Joe Henry Addresses the Nation: The GobQ & A
Steve Almond

At 41, Joe Henry is hardly an overnight sensation. Over the past fifteen years, the Michigan native has made eight records, ranging from the rootsy ballads of Short Man’s Room (1992) to the moody, groove-driven sound of Trampoline (1996). His most recent effort, Scar, is a hypnotic blend of jazz, soul, funk, & Latin music.
     Henry’s albums still sell a fraction of his old high school classmate, Madonna (who also happens to be his sister-in-law). But his work has attracted a cult following which includes some of the finest musicians in the world, including pianist Brad Melhaus, Ornette Coleman, & Marc Ribot. More recently, Henry has made his mark as a producer, manning the boards on Solomon Burke’s new record, Don’t Give Up On Me, for which he very recently won a Grammy.
     He spoke to Gobshite Quarterly from his home in South Pasadena.

GobQ: How did your music evolve from alt-country to this much more atmospheric sound?
JH: For starters, I don’t think I ever looked at the music I made as alt-country. I didn’t look at it as anything except unpopular. [Laughs.] The thing is, at that point in my career, I had to make albums fast and I didn’t have a lot of money, so the arrangements were small and rootsy. But eventually, I wanted more colors on my palette. I think of it as like live theater versus making a movie. Now I have the means to create illusion and effects, to build on a bigger scale. So a lot of that evolution was just me learning how to make records.
GobQ: Is it true you made Fuse [1998] from the beats up?
JH: Yeah. I looked at the music I considered essential, that I returned to again and again, and most of it was rhythm-oriented. The other thing that was happening during that album is that my daughter had just been born and I had to look after her. So I’d put her down to sleep and go out to the garage with the baby monitor. I had maybe 50 minutes to two hours before she got up again. So I had to play everything by myself and the truth is, I’m not a very fluid player on the guitar, so I needed some beats to create the sensation of my having some chops.
GobQ: You seem to want to surprise people with your music.
JH: Yeah, and the thing that amazes me is that some people are actually irritated to be surprised. They’ll hear a particular record and want the artist to do that same thing over and over. But every artist whose records I respected growing up and continue to respect — all their stuff is different. I took it to be my job not to repeat myself. Because when you make an album, it should be a complete thing, a statement of what your concerns and fears and dreams are at a particular moment in your history. It shouldn’t just be: well, here are some songs, and there are some leftover ones that I’ll use for the next album.
GobQ: Would you consider Bob Dylan a good example of the kind of artist you’re talking about?
JH: The consummate example. He never repeats himself. And if you listen to his records in full, you can hear that he made them, really, as small films. He’s making a whole series of choices, in the instruments he uses, in how the vocals are placed in proximity to those instruments, in the order of the songs, in the feel of them together. And even in his live shows he does this. That must have been what it was like to go see Charlie Parker. You didn’t know what you were going to hear. That was the whole point, the whole source of excitement.
     Or take Miles Davis. What do you do with him? Where do you file his stuff? And the answer is: you file his stuff in the Miles Davis category. He provided his own context. And we may try to create genres out of what he left behind. But that’s just us, trying. He’s a great example of someone who restlessly took from everything available.
GobQ: What do you take from?
JH: Well, I mean, I’m 41, and at this point, there’s so much amazing music available to me. And it’s not just music that I try to draw from. I mean, it’s foolish to talk about music just in terms of other kinds of music, because I’m a big reader and a lover of film. So those are major influences on what I do. I love words especially. I love what they do physically, the sounds of words. And there are certain writers who are just...hallucinatory. Alice Munro, for instance. I’m just mad for her. I read her stories and the language is so conversational, it seems so simple. But the way she chooses her words, the choices she makes, create this effect, there’s this abstracted floating detached voice that I can’t even describe entirely. Somehow, the voice defies the simplicity of the words and makes her prose feel transcendent.
GobQ: Munro is the rare example of a literary writer who’s found a large audience. Are you hopeful your music will do the same thing?
JH: Actually, I always say failure is incredibly liberating. I honestly believe I’m lucky. I look at someone like Jakob Dylan and he had this big hit right out of the gate and suddenly everyone in the band buys houses and cars and then, to some degree, everything you do has to be about supporting that success. You start to think: I’ve got to keep this thing going. Jakob always tells me that he’s envious of me. He says, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ And I tell him: so can you. Just do what your soul tells you you need to do.
GQ: But that takes a good deal of confidence, doesn’t it?
JH: I guess so. But I do think that the work creates its own kind of assurance. I’ve always trusted, in terms of the next record, that I’ll know when I’m supposed to know. I’ll hear or see or read the right thing and suddenly it becomes clear what I should be doing.
GobQ: Is that what happened with the first song on Scar, “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation”?
JH: That’s exactly what happened. I wrote that first line — “sometimes I think I’ve almost fooled myself” — and I realized it was about Richard. I didn’t set out to write a song for or about him. But he became the fuel. And the idea of that song led me to Ornette Coleman. Because, if the song was going to be this blues thing — not blues in that corny way, but an orchestrated languid thing based on blues — then someone was going to have to supply the tension. And that person had to be Ornette. I kept hearing Ornette at the center of the song. And I figured what I’d do is keep this part in my head and then find someone else to do it. Then I got this call from a friend in New York who’s a lawyer and he said, “Guess who I’m having breakfast with? Ornette Coleman. I guess I’m going to be his lawyer on some stuff. Isn’t that a kick in the pants?”
     So a few months later, I sent Ornette a package with a letter that told him that I’d worked with Don Cherry at one point, and I included a copy of Fuse, so he could see I was legitimate. My feeling was that if he reads the letter and doesn’t listen to Fuse, my request might make sense. But if he listens to Fuse he won’t understand why I’m bothering him. So anyway, I got a call from his rep who said, “No offense, but Ornette’s not interested. He’s been asked a thousand times by everybody in the world, but he’s never been a sideman to anybody. ” So a few days go by and his rep calls me and says, “I can’t believe I’m calling you, but Ornette just spent the weekend listening to Fuse and he completely understands what you’re after and, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but he wants to be involved.”
GobQ: Were you floored?
JH: Floored. A couple of months after we recorded together, I turned 40, and my wife and kids brought me coffee in bed — this is at 8:30 in the morning — and the phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer it. But my wife said, ‘It’s probably your parents.’ So I picked up the phone and it was Ornette and he played happy birthday for me for two minutes on the phone. It was the most amazing human gesture.
GobQ: How did Madonna decide to cover “Stop”?
JH: I played the song for my wife and she told me, “I can hear my sister singing this song.” I thought she was crazy. But then again, my wife is a very intuitive person. If she told me not to get on an airplane, I wouldn’t. And she was right. My sister-in-law liked the song. I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months. I forgot about it. Then she got back to me and said, “Would it be alright if I rearranged the music a bit?” I told her she couldn’t possibly offend me, so knock yourself out with it. So, you know, my arrangement is a tango, but she did it as this smart dance groove. And it’s a really good lesson in songwriting, because people can hear both versions and not make any connection. I went to see Madonna at the Staples Center out here a couple of months ago, and that song got a bigger response than anything. It was just her and a guitarist and a drum machine and there were 20,000 people singing along. That’s not an everyday occurrence for me.
GobQ: Does that mean you really would like a bigger audience?
JH: The vain part of me, sure. But the truth is that vanity is complete death to art. The greatest art happens when people step outside of their ego. And I didn’t make that up. John Cage told me that a long, long time ago. I’ve got no reason to think I’m not exactly where I’m supposed to be.

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© Steve Almond