Nobody—and yes, that includes the crotchety curmudgeon from Hibbing Minnesota—wrote better songs this decade than Joe Henry. He released four albums in the Aughts:Scar,Tiny Voices, Civilians, and Blood from Stars. They’re all essential. Just buy them. I’d like to think that, in 20 or 30 years or so, when the musical wheel turns and the world reassesses all that has been ignored, these albums will be recognized as the masterpieces they are.
So do alt-country bands like The Jayhawks. So does the supremely gifted Victoria Williams, whose vocals are even more idiosyncratic than Joe's. So does guitarist Marc Ribot, but he plays with everybody. He occasionally employs operatic divas to provide accompaniment for lines like “Because there was no gold mine, I freed the dogs and burned their sled." Good luck trying to find a label for the surrealistic dreamscape that is his music. I'm content to just call it great. As an added bonus, his lyrics also happen to be jaw-droppingly wonderful, and work more often as standalone poetry than those of The Poet of a Generation. His songs are as consistently, restlessly challenging and rewarding as contemporary music gets.
So maybe I’m bitter, sitting here in my coffee-stained T-shirt. I don’t know why the rest of the world doesn’t recognize this incontrovertible truth. Maybe it’s the nondescript name that keeps people from discovering music that is anything but nondescript. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that Joe Henry’s songs don’t fit into an easily defined box, and are too genre-busting to slot within the confines of today’s narrowcasting world. Whatever it is, Joe Henry is the Dylan that scarcely anybody knows.
I interviewed him five or six years ago, right before the release of his album Tiny Voices. He had woken up shortly before I called, and he had just returned from dropping his kids off at school. It was delicious to imagine this dutiful father and devoted family man returning to his notepad after making sure that the kids had their lunch money in hand, jotting down lyrics about widows of Central American revolutionaries, junkies, and rape victims, reveling in apocalyptic imagery involving bombers and tanks and beauty queens and circus freaks selling lemonade. He was writing the kind of shadowy, surrealistic nightmares that Dylan hadn’t explored since “Desolation Row,” and I imagined that he was doing it in his pajamas.
I don’t know if that’s literally true, of course, and Joe Henry wasn’t telling. But maybe that’s because he’s the master of the oblique, of the truth that resides in between the lines on a page, of the indirection that conveys as much in what isn’t said as in the black and white lyrics in the CD booklet. His song “This Afternoon” is a masterpiece of impending dread, of ominous detail piled atop ominous detail, and he never once gets around to saying what actually happens. But you have a pretty good inkling, and it isn’t good.and during the past 10 years he’s worked with artists as diverse as Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco, Teddy Thompson, Aimee Mann, Mavis Staples, and Mary Gauthier, and has almost single-handedly revived the careers of Solomon Burke, Allen Toussaint, and Bettye Lavette.
It’s a staggering body of work. Do yourself a favor and check him out now, before the musical wheel turns.
(Andy Whitman)
We think it’s looking spectacularly good & of course we are particularly chuffed & humbled by BILLY BRAGG & JOE HENRY agreeing so readily to be a part of our very special day. Both have done in-stores here separately over the years & quite naturally are huge supporters of all things independent (& record stores in particular) , so it was just so perfect & timely that they happen to be in Melbourne for their shows the weekend of RECORD STORE DAY!!
"One of the great truths about the human perspective is that we don’t see the world as it is but as we are. So at THE JUSTICE PROJECT we decided to ask people and invite people from around the world who are old and young, healthy and infirm, free and incarcerated to tell us: “What justice means to me.” In this effort, we don’t expect to corner the truth about justice but to witness it by being an honest witness and honor our mission statement to lend an ear and give a voice. Please take a look and join us. As Scripture would remind us, “We’re not expected to finish the work but neither are we excused from it.”
With Donald Trump in the White House, rock is entering a new protest era, and Baez is helping lead the way. Last fall, she performed at Standing Rock in North Dakota as part of the protest against the Dakota Pipeline. In January, she participated in two Women's Marches on the same day, one in Redwood City and another in San Francisco, and she's helping to plan a show to benefit illegal immigrants (her father was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. at age two). "So many people have said to me, out of the blue, 'We need Joan Baez right now,' " says Joe Henry, who's producing Baez's next LP. "She's been fiercely standing where she is her whole life." When Henry told his sister-in-law Madonna he was working with Baez, he says, she texted him: "She's a fucking warrior hero."
read the full interview on RollingStone.She's planning one last worldwide tour, next year, right after she finishes her in-progress album, for which she's already cut covers of songs by Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, Josh Ritter and Anohni. "There's a feeling that things are winding down, and I wanted to do one more studio effort," she says. She's even recording with the same acoustic guitar she used on her first album (it has been refurbished several times). "She's at peace with it," says Joe Henry. "She has other things she'd like to focus on, like her painting. I didn't feel like it was with any regret."
