Joe Henry Biography

With his grand musical scope and infamously wry-but-somber observations, esteemed singer/songwriter and producer Joe Henry has crafted the defiantly alluring Civillians, his tenth album and his second for Anti-. Soulful and warm, sparse and direct, the sophisticated bard has designed a career-defining record, one that will quickly become an obsession to those who lend an ear.

Recorded and mixed in his home studio, Civillians counts the talents of guest pianist Van Dyke Parks on tracks like the emotive, lilting "I Will Write My Book" and the brilliantly poignant, elegiac "Civil War." Elsewhere, the title cut swings as much as it perceptively stings, while the blues-inflected, "Time Is A Lion" result in the crowning achievement of Joe Henry's storied history.

"I wanted these songs to operate in a way that was clearer," Henry explains. "I set a goal to be sonically, lyrically and vocally lucid. My last record (2003's Tiny Voices) was intentionally chaotic, like a Bunuel film shown on the side of a building during a rain storm. I knew it wasn't for everybody. But when I started writing for Civilians, I was very conscious of wanting to strip things back. I wanted to hear more air in the room. And I picked musicians accordingly."

With jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist and chamberlain organist Patrick Warren, guitarist and dobro master Greg Leisz, bassist Dave Piltch and longtime drummer Jay Bellerose, Henry has assembled an ideal cast for his latest disc. In the terse and love-torn "Scare Me To Death," the winsome, uplifting folk-scape "Shut Me Up" and the album's masterful centerpiece "Our Song," that notion is affirmed and then some.

The latter balances sharp personal and political observations with assurance and sophistication, as a sardonic, spirited Henry portrays an overdeveloped, insensitive and downright pushy America. As for his ironic depiction of the song�s main character bumping into baseball icon Willie Mays at a Scottsdale, Arizona Home Depot, Henry admits, "It's no accident that the song falls where it does, in the middle of the record. It's sort of the hub of the wheel. Once I'd written it, it influenced how I heard everything else."

But if that tune and the aforementioned "Civil War" are ripe with what Henry calls "political undertones and overtones," he insists they weren't contrived. "I've never sat down with the idea of writing a quote-unquote political record or even a political song, for that matter. The process of writing for me has always been the process of discovering what I'm writing about. I never really know where I'll wind up. And in this case, I see in retrospect that the times in which we live have somewhat subverted the process."

Henry says his only aim for Civilians was, "to make a better record, a different record than I've made before." And despite such critically heralded discs as 1992's Short Man's Room, 1993's Kindness of the World, 1996's Trampoline, "99's Fuse and 2002's Scar (which All Music Guide called "a triumph for American Music") in his back pocket, the ambitious musician/producer blows that goal out of the water.

"I don't think I've ever made a record where I felt less concerned by what anyone might think of it - be it my label, my manager, my wife, or whomever," he confesses. "I felt completely liberated, and I think that the fact that I've been producing so many records for others has gotten me to the place where I've learned to work with an aerial view; and it's a relief whenever I can hear a song outside the clutter of my own vanity. I find that's a place of strength rather than of resignation."

Having produced artists as diverse as Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, Billy Preston, Bettye LaVette, an Allen Toussaint/Elvis Costello collaboration and the 2003 Grammy Award winning Solomon Burke disc Don't Give Up On Me - plus his longtime hero Loudon Wainwright III for the soundtrack to the smash summer Judd Apatow movie Knocked Up - Henry says all of these collaborations have informed Civilians.

"As a producer, you can see a project in a completely different way," says Henry, who also recently worked with Richie Havens, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, John Doe and Bob Forrest on the soundtrack to the Bob Dylan-inspired Todd Haynes film, I'm Not There: Suppositions On A Film Concerning Dylan. "Working with other artists has given me an incredible freedom, so that when I come back to do work for myself I plug into the music in a different way. Perhaps because the whole of my artistry doesn't rest with my records alone, I am fearless, in a way. There's less to lose and yet, somehow, much more to gain."

Those perspectives light up Civillians, turning it into Henry's most consistent and endearing song-cycle to date. From the contagious, roaring thump of "Time Is A Lion" to the soulful, cool, devotional breeze of "Love Is Enough," the follow up to Henry's praised 2003 Anti-debut is bolstered by charm and confidence.

"The songs have the right amount of smoke, the right number of mirrors and the right kind of clarity," Henry says of his art. "And I'm not sure, that with all of the records that I've made, I've ever felt that way before now."

"I feel like I'm moving forward with Civilians," Henry concludes with an air of self-assurance and resolution. "I wouldn't say that it came together effortlessly, but this record certainly feels as if it happened the way it was supposed to."