Some songs can’t be confined by a studio. Case in point: Feral Foster’s “New World Blues,” which, more than a decade later, thrives best on the spark that passes between performer and audience. The first “new” music from Foster in 12 years, this live version of the leadoff track from his 2104 debut was recorded at the Brooklyn Folk Festival, where his deeply rooted songwriting and commanding voice found the ideal setting.
A longtime fixture in New York’s roots community, Foster has spent more than 20 years carrying forward the city’s folk and blues traditions as both a songwriter and the host of the Roots N’ Ruckus series at Brooklyn’s Jalopy Theatre. His work culls from the language of early blues, country and jazz as it reflects in the hard realities of modern America—a non-nonsense approach that’s resonated with better-known contemporaries like Alynda Segarra of Hurray For The Riff Raff.
“A recording is a coordinate in musical spacetime, a familiar fleck along your timeline, something you can’t get back to again,” says Foster of his latest single. “Listening to it is as close as I can get to a pleasant return—access to the moment when this talent, this audience and that room aligned to make something sharp and beautiful.”
We’re proud to proud to premiere the live version of Feral Foster’s “New World Blues.”
—Hobart Rowland
