Lee, and Iris DeMent, and was recently invited to be a co-producer on DeMent’s album Workin’ On A World (February 2023). In the last few years Pieta’s songs and music have been heard in various TV Shows and indie films including Everything Will Be Fine (Wim Wenders). With the release of her most recent album Freeway (September 2019, Righteous Babe) co-produced by Bon Iver drummer, S. Carey, followed by multiple experimental collaborations since, with various artists including JT Bates, S. Carey, CARM, and Howe Gelb & The Colorist Orchestra, Pieta’s music and artistry continue to rise.
“…moody, ethereal… I will listen over and over again.” -NPR’s All Songs Considered
To learn more about Pieta Brown:
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 perfectly complement 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 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.
“Contemporary and timeless.” —The New York Times
To learn more about Jeffrey Foucault:
