Joe Henry

All Music Guide:

Joe Henry is best known for his two country-influenced albums, 1992's Short Man's Room, and 1993's Kindness of the World, both of which feature members of the country-rock band the Jayhawks, but his musical direction has actually changed several times over the course of his recording career, reflecting his restless, adventurous spirit. Henry was born in North Carolina, grew up in Michigan, spent the early part of his music career in New York City, and finally settled in Los Angeles in 1990 with his wife and son. After his little-heard 1986 debut, Talk of Heaven, Henry debuted on A&M in 1989 with the rock & roll album Murder of Crows, which was produced by Anton Fier and featured Mick Taylor on guitar.

From there he pared down to the quiet, entirely acoustic moods of Shuffletown (1990) before shifting into the country- and folk-influenced territory of Short Man's Room and Kindness of the World. The latter two albums earned him an excellent reputation among fans of alternative rock and country as a superb singer and songwriter. He followed Kindness with the five-song EP Fireman's Wedding a year later. Henry's lyrics are a central focus of his songwriting, but even though he often writes in the first person, his songs are not "personal" in the manner of musicians who are often called singer/songwriters (a genre he doesn't like to be associated with). He's recorded some excellent country covers, but he's equally interested in soul, funk, and rock & roll.

On Trampoline, released in 1996, Henry veered in an edgier, more rhythm-oriented direction. While he still employs acoustic instruments and even a pedal-steel guitar on several songs, Trampoline (much of which Henry recorded at a studio he set up in his garage) is more clearly defined by its drum loops, loud electric guitars, mysterious voices, and curious sonic textures. For this album, Henry recruited guitarist Page Hamilton from the band Helmet and drummer Carla Azar from the band Edna Swap.

Fuse -- mixed with the aid of Daniel Lanois and T-Bone Burnett -- followed in 1999. Two years later, Henry returned with the enigmatic stunner Scar. This particular release marked his last with Mammoth. He opted for a deal with Epitaph's Anti and entered the studio in December 2002 to record his ninth album, Tiny Voices, his most intricate album to date. A second album on Anti, Civilians, followed in 2007, while a third from the label, Blood from Stars, appeared at the end of the summer in 2009. Henry was wildly busy as a producer for the next two years, helming projects from Allen Toussaint, Salif Keita, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Mose Allison, Hugh Laurie, Over the Rhine, Lisa Hannigan, and Me'Shell Ndegéocello, as well as participating in others. He finally got around to recording again in 2011, with his most eclectic collection of songs -- all recorded acoustically -- entitled Reverie, which was released on Anti in October of 2011.

Wikipedia:

Joe Henry (born December 2, 1960) is a three-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. Henry, "a modest-selling 'critic’s darling' with a reputation for pushing the envelope" writes "songs [that] don’t fit into an easily defined box", instead drawing influence from a wide array of music including folk, blues, jazz, rock, country, and alternative forms alike. He has released 12 full-length studio albums under his own name, and has produced dozens more records for others as well.

Career

Early years

Joe Henry was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, grew up in the Detroit, Michigan area and graduated from the University of Michigan. He moved to Brooklyn, NY in 1985, where he began playing in small clubs and recording music, releasing his first album "Talk of Heaven" in 1986. The album earned him a recording contract with A&M, which subsequently released "Murder of Crows" in 1989 and "Shuffletown" in 1990.

"Shuffletown," produced by T-Bone Burnett, was the first to represent a shift in musical direction, and included a group of mostly acoustic players recorded live, directly to two-track master tape. His sound veered toward what was then emerging as "alt country". Henry’s next two records, "Short Man's Room" (1992) and "Kindness of the World" (1993), shared members of the country-rock band the Jayhawks. These two albums were specifically written with the Jayhawks as backing band, as Joe was sharing a tour with them during the same period. The murder ballad "King's Highway," from "Short Man's Room," has been covered by Joan Baez.

Musical transition

For his 1996 album Trampoline, his sixth LP, Henry hired guitarist Page Hamilton of Helmet, with a result that one reviewer called "idiosyncratic broadmindedness". [1]

Fuse (1999) continued Henry's experimentalism. “Recorded with help from producers Daniel Lanois and [T-Bone Burnett]], “Fuse” is an atmospheric marvel.” Ann Powers of the New York Times stated that “[with] “Fuse”, he has found the sound that completes his verbal approach.”

Early 2000s

Scar, released in 2001, consisted mainly of jazz musicians (Marc Ribot, Brian Blade, and Brad Mehldau among others), and included an appearance by saxophonist Ornette Coleman on "Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation."

In “Scar”, according to Allmusic's Thom Jurek, "[Henry] has moved into a space that only he and Tom Waits inhabit in that they are songwriters who have created deep archetypal characters that are composites—metaphorical, allegorical, and 'real'—of the world around them and have created new sonic universes for them to both explore and express themselves in. Scar is a triumph not only for Henry—who has set a new watermark for himself—but for American popular music, which so desperately needed something else to make it sing again." [2]

2003's self-produced Tiny Voices, was his first on Epitaph's Anti label. Reviewer Jurek described the album as "the sound of Hemingway contemplating the Cuban Revolution with William Gaddis, the sound of Buddy DeFranco and Jimmy Giuffre trying to talk to Miles Davis about electric guitars in an abandoned yet fully furnished Tiki bar in Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles." [3]

In the early 2000s, Henry was also an inaugural member of the Independent Music Awards' judging panel to support independent artists.

The Garfield House

Since the success of his first Grammy Winning production, Don't Give Up on Me by Solomon Burke, Henry has been spending more and more time producing records, in addition to his work as a solo artist (see discography at bottom of page). In 2006, Henry opened up a home studio, where the vast majority of his productions now take place. Since then, he has developed a close musical partnership with recording engineer Ryan Freeland and a particular group of Los Angeles-based musicians (including Jay Bellerose, Greg Leisz, David Piltch, Patrick Warren and Keefus Ciancia among others), with whom Henry works almost exclusively.

“Strange Weirdos” and “Knocked Up”

In September 2006, Joe Henry and his longtime hero Loudon Wainwright III began composing the music for the Judd Apatow movie Knocked Up, one of the first undertakings in the new studio. Snippets of instrumentals were used as background score for the film, but the full versions of the songs make up Wainwright's 2007 Henry-produced album Strange Weirdos.

Henry’s Own Music

Though Henry began to spend more time producing, he has still continued to regularly record and release records under his own name. In 2007, Henry released Civilians, the first of his own records produced at The Garfield House. In contrast to Henry's Tiny Voices, Civilians is “a rich, acoustic affair that returns us to Henry's rootsier sounds,” in part due to the absence of horns (which were present on his just previous (to Tiny Voices) recordings Scar and Fuse), and also notable contributions by Bill Frisell and Van Dyke Parks. The song "God Only Knows," the final track on the album, was used in a "TCM Remembers 2008" TV spot, a video memoriam of actors who have died in 2008.” Additionally, for a portion of Bonnie Raitt's 2012 album Slipstream which Henry produced, Raitt covered two of his songs from Civilians.

In 2009, Henry released his ninth solo record, Blood From Stars. On Blood From Stars, Henry incorporates an influx of orchestral blues, highlighted by the instrumentation of guitarist Marc Ribot, pianist Jason Moran and even his saxophonist son. Though the album focuses on developing the myriad faces of blues, Henry also adds speckles of jazz, rock and pop. And, as its title suggests, Blood From Stars is lined with a darkness that traces through the rugged history of American storytelling.”

In May 2011, Henry announced a new album for release on October 11 titled Reverie. Instrumentation-wise, it’s the simplest record Henry’s ever done: acoustic guitar, upright bass, upright piano, and drums. “When you listen to Reverie, especially on headphones, you can hear traffic in the background or a neighbor calling her dog. It's not always a pristine recording environment. Henry not only left the windows open at his basement studio, but also put microphones on them.”

Thoughts on Music

When asked to elaborate on the concept behind Reverie, Henry offers: "‘It just occurred to me when I was writing songs one day that there's no such thing as silence,’ Henry says. ‘When you're working on a song, invariably someone rings the bell. Someone walks through the room. The song might recede into the fabric of life happening around it, but it doesn't fade to black politely. So I decided to emphasize that fact, because I think it's real. I don't think any real music ... I don't think any real living happens in a vacuum.’”

In a variety of interviews about his concept of songwriting, he shares: "‘I was very enamored with all of the songwriters who were writing in a narrative voice in character,’ Henry says. ‘I knew that Randy Newman was not writing about himself, that Bob was not writing his own story. He was making up a character and following it.’” "But there was this singer-songwriter environment, this post-Dylan fallout, of people who think that pages of your diary set to music are songs, and that the more `honest' songs are, the better they are. And that's the greatest misconception of American popular music: that if you're being honest, you're being entertaining." “It wasn't about how much of your life you were willing to expose — it was about how wild a character you were willing to inhabit."

Personal life

Henry is married, since 1987, to Melanie Ciccone, sister of Madonna. He has two children, Levon and Lulu. [1] Henry's wife talked him into letting her send Madonna a demo of his song "Stop", which was reworked and recorded as "Don't Tell Me" (from Madonna's 2000 album Music). Henry's own tango-tinged version of the song appeared on Scar and was featured in an episode of "The Sopranos". Henry and his sister-in-law recorded a duet, "Guilty By Association", on the charity album Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation, and collaborated on the songs "Jump" on Confessions on a Dance Floor, "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You" on Hard Candy, and "Falling Free" on MDNA.

Currently, in addition to recording, writing songs, performing, and producing, Henry is working on a biography of Richard Pryor along with his brother Dave Henry, who is a writer based in Louisville, Kentucky. Joe also maintains an online journal through his website (http://www.joehenrylovesyoumadly.com/category/journal/) through which he publishes essays on a semi-regular basis.