Reluctant Singer/Songwriter - Joe Henry Fuses Genres by Steve Baltin
First appeared in BAM magazine on March 12th, 1999
Joe Henry may be a singer and a songwriter, but don't call him a
"singer/songwriter." "I always bristle at the 'singer/songwriter' tag," he says.
"I am a singer, and I do write songs, but I think that tag has come to be
something very specific, and I don't have much interest in what that is."
Although Henry's new album, Fuse, incorporates elements of folk, country-rock,
blue-eyed soul and samples-and a jazzy-instrumental number-the tag still follows
him.
"If I was starting over, I would still do what I do but work under the name of a
band," he says. "Then people accept you differently." He cites his friends
Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, the Wallflowers' Jakob Dylan (Dylan supplies
backing vocals on the new album's "Skin & Teeth") and Helmet's Page Hamilton as
musicians he feels are treated differently because they work under a band
moniker.
To Henry, the advantages of performing under the guise of a group extend to
having more freedom musically, at least from the expectations of fans. "This is
my seventh LP and they've been all really different musically," he says. "It
does confuse people. You jump around and do different things and people think
you're just being contrary. I think it's really limiting that people hear a
record and they think, 'OK, that's what you are.' All you're really allowed to
be for them then is that one thing."
Many of the rising stars in music, from Tricky to DJ Shadow, have circumvented
those limitations by using pseudonyms for projects that don't fall into their
"normal" catalogues. However, Henry says that at this point in his career, that
is not an option for him. "I've got too much invested in this," he says. "I
wouldn't relish just starting over."
While Henry is hardly a household name to the average fan, he has, over the
course of his seven albums, earned a great deal of critical praise and respect
from his peers. Indeed, Fuse, which Henry produced himself, boasts mixing by
T-Bone Burnett and Grammy-winner Daniel Lanois, two of the most respected
producers in music today. Henry is returning the favor by, in his words, "kind
of producing Burnett right now." The project is clearly in its infancy, as Henry
says about it, "We'll see where that goes."
Though Henry also co-produced the last solo record for former Throwing Muses
frontwoman Kristen Hersh, as well as a new band on Capitol Records that has yet
to be released, he doesn't have designs on competing with Burnett and Lanois for
production work. "I am interested in [production], but probably only to a
point," he says. "I didn't come to that job by wanting to ride herd on someone
else's activity. I learned to be a producer out of necessity."
He does admit, however, that he finds a certain freedom in handling production
chores for others. "Working with somebody else's material can be liberating
because you don't have so much of your own identity at stake," he says. "It's
easier to take your ego out of it and just hear it as a piece of music."
Though Henry has produced his own work before on several occasions, Fuse was a
different experience for him. While on previous albums, he recorded live in the
studio-making him what he refers to as more of a "bandleader" than a producer-he
took a more piecemeal approach to making Fuse, prompted by the birth of his
daughter 16 months ago (he also has a seven-year-old son). "That completely
altered when and how I was able to work," he says. "I had to learn how to make
better use of my time when I had it."
For Henry, who is a dedicated family man (when we were scheduling our phone
interview, he specifically requested that we do it at a time where it would be
finished before his son got home from school, so it wouldn't take away from
their time together), the birth of his children has given him perspective on his
music. "I've never been terribly precious about what I do," he says, "but I've
been a lot less precious with the whole process since having children. I just
have less drama. Music is not the most powerful force in my life."
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