Mule

“We’re friends because Kelly Joe told me about your guitars.”

I’m in Jeffrey Foucault’s kitchen. It’s beautiful and authentically classic, like the uncurated quaintness of his adopted city, Shelburne Falls. I’m drinking beer and he’s drinking wine-something he knows more about than I know about anything. I asked him once for a wine recommendation because I know nothing and he told me not to buy anything with an animal on it. I sent a picture of what I had-my wine collection looked like a zoo.

We had just gotten done fly fishing on the Deerfield. Another pass time where our disparity in knowledge is laughable. I’m a completely obsessed rookie and he moves on the water like a D1 level collegiate wrestler. You can just tell. Spontaneous, intentional. He changes techniques between riffles and tail outs, notes the depth in seconds where he got the first bump. He knows how increasing the water flow from the dam 400 CFM will affect the reproduction of the native fish. He outwitted two rainbows in a rocky run in a Massachusetts canyon transforming continuously with the gradation of light. I’m keeping one eye on him and one on the stack-mended mess I’ve caused in the water. Bucket list.

After Kelly Joe’s passing last year Jeff and I and my friend Tony had conversations about the trajectories his music put us on. How we knew watching him play we seeing behind the spiritual curtain. There may have been unexplained metaphysical implications watching him perform but sitting at dinner with Jeff and his wonderful family, with Lisa who wrote the poetry Jeff’s translated in his album “Cold Satellite”, and her husband David ‘Goodie’ Goodrich, I recognized the terrestrial gift Kelly Joe gave us: Each Other.

The Last Mule Bus Stop with Bros Landreth tonight at Milkboy in Philadelphia.