God Is In The Details

Joe Henry (brief) winter update

Just a few activities of note to keep you JH fans excited:

• Based on Joe's Facebook postings last week, it would appear that the Johnny Cash Bitter Tears project has commenced recording.  According to JH, visitors to Garfield House included Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and Rhiannon Giddens (from Carolina Chocolate Drops).
• The live session from KEXP in December has made the rounds on NPR's website, and "Swayed" (one of the new songs from the upcoming Invisible Hour) is available for download as a video podcast.
• JH joined a host of wonderful aritsts at The Troubadour in LA for a tribute to the late Phil Everly.
• UPDATE:  I also meant to note that the folks at American Songwriter were kind enough to post a recent article from their January issue, which features The Milk Carton Kids discussing one of their mentors (guess who).

That's about all I know for now, but I'm sure we'll be hearing plenty about Invisible Hour in the coming months.

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Joe Henry's new record 'Invisible Hour' to be released Spring 2014

Billboard has an interview and some details about JH's new record, Invisible Hour.  Significantly, the album will not be released by Anti- but through some alternative distribution model, hopefully around April of 2014.

The article also mentions the upcoming project related to Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears.

Joe Henry to produce 'Bitter Tears' project

Loyal JH fan and reader John R. passes along this bit of exciting news from the Chicago Sun-Times.

In the meantime, JH is winding his way through his handful of acoustic dates right now, stopping in Ann Arbor tonight.

 

Autumn Joe Henry update

Well, we've had several nights in the 50's here in Houston, which must mean the rest of you in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying between seasonal and frigid conditions.  As such, I apologize for the lack of posts recently and hope this will catch you up on a few recent JH happenings.

• Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him, by David Henry and Joe Henry, has just been released by Algonquin Books.  The hardcover recently shipped and the e-book should be out any day now.  Brothers David and Joe will be doing a few signings around the country, if you can catch them.  This is at the top of my reading list - can't wait!
• JH will be delivering a few more acoustic performances in December, following his rousing sucess at Largo this past July.  Dates are as follows:  Dec 3, Minneapolis; Dec 4, Chicago; Dec 5, Ann Arbor; Dec 7, Seattle.  Not to be missed if you are nearby.
• UK duo Chas & Dave have just released their new record That's What Happens, produced by JH at Abbey Road Studios.  It is available at Amazon UK (still awaiting delivery of my copy).
• Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil Warwas released yesterday by ATO Records.  This unique project celebrates a unique period in American and American music history.  JH contributes several productions by artists like Taj Mahal, Chris Hillman, John Doe and T-Bone Burnett.  He is also backed on a track of his own by The Milk Carton Kids (you can hear the whole record over at Garden & Gun).
• Speaking of whom, I had the great pleasure of seeing The Milk Carton Kids at their sold out Houston show last night.  They'll be heading back to LA and hosting a revue at Largo next Tuesday, Nov 12.  Who knows who might turn up?  They'll also be back at Largo on Saturday, Nov 16.
• Close JH friend Sam Phillips will also be at Largo this weekend for her only solo shows of the year (Nov 9 is sold out, Nov 10 is on sale).  She will be backed by JH cohorts Jay Bellerose, Jennifer Condos and Greg Leisz.
• Over The Rhine will wind up their fall tour on the West Coast in the coming weeks.  They will continue to be backed by Jay Bellerose, Jennifer Condos and Eric Heywood, who contributed their talents to their double CD Meet Me At The Edge Of The World.  Dates here - I can't imagine who might turn up at The El Rey!
• You might recall that New West Records auctioned a number of 7-inch singles to benefit Replacements guitarist Slim Dunlap earlier in the year.  On Nov 12, they will release a compliation of the tracks, which feature a number of production contributions from JH as well as his excellent take of "Taken On The Chin."  The 2 CD set will feature tracks not previously available.
• Glen Hansard will release an EP on Nov 25, featuring his epic cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Drive All Night".  The track features vocals from JH and Eddie Vedder, plus sax by Jake Clemons (nephew of Clarence Clemons).  The track was recorded at Garfield House and produced by JH.  You can hear the song over at Rolling Stone.

That's about all I know for now.  I know of at least one artist who has recently graced the basement of Garfiled House, and I would expect to hear about that project in the coming months.  And, of course, all indications are that we'll be hearing about a new JH album any day now.  Fingers crossed!

Over The Rhine - 'Meet Me At The Edge Of The World': A Review by Josh Hurst

{Ed. note:  Once again, writer and critic Josh Hurst has generously offered up a review for the site, this time for Over The Rhine's sprawling double CD Meet Me At The Edge Of The World.  Many thanks to him for the letting us enjoy it here...}

Long before we knew anything else about Over the Rhine’s 2013 LP—before we (or they, possibly) knew that it was a double album, before we knew that its songs would be harvested and preserved in a South Pasadena basement studio, before we even knew that it would arrive in our mailboxes in 2013—we were told that the album would be called The Farm. It is not a very evocative title, and there is a feeling of rightness to the album’s finished title Meet Me at the Edge of the World, which perfectly encapsulates the particular and peculiar mystery of this nineteen-song cycle; listeners will doubtless feel that this was meant to be the record’s title all along, that it was only briefly christened The Farm because its real name had not yet fully revealed itself.

But in the world of Over the Rhine, names—even temporary ones—always mean something: The Farm, placeholder though it may be, is a title that strikes me as quintessentially Over the Rhine. It might have almost been a fitting title for this album because the album is—yes—rooted in a very specific piece of real estate, an actual Ohio farm that’s playfully referred to by its caretakers as Nowhere (Now Here?)—but also because, with Over the Rhine, there has always been a certain workmanlike quality to the writing and recording of songs. I don’t mean that in a bad way: There are musicians who are more like architects than farmhands, raising towers forged from imagination and ego in equal measure, ambition tempered with indulgence. Over the Rhine—who are, we all know by now, husband/wife team Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist—have been given a garden of songs to tend and to harvest, and they do so with a genuinely affecting warmth and faithfulness, growing their songs from season to season, whether lovingly homemade recordings or gussied-up films for radio. They do what they do, one always feels, for the profoundly simple reason that it’s the job they’ve been given, the particular piece of earth they’ve been asked to till. Few musicians seem to share their profound sense of vocation.

So this new album, then: It was recorded with captain/producer Joe Henry and his crew, in Joe’s basement studio. He also produced The Long Surrender, which came out in 2011 and is probably still my personal favorite Over the Rhine record, though this one is just as fully-formed and is even more sweeping in its scope. He is such a simpatico producer that one imagines he might have become a full-fledged member of the band, had he been living in the right Ohio town at the right time in the 1980s. And it’s not hard to imagine what Linford and Karin see in him; like them, Joe Henry is a songwriter whose compositions always sound like he plucked them clean out of the air, even though he probably puts a great deal of hard work and elbow grease into making them sound so effortless and organic. 

Meet Me at the Edge of the World is a collection of country music, I think, more than any other Over the Rhine album to date. I don’t just say that because it is music about the country, nor because there is a heavy dose of steel guitar here, blurring the edges of these songs with mystery and grace. I say it because the songs are simple and direct, their emotions immediately apparent, the lyrics personal and unadorned. (What I mean to say is, Linford’s Leonard Cohen/Blonde on Blonde fixations never seem to surface here; there is no “Infamous Love Song.”)

The vibe is rustic, ramshackle, and dusty; previous Over the Rhine albums have generally been marked by Linford’s piano and Karin’s singing, presented with clarity and precision, but Meet Me feels like a new chapter, one in which the traditional roles of the band need not be so clearly-defined as they have been in the past. The piano plays a smaller role here than on any Over the Rhine album since—well, Eve, probably. Linford and Karin develop some rich harmonies throughout the album; he has never been more present as a singer, and indeed, the two share their first-ever recorded duet (discounting things like “Don’t Wait for Tom,” I reckon) at the beginning of Disc 2. The cumulative effect is a kind of mystic vibe that replaces the last album’s swirling, Astral Weeks feel with a more rooted and earthy barnyard hum—with, I should say, some heavy Big Pink vibes, especially in the Garth Hudson-styled organ that accents “Called Home.” (There is an actual Band song on the second half of the album, too.)

It is a warmer and more assured album than their previous double, Ohio, and more sophisticated, to boot. Double albums are known for their great sprawl, but this is no White Album, nor even a Sign ‘o’ the Times; the nine songs that make up the first disc are as tight and as unified a sequence as Over the Rhine has ever released, developing lyrical motifs and sustaining a consistent mood even as the songs dart down the occasional side road—the handclap funk on “Gonna Let My Soul Catch My Body,” for example. The second disc is a continuation of the first and the same themes spill over, but it’s also a little more loose and unencumbered, its edges left wild. A couple of brief instrumentals add character and context to the album—though they’re each just a minute long, they feel essential to the fabric of this record—and the Band song (“It Don’t Make No Difference”) is re-imagined as something that’s simultaneously easygoing and heartbreaking; they make it their own, even while tipping their hat to some of this collection’s musical and spiritual touchstones. 

I used the word “heartbreaking,” and I’m not the first person to do so in the context of an Over the Rhine album. I remember seeing the band perform, in the summer when they released their jubilant and celebratory Trumpet Child album, and Karin joked at the time that the band would soon return to writing their songs of sadness and melancholy. Meet Me at the Edge of the World is not a melancholy record, though, and in fact it sounds to me like the sound of contentment. It’s an album about home, written from the perspective of two travelers who have found that very place; they may still miss it, as they take their songs out into the world, but it’s an affectionate longing for a destination they know and love, not the restlessness of two seekers. (Likewise: The song called “I’d Want You” is not a song of loneliness for an unnamed, undiscovered lover, it doesn’t seem to me, but one of longing and desire for a particular beloved.)

The record’s contentedness does not mean it is frivolous, or even that it is marked by a prevailing sense of good cheer; there is a warmth of love, acceptance, and familiarity here that illuminates that record’s darkest corners, and bolsters the listener’s spirits as he allows these mysteries to wash over him. And indeed, the album’s mantra to “leave the edges wild”—which appears in many of its songs, on both discs—bids us to avoid compartmentalizing the record too neatly. Contented though Linford and Karin sound to me, then, it is worth noting that the album makes multiple mentions to sacrifices made; this sense of home is hard-won and long fought for, it seems. I also hear several mentions of mortality here; the title of the song “Called Home” takes on two meanings, and a song on the second disc considers the question that all long-time lovers face sooner or later, if they’re honest with themselves—“who’s gonna bury who?” 

The performances and the production ensure that there are small, sensual pleasures to be found throughout the album—that Garth Hudson organ on “Called Home,” the reliable thump of Jay Bellerose’s drums, the seductive slow burn of “I’d Want You,” and on down the line. “Highland County” is an amiable country shuffle; “Wait,” which recaptures the incredible holy-moment feel of the last album’s “Rave On,” pays off the album’s patient and luxurious pacing with something so aching, you can feel it on your skin. The duet on “All Over Ohio” might just make it the essential Over the Rhine song, Linford’s plainspoken drawl and Karin’s soulful gale perfectly encapsulating the strange and wondrous alchemy that has for so long been the group’s calling card.

On and on goes the list: “Earthbound Love Song,” a backporch folk song that references Johnny and June (the patron saints of musical couples, I dare say), wonders if joy and redemption are as real on Earth as they are in the sweet hereafter, a gospel flourish that grounds the album’s themes of contented domesticity. “Cuyahoga” is one of the minute-long instrumentals, but it feels like it could go on forever, steadily flowing like the river that gives it its name; “The Birds of Ohio,” meanwhile, is a playful piano showcase. (I mention them both to emphasize that they are not “interludes” or throwaways, despite their brevity.) And in the band’s grand tradition of perfect album closers, which draw together all the thematic strands that have preceded, there is “Favorite Time of Light.” The last album ended with a spiritual of human brokenness, “All My Favorite People,” and this one is a kind of a spiritual as well, I think—only this time, it’s a quietly stirring witness to the joys that arise from little things, small moments of grace, shared together.

I said before that, in the world of Over the Rhine, names are important. Meet Me at the Edge of the World—the album formerly known as The Farm—could have very easily been titled Over the Rhine, and none of us would have had to ask why. (It is a masterwork in the truest sense, that is.) This feels like the most personal set of songs the band has ever recorded, the one that’s the most them—and yes, I’ve heard Drunkard’s Prayer. Its affection for a specific piece of land—called Nowhere; called Home—is something that only Linford and Karin could have conjured, yet it is also universal in its resonance. This band—restless in leaving life’s edges wild, but sounding assured of the work that’s theirs to do—bids the listener to sit, be still, to revel in small joys, to find meaning in vocation and in homes both heavenward and earthbound. By which I mean only to say that, like every other record released by Over the Rhine, this one feels like a unique an invaluable gift.

Hugh Laurie's 'Didn't It Rain' out now in US & Canada

Joe Henry produced it.  You should go buy it.

Then there's this...

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Paste magazine visits with Linford Detweiler; MMATEOTW headed to fans

Linford Detweiler of Over The Rhine spoke with Paste about the upcoming double album, Meet Me At The Edge Of The World (produced by JH; due Sep. 3).  You can also listen to the Track #3 from the record "Sacred Ground."

However, in more exciting news, fans who funded the record have received shipping notices that their packages are on the way.  So you should start hearing a collective murmur of excitement from OtR fans over the next days!

New Joe Henry-produced Chas & Dave album due in October (UK)

British duo Chas & Dave (Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock) will release their first album of new material in 27 years.  The album will revisit some of their early work as well and feature guest spots by Albert Lee and Hugh Laurie.  And, of course, Joe Henry produced the entire affair.

Okay, Brits, fill me in -- I'm entirely unfamiliar with the work of Chas & Dave.  Can't wait to hear it.

It's due October 28.  You can pre-order via Amazon UK here and read more about the record in The Guardian.

UPDATE: Great preview of the new record, featuring interviews with the players and JH...

Joe Henry to be included on (really cool) Civil War compilation (updated)

This fall will see the release of a very intriguing 2-disc compilation of Civil War-era tunes, recorded by some fantastic artists.  Joe Henry will contribute "Aura Lee" -- and maybe some production work on the other tracks?

Read more about Divided & United and hear Loretta Lynn's contribution here.

UPDATE:  A bit more info (from The Man himself):

• "Aura Lee" features 3-part harmony courtesy of The Milk Carton Kids
• JH also lends production duties to tracks by Taj Mahal, John Doe, Carolina Chocolate Drops and Chris Hillman (plus assistance on the Sam Amidon track)
• And in a neat twist, JH also produced the track from T Bone Burnett, who was Joe's production mentor

Hugh Laurie's 'Didn't It Rain' due in US/Canada on Aug. 6

Hugh Laurie's latest JH-produced album Didn't It Rain will get a very welcome release in the U.S. and Canada on August 6.  Pre-order information here.

Read the recent review by guest blogger Josh Hurst here.