Breaking News: Alex's Vinyl Vault is BACK!

Hey,

I really hope you’re doing well! It was really nice to read a lot of your comebacks last week about the books you’re reading and why they move you this much! Always delighted to read your thoughts!

We’re now Sunday morning, it’s 9 am and we’re right in the middle of another snowstorm, the third one this week following a crazy -31°C daytime temperature that lasted all week long. Alex, in the meantime, keeps sending pictures of himself walking outside with his lovely boys under autumn-like weather down in Virginia. Definitely jealous!

These past few days have been very productive for us all within the band up here in the North, and of course, for Alex further down South. We’re all actually working on a very unique and special music project. I'll hopefully have the chance to share a little more with you shortly as this evolves and becomes more and more precise and specific…! I really love those early-year studio sessions up here near Montreal, being all together, doing a lot of exploration, not caring about what’s happening outside those church walls, especially knowing we’re not missing anything with such crazy weather. We simply have to abandon ourselves, discover new sounds and noise landscapes, allow deep and liberating emotions to resonate, filling this church with substantial and thriving sensations from morning to night. Moments that you never want to get out of, so truly transformative and fulfilling they are.

Alex, on his end, is working on several projects at the same time. It’s always so great when we call each other around dinner time and share about those projects, their souls, their essence, their journey, and what we’re all living as we walk their paths and discover what they have for us to get a hold of. The way we operate is quite simple; we upload musical files into shared sessions where Alex can hear what we’re working on in real-time. It allows Alex to have a better perspective of the project while he’s writing the story, the lyrics, the spoken words, the whispers, and the screams, and this allows us to explore with a wide and limitless approach, digging for gold and diamonds.

Those dinner conversations could be compared to six explorers spending their daytime on a new planet or a never-searched-before archeological site, bringing back their own wonderful discoveries. This is what gives those dinner conversations such a uniqueness we all enjoy so much, and it clearly paves the path ahead of us before we get back together to finalize this amazing journey. I came to realize how powerful vulnerability truly is when it’s honestly shared… It opens up an infinite amount of greatness, of belonging, of truth and it allows us to not only share about music, sounds, noises, melodies, or rhythms but about the heart and soul of it all. It starts with us all in the first place. There’s no substitute for this vulnerability, this openness, even though, most of the time, it’s also the hardest thing to do.

THE SON OF HANNAH

For those of you who just discovered Alex Henry Foster since his last European tour or afterward, I just want to take some time to explain our DIY lathe-cut vinyl culture to you. Since the start of the pandemic back in March 2020, as we had literally just come back from touring Europe with our great friends from …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead on March 15, we decided to get started with doing live performances streamed online, out of which we’d make direct-to-vinyl LPs.

For every release, the SFCC members had access to a 48-hour pre-sale before everyone else. We always print a very limited edition of those vinyls, (usually between 100 and 200) as they’re made in real-time, one by one. Alex always takes a huge amount of time writing personal letters to everyone who purchases those collector vinyls.

We learned the hard way that it wasn’t a great idea to send 100% of the vinyls and not keep a few copies just in case the postal services would really mess up those very unique, signed, numbered vinyls! Following those terrible events, we’ve always kept around 10% of the vinyl production, and love to bring those back at some point for the new Club members! Now, that being said, this is exactly what’s going to happen early in February with the single The Son of Hannah that we launched in June 2021.

This song has been written as the opening track for the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. I shared its incredible story with you last year in a previous cult missive that you can read here. Alex will publicly announce the release after the live viewing sessions we’re holding on Saturday, January 29. We’re very thrilled to start the year like this with you all. Of course, I’ll explain all the specific details later on in another letter to you. I just wanted to share the news with you and make sure you wouldn’t miss this very first event where we’ll all gather around music to start the new year.

This unique and homemade vinyl will be available starting Wednesday February 9, at 10am Eastern Time for you, SFCC The Club Members, and will remain exclusively available within The Club for 48 hours! That’s one of the amazing perks of being a member!

Following those 48 hours, the vinyl will be available for the non-members as well, starting Friday February 11 at 10am Eastern Time. We printed only 200 of those little treasures, of which only 18 are left. In the event that we sell more than this amount during the first 48 hours, Alex will go live to draw the winners - but more about this in another letter!

Looking forward to seeing you all this weekend! Take good care!

Your Host and Friend,
Jeff