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Joe Henry |
After producing a number of critically-acclaimed projects for other artists, singer-songwriter JOE HENRY records his own stripped-down gem of an album
By Jim Steinblatt
Few music creators are as self-analytical and self-aware as singersongwriter and recording artist-producer Joe Henry. He can easily and articulately discuss the various stages of his musical development as well as spell out his philosophy of making records. Henry, a veteran of over 20 years as a recording artist, recently issued the critically-acclaimed Civilians (Anti- Records), his first album in four years. While fours years can seem like an eternity in the cycle of releasing an album, touring and then recording again, Henry emphatically states that there was "no break." During the supposed "layoff," Henry was actively working as a producer on a broad range of projects for artists as varied as Solomon Burke, Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello and Loudon Wainwright III, among others. "I think that with the more I work the less I find distinction between the different parts of my job," he says. " I would have imagined that producing was a completely separate pursuit from writing and recording an album of my own as an artist. I find, though, that what I am is in the business of making something meaningful come out of a pair of speakers. Whatever I do in service of that is part of the same job."
A great deal has gone into the making of Joe Henry, songwriter and producer. He was born in the south and grew up outside Detroit. As a child he was fascinated by music, enamored first of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash and, a bit later, of Dusty Springfield, Louis Armstrong, Doc Watson and Glen Campbell "doing Jimmy Webb songs with full orchestrations," as well as Bob Dylan, Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie. A selfconfessed obsessive about records, Henry used them "as a way in, even with the few chords I knew. I don't read or write music so the way that I learned to play and to write was to put a record on and try to understand something about every song that went by. It was kind of like learning a language by having to speak it on the street. After years of speaking because you need to, then you can look back and start understanding the rules of grammar that underlie what you're doing unconsciously," he says, adding: "I wrote songs as a primitive and only after doing it for years did I start understanding that there was theory behind what I was doing -- �oh, that's why I always go to that chord.'" With the total support and encouragement of his parents, the teenaged Joe Henry announced himself "as a songwriter before I'd even written a song."
The kid songwriter grew up and was signed to his first record deal by the New York-based Profile label in 1986. "Profile was Run-DMC's label and they had some idea to branch out but they didn't have a clue how to do it, apparently," remembers Henry. "I moved to New York at the time but there was no community at the label I was signed to. It was a dance world at that moment and I was a singer-songwriter. I was very much working in a vacuum and it was difficult not to feel a part of something." An inauspicious beginning brightened considerably after Henry was signed by A&M and had his next album produced by T-Bone Burnett. "Coming to Los Angeles, I started working with T-Bone as a production associate. It was night and day. The first day in Los Angeles, working with T-Bone, I found myself in the company of some startlingly great musicians who are still friends and acquaintances who remain incredibly supportive: Jim Keltner, Booker T, Edgar Meyer -- an amazing group of people."
Henry's new album, Civilians, is more sonically sparse than his last couple of albums. "I wanted to see if the songs could live if I stripped them bare and put them out into the light of day. I wanted to create the sensation that the listener was looking right at the heart of each song." He acknowledges that some may hear in Civilians echoes of the postmodern cabaret sound of recent albums by Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits: "I think all three of us love Edith Piaf and Lead Belly in equal measure, and I hear both elements at work and they are both part of my makeup." Nonetheless, a major influence on Civilians is Loudon Wainwright III, with whom Henry co-produced and co-wrote the soundtrack to the hit film, Knocked Up. " I credit my work with Loudon last fall with pushing me in the direction of stripping down. I felt enthralled by how emotionally available he is not just as a writer but also as a singer."
Busy as he currently is as an artist, Henry still has a number of production irons in the fire, recently completing an album for Nashville-based singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell. "I think that there are examples of excellence in every kind of music," says Henry. "Anyone who grew up in the time I've grown up � we've been exposed to everything. Why shouldn't that influence you? I have learned many languages, musically speaking and I find a way to make them authentically my own or for those influences to be authentic to me. I certainly have no more interest in compartmentalizing myself as a producer than I do as an artist."
