Joe Henry

Last night my two best friends in the world went to see Joe Henry at the legendary Blue Note in Manhattan. I was supposed to be at the show with them, and really wish I could've been. I hear the show was everything a person could expect out of the man i think has the most accomplished body of work in the music world of the whole last decade.

Beginning with the Craig Street produced, avante-garde meets tin-pan alley 'Scar' in 1990, Joe Henry has been creating unclassifiable but unmistakeably American masterpieces, all through the naughts. Mr. Henry is a student of the blues, jazz, folk, and pop that define this country musically. He's proven his credibility producing albums by the likes of Allen Toussaint, Bettye Lavette, Ani Difranco, Loudon Wainwright III, Solomon Burke, and the Blind Boys of Alabama; but Mr. Henry has really shown his chops on his own records these last ten years. His obtuse but highly lyrical songwriting, coupled with compositions running the gamut of American roots music, presented in challenging incarnations, performed by the most talented and respected studio musicians of our times, have resulted in a body of work with no comparison. I mean that literally. Try to compare any one of his last four albums to anything out there and you'll be stretching your imagination at the least. Scar, Tiny Voices, Civilians, Blood From Stars. These albums are what it means to be an American and a romantic.