Joe Henry Announces Vinyl-Reissue Trilogy

In 2024, Joe Henry is set to release three of his most acclaimed studio records for the first time on vinyl via earMUSIC, featuring a special selection of unheard bonus tracks as well as intimate demos and live recordings from his personal archives.
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“With this new reissue series, I find there’s something unexpectedly compelling to me about revisiting this particular trio of albums as, together, these volumes represent my sort of 'coming-of-age’ as a record maker, in that I stopped observing any border between a song's composition and its studio articulation. It all became a single impulse for me...conjured into fruition right there in my basement.”, Henry reflects on the reissue series.

Available Formats:

CD Digipak • Black 2LP Gatefold • Digital Download/Streaming

CIVILIANS​ TRACKLIST:

(Vinyl Side A)

1. Civilians

2. Parker's Mood

3. Civil War

4. Time Is a Lion

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(Vinyl Side B)

1. You Can't Fail Me Now

2. Scare Me to Death

3. Our Song

4. Wave

(Vinyl Side C)

1. Love Is Enough

2. I Will Write My Book

3. Shut Me Up

4. God Only Knows

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(Vinyl Side D)

1. Time Is A Lion – Demo*

2. I Will Write My Book – Demo*

3. God Only Knows – Demo*

4. Bread & Flowers – Demo*

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* Previously unheard bonus material

INVISIBLE HOUR TRACKLIST:

(Vinyl Side A)

1. Sparrow

2. Grave Angels

3. Sign

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(Vinyl Side B)

1. Invisible Hour

2. Swayed

3. Plainspeak

4. Lead Me On

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(Vinyl Side C)

1. Alice

2. Every Sorrow

3. Water Between Us

4. Slide

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(Vinyl Side D)

1. The Glorious Dead - Alternate Version Demo*

2. News From The Great Wide World - Demo*

3. Slide – Alternate Version Demo*

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* Previously unheard bonus material

BLOOD FROM STARS TRACKLIST:

(Vinyl Side A)

1. Sun Comes Down

2. The Man I Keep Hid

3. Channel

4. This Is My Favorite Cage

(Vinyl Side B)

1. Death to the Storm

2. All Blues Hail Mary

3. Bellwether

4. Progress of Love

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(Vinyl Side C)

1. Over Her Shoulder

2. Suit on a Frame

3. Truce

4. Stars

5. Coda: Light No Lamp When the SunComes Down

(Vinyl Side D)

1. Bellwether – Live-On-Air*

2. Truce – Live-On-Air*

3. Channel – Live-On-Air*

4. Stars – Live-On-Air*

5. Light No Lamp – Live-On-Air*

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* Previously unheard bonus material

UNSPEAKABLE: The Collected Lyrics of Joe Henry, 1985–2020

UNSPEAKABLE: The Collected Lyrics of Joe Henry, 1985–2020

Unspeakable: The Collected Lyrics of Joe Henry, 1985–2020, is a compilation of lyrics that, when “raised by the waters of melody,” created a body of work that established the American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer as an American creative force. The volume features lyrics to 182 songs from Henry’s fifteen albums produced between 1985 and 2020, and nineteen additional songs written for, and with, other artists, such as Roseanne Cash, Mose Allison, and Billy Bragg. The volume also includes 18 black-and-white photographs made by the artist during this same time period.

Printed on natural matte art paper, and bound in deep green cloth with a black quarter binding, Unspeakable is published in a first edition of 1,000 copies.

A special edition of 250 copies, numbered and signed by the artist and presented in a custom cloth slipcase, is also available.

"Karen Dalton" Live Performance Video

Live performance video for the song “Karen Dalton” from All The Eye Can See

"Five Things I've Learned About Song" Master Class

Joe Henry talks us through his process and musings in this online LIVE 90 minute class from June 13, 2021

"Bloom" music video out now

I swore off —and some time ago— the notion of music videos as they came to be known: it always being a perilous proposition to wed images for promotional purposes to music —the former meaning to assign easy and unified experience to consumers; while music itself finds its resonance and longevity to its ability to be shape-shifting and ever evolving.

But I find I have no issue standing with and before you as you listen. And in acknowledgement of Warhol’s infamous ‘screen tests,’ I offer now my near-unflinching gaze: in living color, and almost life-like.

It’s my way of owning this work in all its wiry and unveiled splendor;

with love and squalor.

Largo Los Angeles: Encore Performance

Joe will be giving an encore performance of his May show at Largo on July 13th. Tickets are on sale now here.

Newport Folk Presents: Mavis & Friends

Joe will be joining the legendary Mavis Staples on stage at the Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles on May 22, 2019 as part of her three-city Mavis & Friends tour.

Postponing Midwest Solo Shows until Feb 2019

We regret to announce that the upcoming Joe Henry shows in Chicago, Minneapolis, Northfield, and Ann Arbor are all going to be postponed due to a medical issue (non-life threatening) which has made travel impossible. 

Our sincere apologies to those of you planning to attend these shows. 

The dates have been rescheduled as follows: 

Feb 15 / Northfield, MN / Northfield Arts Guild Theater
Feb 17 / Minneapolis, MN / Dakota 
Feb 18 / Ann Arbor, MI / The Ark
Feb 19 / Chicago, IL / City Winery Chicago

Tickets purchased for the original dates will be honored in February - with the exception of the Ann Arbor show. The Ark in Ann Arbor will be refunding all current ticket holders and tickets will need to be re-purchased for that one.

Joe Henry On World Cafe

Listen to an in-studio conversation (with Talia Schlanger) and performance of three songs from Joe's new record Thrum.

https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2018/01/10/577004499/joe-henry-on-world-cafe

THRUM RELEASE

THRUM RELEASE.

I am far away from home and my beloved this hour, in a tilting rented house in East Nashville; and for twelve consecutive days, nearly, I have –along with my traveling companions– eaten breakfast at the same joint that lies, as the crow flies, between this door and that of a recording studio across town.

It's sort of like being at sea, in that I have only moved back and forth between bunk and my turn at the wheel, except to pull up to a scrubbed surface for rations...

But I can still spy the land. And even though it appears to be both storm-locked and blazing, I feel my connection to it nonetheless.

And to you, an abiding love: whoever might have brought themselves to be reading this right now. Though I make no assumptions about you, I owe each of you who has given their attention to my work a debt of gratitude. 

Today marks the official release of a new album, Thrum –my 14th; and within it are songs that I am proud of. It was performed, recorded, and mixed to stereo tape –simultaneously and quickly– this past spring; and features the contributions of some of the deepest musicians I know to be alive and playing, and who happen also to be among my dearest friends –one of them also a son.

It has been suggested by a few who have already taken the ride that the songs might be...political, in regard to their concerns. But while i would never argue anyone's interpretations, I will say that I think every song that endures or aspires to is rather, by its very nature, a "love song." I don't believe in any other kind.

I mean, no one writes songs about the government –certainly not me. We write about proximity: me to you; us to god; hope to fear; darkness to next light; our sparking lives to a perceived finish of them.

And in so doing, all else and all of us are included; covered. 

Because it is late and I am exhausted –my guard down, my filter sliding like a delta– I will tell you that I believe music to be powerful and spring-loaded. And the harder the times, the more I lean into it –for nourishment, expression and consolation.

I will leave you, then, with these: eleven new songs of my own invention that I offer like wood to a fire:

They were built to be consumed.

Love to all,
JH

A NOTE ABOUT THESE RECORDINGS [THRUM]

When the songs that make up Thrum began to arrive, pair off and multiply ––when I could hear within them a common vocabulary of shared intention–– I began to imagine not only the cast of musicians that might best articulate them, but as well a recording method which might bid welcome the unknowable and mercurial in each, and conjure them wholly, sparking into the room. And as I did, I went to my friend and longtime engineer, Ryan Freeland, with a proposition concerning how I might make an album that could allow for bold manipulations without forsaking the alligiences inherent to our spontaneous, performance-based ethos....

I pitched Ryan the notion that I would assemble a room of trusted brothers (one of them also a son); and as we offered up takes of each song, he would respond to their cumulative weather pushing through the control room speakers --not as a dispassionate stenographer documenting all for posterity, but as one making tonal movies on-the-fly: contorting, mixing, and printing the results to 1/2" stereo analog tape in real time as we played. 

This scheme would, of course, prove feasible and advantageous for me only if Ryan and the other musicians found the invitation inspiring and not a hindrance to their collective creativity, upon which I have grown to so rely; and fortunately for me, they did to a man, and to them each I am grateful. As such:

We convened twice, for two days each gathering, at United Recording in Hollywood (its studio B being my favorite recording space in all of Los Angeles, its crew the kindest); and with each song emerging in rotation, we played to hear in collaboration its fundamental impulse; and as the song took shape, Ryan made decisions about how to frame it all as a visceral and singular listening experience. Ryan was, thus, a band member –essentially playing all of us as we played each song.

I had described to Ry and the fellas something of what I imagined, sonically ––referencing, for example, a particular Ray Charles album recorded live at the Olympia Civic Theatre in Los Angeles in 1964, wherein his voice throughout threatens the authority of the audio equipment employed to limit its dynamic volatility. When he sings low, the sound relaxes open like a dilated pupil, saturating with intimacy and color; and when Ray becomes fierce and pounces, it flares like a bulb being fed a wild surge of unmetered electricity, distorting like a fine line of ink being pulled into fuzzy bloom by thick and fibrous paper; and in truth, I wanted every sound to argue containment and speak like a living soul breaking out of a flat, still photograph and into vivid animation; wanted everything with its holy fractures in view.

I instinctively felt and still do feel that these songs could flourish no other way than being thrown headlong into the proverbial sea that would both toss them high and then pull them under into depths from whence none would emerge without 'the bends' that would leave them disoriented and walking oddly though steadfastly forward. The songs, after all, each initially surfaced to tease my reach like shadows in a fever dream: all of them naked and asking after succor –all of them reconciling not only light in darkness, but the light within darkness; of it: yielding what light itself shall never; all of them wanting not only for love, but to be fairly seen without judgment ––as every prodigal son and daughter longs to be.

And I embrace them here and all; am liberated, and accept that though of my own invention, these songs nonetheless will survive as they do, and well outside of my control, wild imaginings, and inevitable misgivings. So may it ever be.

They will, alas, break my heart, somehow; and in so doing, make me whole, I want to believe. Like the endless party in the apartment upstairs, they are noisy and unnerving to me even now; and by morning will leave empty bottles and un-mated shoes in their wake. 

And in this way I shall follow them on.

JH

Big Ears Festival With Marc Ribot

to any and all within the sound of my virtual voice! (and any who, perhaps, have a brother-in-law with a late-model buick who might ferry you to knoxville, TN next spring, in the manner in which you’ve become accustom and reliant…)

let this stand as a formal announcement that i shall be appearing at the acclaimed Big Ears Festival on the night of april 1st, 2016, and in the good company of my friend and oft-times collaborator Marc Ribot.

marc is a mountain, you are to understand: is inarguably one of the great living guitarists upon our landscape –nay, one of its greatest practitioners *historically* (i said don’t argue), regardless of blood function. we have been playing music together since 2000, when marc first joined me in the studio for the ‘Scar’ sessions; and since that time i have engaged his person and artistry at every possible juncture. i’ll be playing songs old and new from throughout my checkered history (read that: whatever i feel like), and marc shall orchestrate the proceedings like weather rising on an outdoor wedding –separating men from boys, and sending bridesmaids running for shelter.

please join us. tickets are now on sale. and note: whoever catches the bouquet will receive two request vouchers which shall be honored or not by the whim of the evening and level of the bourbon.

jh

Visit the Big Ears site for more info.

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UPDATE (12/3/15): Joe & Marc’s Big Ears performance will now take place on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:30pm.

UPDATE 2.0 (3/9/16): Joe & Marc’s set has been moved back to Friday night, April 1st. 10:30pm at the Bijou Theatre.

The Garfield House

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD…

This house –looking here like a cross between fairytale doom and a Christmas cookie— is called the Garfield House. It was built in 1904 by arts-and-crafts spearheads Greene and Greene for Lucretia Garfield, the former first lady and widow of the 20th President, James A. Garfield, following the commander-in-chief’s assassination in office in 1881.

My family and I have lived within its mysterious and comforting frame for nine years; and not only have our children both come into their own here, but I personally have experienced (as I know Melanie has) a most particular creative awakening that could not and would not have happened elsewhere.

The recording studio that I have run down in the basement –the very space where Mrs. Garfield’s kitchen had originally been installed, and where her cooks lived— has seen a staggering array of artists/musicians pass through its doors in just-shy-of-a-decade; and, along with hosting the manifestations of 3 Grammy-winning albums, has been witness to much holy ruckus…

From Mose Allison and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, to Solomon Burke, Jimmy Scott, Allen Toussaint, and Rodney Crowell; from Loudon Wainwright, Meshell Ndegeocello, Aaron Neville, and Mary Gauthier, to Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Over the Rhine, Jakob Dylan, The Milk Carton Kids, and John Doe. From Lizz Wright, Bill Frisell, and Van Dyke Parks, to Bonnie Raitt, Glen Hansard, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops; Lucinda Williams, Chris Hillman, Bettye LaVette and T Bone Burnett, etc.

In all, we have heard a great many songs conjured; have had love deeply affirmed, and much truth ratified.

Most importantly, there has been the on-going brother-/sisterhood of my dearest friends, without whom none of this communion could ever have been realized; and that steadfast gang includes Jay Bellerose, Jennifer Condos, Greg Leisz, Patrick Warren, David Piltch, Levon Henry, and Ryan Freeland (without whom this joint would have been nothing but a groovy clubhouse); Chris Bruce, Marc Ribot, Doyle Bramhall, Jean McClain, Julian Cubillos, Eric Heywood, and Keefus Ciancia.

The Garfield has offered me an on-going masters program, and one from which I never fully imagined graduating; but alas, it is time to pack up and move on from it, to reset the table; to turn a page with my beloved for the next chapter yet to be written.

And as we make ready for our exodus and transition, it is with both melancholy and profound gratitude.

Who knows what we shall next discover?

Joe Henry

Sam Phillips & Joe Henry: Alone And Together

To whom it may concern:

I have been discussing this possibility for years with my dear friend of a quarter century – my true sister –  Sam Phillips; and now we have formalized it: spat in our hands and shaken them.

Over two nights in february (21 and 22) we shall share a band and an evening – singing songs apart and together.

If we can’t set fire to you, we’ll set fire to ourselves. That’s how serious we are. please consider joining us if local to Largo/Coronet Theatre in West Hollywood.

Joe Henry

1 December, 2014

The Barber Of Seville

Like a birthday, the release date of a new album can send a thrum of anticipation through its alchemist’s bones, as if a great mission bell had been struck and then lowered into water; its waves moving from the balls of your feet up to your molars, passing ‘go,’ and collecting two-hundred dollars. Foolish as it may seem, you can feel like a shy kid with a new haircut: sure that every stranger, from baker to bank teller, can see something is suddenly and conspicuously different about you.

It’s a fleeting sensation to be sure, but real and nonetheless worthy of regard, given the hundreds of hours spent in isolation that even the most modest public airing stands to validate: for a brief moment you are invited from minimum-security confinement out into the open yard with the general population –to take some air, squint at the sun, and shoot a few hoops that someone may even notice and encourage.

Today is just such a day for me, as Invisible Hour –my thirteenth record as a solo artist— hits the streets and strikes out on its own like Hazel Motes with a new suit and wide hat, looking for both trouble and redemption.

And though far away from home (I write this from Seville, in the south of Spain, on the campaign trail), I share this day with my beloved family and dearest friends who helped turn a satchel full of blueprints into an actual (if jerry-rigged) flying machine. They know who they are, and know too that they have my abiding love and gratitude.

I have a few hours until show time and thus will walk this ancient, scrubby and beautiful city in search of my next coffee, bashfully nodding to any stranger who might give my barber-fresh shorn-and-powdered countenance a quick double take.

Tomorrow, after all, it will be someone else’s birthday; and if I don’t eat some cake it will only go to the bad –which would be a shame, really, after we’ve fussed over it.

Joe Henry

3 June, 2014

Invisible Hour

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

My new album that stands trembling upon your threshold, Invisible Hour, is my 13th as a solo artist. It represents plenty to me beyond sheer endurance; and though I feel myself continuing to evolve daily (as we all must), I nonetheless believe, if allowed, that this stands as a defining moment for me personally and as artist.

Mind you: I have always delivered what I believed to be my best work at any given juncture; but I sometimes recognize in retrospect inadvertent fault lines at the borders between the songs themselves and their articulation; between production concepts and the songs they mean only to serve. With this album, though —at least in this honeymoon period— I feel instead that the work all of us did in conjuring the music those four days late last summer has disappeared into the songs themselves, leaving behind no paint cans nor scaffolding; no baggage the songs were not themselves already carrying upon arrival. I mean that I hear in this final rendering, alas, no finality at all, but, rather, possibility —for liberation, for acceptance, for real-time revelation— as if the songs herein are inviting me into adventure as opposed to my simply securing them within a frame.

The songs lean into and out of folk tradition as pieces of writing, perhaps, and evidence my earliest loyalties; yet while that offered all of us a tonal bedrock, and suggested the steely rumble of acoustic instrumentation to be an appropriate point of demarcation, it also enforced mystery as a historic fact; and as such, every musician on the date sang and played less to earthly parameters and more to ghostly communion with discovery, with love in all its forms.

You will read in the album’s accompanying liner notes my suggestion that these are all, perhaps, “songs about marriage;” but I should hasten to add that that is a personal observance, and recognized much after the fact. That thread —of commitment, surrender, and hair-raising mystical alignment— does indeed snake through the whole in ways both overt and peripheral, literal and metaphoric. But though marriage as a notion moves like significant weather through its rooms, it is really the redemptive power of love in the face of fear upon which this house is built. Love is the story; and the characters paw lustfully after it –formal pairings notwithstanding.

These songs and this music sound alive to me just now, I really want to say: romantic, mortal, and singularly of a piece: ranging, though all cut from a single bolt of coarse cloth.

I am very proud of the work, and am thus, for the first time, releasing it myself (in partnership with my management on our own Work Song label), in recognition of the changing landscape and in the spirit of true ownership in every sense of that word.

Simply stated, it is my intention to be as bold and creative in taking the music out into the world as I tried to be in writing and recording it. Perhaps I am just at the point in my life, as a person and as an artist, where I understand that erecting a fence between the two was somebody else’s idea. And it has worn out its welcome.

Joe Henry

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor And The World That Made Him

I have told both of my children this many times over, regarding life and one’s expectations:

“All you can know for sure is that it won’t happen as you imagine it.”

No mystery as to where I learned this lesson. My life –both personally and professionally— has surprised me at every turn, in ways both disorienting and affirming. So may it ever be.

The news of the moment, shockingly and finally ready for public consumption, concerns the just-announced publication of a book this coming November, co-authored by my brother David and I. Entitled Furious Cool (Algonquin Press), it looks not only at the life of comedian Richard Pryor (with whom I became acquainted in the last years of his life, courtesy the strange journey of a song in which I adopted his character voice), but also the dark and raucous times that produced him and allowed his ascent.

I am not the one to ask, of course, but in my humble estimation the book is an appropriately sprawling mess and demanded to be, reflecting as it does upon the holy hell of a tender heart asked to walk out along a perilous high wire that happened also to be electrified.

You’ll laugh and you’ll cry, I mean to tell you.

And why shouldn’t you, if the books authors were willing to?

Love and revelation,

Joe Henry

You can pre-order the book at the following links:

Amazon.com

Algonquin Press

Kindle

Japan With Lisa Hannigan

Nearly 3 years ago, i toured Japan for the first time. I accepted the invitation with uncertainty, believing that –since i had never been– i’d be starting from scratch where finding an audience is concerned.

I needn’t have worried: i was shocked to find an audience waiting…one that received me warmly, knew my body of work, and listened intensely to what the performances revealed.

The trip in total was a revelation and for many reasons; thus when i was invited to return, i not only eagerly accepted, but decided too that it might provide the perfect opportunity to introduce my dear friend, the singer/songwriter Lisa Hannigan of Ireland, to this audience –and them to her. As Lisa and I have just recently toured in North America together –and given that there is no musician working today that i hold in higher esteem– it seems almost an alignment of stars that we can share in this experience together.

And thus we shall. As with our previous outing, it will be our intention to be onstage together for the duration of the evenings…contributing to each other’s songs as we can, and with the help of our brothers-in-arms, drummer Ross Turner and guitarist/singer/songwriter John Smith.

Suffice for now to say that we all look forward to whatever we may uniquely discover on this journey. All we can know for sure is that it won’t be what we imagine, but will likely be much more.

Joe Henry

—————————————————

Dates:

Oct 8 – Yokahoma @ Thump’s Up

Oct 9 – Nagoya @ Club Quattro

Oct 10 – Hiroshima @ Club Quattro

Oct 12 – Osaka @ Club Quattro

Oct 14 – Kyoto @ 京都 磔磔

Oct 16 – Tokyo @ Duo Music Exchange

Touring With Lisa Hannigan

dear friends,

now it can be told…

throughout much of june, i will be touring in collaboration with my friend and sister, the great lisa hannigan of ireland. we will be joined by her brilliant and soulful drummer, ross turner, and the heroic singer-songwriter-guitarist john smith of england.

as much as possible, we all expect to be on stage for the duration of the evening, with our hearts and minds aimed at discovery…adding to each other’s songs as we can, airing new ones as they appear, and covering a few old favorites when they offer illumination.

i for one am looking forward to this with great anticipation. there is no one working whom i admire more so than lisa –and no new musical friendships that offer more than do mine with ross and john.

i hope we may see some of you along the way.

jh

GONE / NOT GONE: Levon Helm In Motion

This past Tuesday afternoon, many of us began to receive and share word that Levon Helm was in the final stages of his long and heroic battle with cancer.

By that evening, Levon was not yet gone, but neither was he fully among the living. As we understood from his family, he was hovering at the doorway between this world and the next … still taking the air of mortals in shallow and halting breaths, but with his eyes rolled back against the drawn curtain of his times. And we hovered with him.

Yet already in that moment, for many of us sadly absorbing the falling shoe of this news and preparing for the other to drop, he had assumed the flickering posture of memory; of those who had danced alive in our high beams, throwing shadows that moved like ancient black rivers; of those who have pointed the way forward from so far behind us that they shall forever, henceforth, stand ahead on the pathway like an omen of what is still to come; of those disappeared into omnipresence, like word into deed, fear into mercy and grace.

Levon entered my life when I was so young as to have had no notion that my gate needed a guard; thus, he waltzed right in while I was completely vulnerable to his raucous and ranging alchemy, and he changed me. Like children pulled into ministerial service when still in single digits, I looked unquestioningly upon Levon Helm as my church elder … a deacon who spoke our gospel; who swung- and sung-out time in glorious illumination of its wild and elastic poetry.

In the same way that his great friend and sometimes-boss Bob Dylan connected the dots between Jimmy Reed, Arthur Rimbaud and Muhammad Ali, so Levon drew the second line that had Howlin’ Wolf, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Marvin Gaye and Hank Williams all dancing out in front of the same New Orleans funeral parade. (They all walked liked Bo Diddley and didn’t need no crutch.) He brought soul and an open heart to the darkest corners of rock music — in a troubled era he helped shape and define — and a rural humility to the grandest stages.

As I awaited word of the inevitable — while we all waited — I found there was nothing I could do but listen. And when I did, I was moved; was moving … leaning, as implied, from past tense into present action; loosing my mind to what my body already knew, to the instinctive sway of my knees and shoulders in the face of unease; and I was reminded how much of our true intelligence resides in our physical frames’ southern hemisphere.

Yes, all I could do was listen and move, and it is what we will all do today. But then, that is all Levon Helm ever asked of any of us.

Joe Henry
South Pasadena

LA Times Version Here