Description
Songwriter/composer/producer Joe Henry is a hyperliterate storyteller, drawing an authors eye for the overlooked detail across a broad swath of American musical styles folk, rock, jazz and blues and rendering genre modifiers useless. Working with an incredibly diverse range of musicians from Elvis Costello to Ornette Coleman to Richie Havens Henry has produced four Grammy-Winning records: Dont Give Up On Me(Solomon Burke), Genuine Negro Jig (Carolina Chocolate Drops), A Stranger Here (Ramblin Jack Elliott), and Slipstream (Bonnie Raitt).
Henry shares his personal reflections on the origins of his new album, The Gospel According To Water: The album is called The Gospel According To Water. It was recorded over two days this past June, and fairly by accident, when I thought I was merely making demos of thirteen new songs ahead of forgetting them all but two written between Valentines and Fathers Day; all having flowered from the black earth of recent experience namely a cancer diagnosis late last fall that left me reeling though, as well, set into motion many blessings and positive shifts in my life, as well as an unprecedented songwriting flurry.
With only a handful of friends playing in support, I entered the studio and tore through these songs with determination and abandon, then went home. I had let nothing clutter or distract me from the essential and true heart of these songs; and upon waking the morning after, I listened and understood that something had transpired that was more than Id bargained for; that the songs as articulated had sparked an ember that somehow remained bright and alive before me, moving beyond my expectations. I unexpectedly heard the songs as complete, and vividly so; and knew that the casual circumstances had not limited my expression but in fact liberated me from the cloying aim for posterity that can make weighty any session and landed me instead in a place both unencumbered by the past and unattached to futures.
Though they have all grown out of darkness, I dont believe any of these songs themselves to be dark in nature, nor about the circumstance that promoted their discovery. In them, I hear deep gratitude, and a compassion toward self that I dont always possess; an optimism I did not know Id allowed to flourish. These recordings are raw and wirey and spare because the songs insisted they be. But I believe them to be as wholly realized as produced as anything Ive touched, as well as being deeply and fundamentally romantic: in love with life, even when that life founders and threatens to disappear; lustfully aglow, not in spite of the storm but because of one. Come November, then, I will hand this all over while the sky is bright, and leaves are still turning and descending the days listing as they grow brisk and shorter. Just in time for Thanksgiving.
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