meet joe henry

Great lyrics that flow poetically while fitting naturally into the song aren’t easy, and such songwriters very often go unnoticed. Take Joe Henry, for example. If you know of him at all, it might be because he is married to the sister of Madonna, but in a perfect world he would be right up there with John Prine, Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and Bob Dylan in terms of great songwriting.

But Joe’s problem might be that he is constantly reinventing himself. His early singer-songwriter material—best represented by the two albums I want to recommend, 1992’s Short Man’s Room and Kindness of the World, which was released the following year—gave way to drum machine and sample experimentation on 1996’s Trampoline and again on 1999’s Fuse, and then a heavy dose of jazz on 2001’s Scar (with an appearance by Ornette Coleman) and 2003’s Tiny Voices.

You can’t blame an artist for branching out, and Henry has certainly kept his amazing songwriting ability throughout his many reincarnations, but a part of me is always hoping that he delves back into his Americana roots for old time’s sake.

Henry essentially uses the Jayhawks for his back up band on both Short Man and Kindness at a time when that band was also at its zenith, but the songs would’ve worked if Henry had sat alone in the bathroom and played them into a Mr. Microphone. Fold out the CD sleeve and randomly point at the printed lyrics and you will find a line that any given songwriter would kill for. I have never been to Michigan, but the way he croons “ In Sault Sainte Marie the hills glow without the hand of God” has done more to motivate me to visit than any commercial or ad in a travel magazine. Any songwriter in Nashville would’ve taken a line like “And if I never hear another word from you, then I’ll remember that too, as something you once said” and made it into a damn fine hook, but Henry casually places it near the end of “Reckless Child” with equal weight to the rest of the song.

Those are a couple of examples from Short Man, but I would probably have to go with Kindness if I had to choose between the two. There is something about the sense of loss and steel guitar waltz of “Third Reel” that gets me a little choked up every time, and it sets the listener up perfectly the upbeat and driving “Dead to the World” that immediately follows and begins side two.

I mention Joe Henry now because I always revisit him in the fall and spring. I went digging into my chaotic mountain of CDs for these two this morning, and I have yet to find my copy of Short Man. If you go looking for your own copy of either of these—and I highly recommend that you do—you’ll probably have to find a second-hand copy through Amazon, but there is something poetic in that too.