[American Songwriter] Alex Henry Foster Reveals “The Son of Hannah,” off Upcoming Live Album and Film ‘Standing Under Bright Lights’
As published in American Songwriter
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Reflecting on his sold-out concert at the Montreal Jazz Festival on July 5, 2019, every moment from that evening transformed into something sacred and comforting for Alex Henry Foster.
He can still see the faces in the audience, the hands raised in the air, and some people with their eyes closed, while others were moving quietly—even crying—or in some peaceful state of grace. The concert was never something the Canadian artist considered releasing as an album, much less a film. Intended as a one-off show, on stage Foster conducted 10 musicians, including percussion, trumpet, and cello, through an exquisite light show, but thought nothing more of the performance… at the time. Nearly two years later, Foster is releasing the entire live performance, Standing Under Bright Lights (Hopeful Tragedy Records), out April 16, as a triple LP and DVD.
“It’s that transcending element that reminds me just how intimate such a communal moment can be once truly lived,” says Foster of the performance. “It’s way beyond me, and that’s why I know it was a unique moment in time. It isn’t entertainment. It is an invitation where everyone is welcome to define their experience and choose the way they want to live it. A moment like this is fragile, and you need to remain humble towards it.”
Conducting for two hours, in spirit, says Foster, the audience was actually directing the performance. “It was probably one of the most beautiful, liberating, and uplifting communions I have ever experienced in my life,” he shares. “It was a transformative celebration of what it means to be alive. Would I have known, at that point in time, that it would have been recorded and filmed for a further release, I would have ruined it all with all the fake clichés that come with self-consciousness and self-absorbed ambitions. Therefore, I know it’s a moment that is as honest as I could have been.”
Opening his two-hour, symphonic performance, “The Son of Hannah,” is an intimate reflection on keeping faith in moments of great despair, says Foster, and is tied to a reconnection with his ill father in 2016.
“’The Son of Hannah’ is as much of a cathartic metaphor to my father’s tormented and distressed nature as it is a vibrant homage to a man who dedicated his life to emancipate himself from his inner demons, to find everlasting rest within, to make peace with his past and shortcomings while embracing an inevitable defeat to the implacable essence of cancer,” shares Foster. “It’s an intimate reflection on personal struggles to keep faith alive in moments of great despair, an acknowledgment of our deepest need in times of hopelessness. But most of all, it’s the poignant testimony of a man’s redemption that led to his son’s forgiveness and untimely inspired him to find his own way of being free, whatever it may mean.”
Propelled by a deeper turmoil, Foster maneuvers from his delicately sinister oration into something more captivatingly honest, and raw, sorely declaring He left me with nothing / No words, no direction to set myself in / But he gave me everything I’ve ever needed…Taught me to feed a spirit of my own / To carry my voice beyond morning views / And to leave the past behind.
“The Son of Hannah” is a father’s life story told from the perspective of a son still coming to terms with his absence and his own lingering sense of displacement.
Finding himself exiled in Tangier after the loss of his father, and the subsequent break from his longtime band Your Favorite Enemies, Foster spent the next two years emotionally detoxing and writing what would ultimately become a narrative on grief, confusion, and self discovery. This emotional and creative sabbatical led to Foster’s 2018 solo debut Windows in the Sky.
Planting himself somewhere as foreign as Morocco never daunted the artist, who now resides in Virginia, and admits that he’s never really felt at home anywhere in particular. Still, every place he’s lived all have impacted him creatively, whether he’s conscious of it or not.
In retrospect, Windows in the Sky, ebbs in seasonal elements, he says, partially pulled from acclimations to Canada’s fall and winter and the North African desert mixed with other streams of thoughts, memories, and visions.
“I believe creations reflect the nature of what we have accepted would define us as a person, as much as what we may fiercely rebuke the ascendance of on our identity,” says Foster. “I know it might sound quite far-fetched, but if we are not the product of our environment, I believe we are deeply influenced by what we want to make out of what has been experienced in those places, at the very least.”
Having spent more than a decade prior to his solo work with Your Favorite Enemies, Foster says he was able to hide behind the more spectacular live setting of a band rather than being entirely bare, so revealing his solo material for the first time, was a difficult task , so performing Standing Under the Bright Lights was humbling.
“I was scared that such intimate songs might lose their essence by playing them over and over,” says Foster. “I didn’t know if I could expose myself night after night without turning that into some repetitive sort of play, and I didn’t want to turn every live moment into another display of sorrowful grief and never-ending eulogies.”
“I was able to hide within the context of a very heavy band, so I had to unlearn what was by then second nature,” says Foster. “It wasn’t about jumping no more. It wasn’t about screaming, nor even about entertaining. It was about communing, and it freaked me out, to be exposed in such an intimate setting.”
Now, Standing Under the Bright Lights, a more euphemistic title depicting Foster’s renewed creative state of mind, reveals the artist most exposed. It’s the essence of Foster’s emotional journey, reflected outward for the first time.
“I had to be honest with myself and to look into the reasons why I wasn’t able to fathom the perspective of standing in front of people as I am, and had to look into my fear of failure, of rejection, or of not being enough,” reveals Foster, who says it’s still daunting to reveal so much of himself in his songs, but it’s something he’s learning to accept rather than try to control.
“All those lifetime struggles reemerged in a split second,” continues Foster, “reminding me of the evolving stream that life is when you decide to let go, to take it as it is, and to go from there.”
TINA BENITEZ-EVES
April 8, 2020