Joe Henry is a songwriter, producer, and writer who has released over 15 solo records on labels such as A&M and Anti-, and has produced records for a long list of artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, Solomon Burke, Allen Toussaint, Rodney Crowell, Aimee Mann, Ani Difranco, Teddy Thompson, John Doe, and more. We have a diverse conversation about keeping yourself in the creative stream, knowing when to step away, acceptance, and much surrounding the Tom Waits quote, "How you do anything is how you do everything."
Joe Henry is a songwriter, producer, and writer who has released over 15 solo records on labels such as A&M and Anti-, and has produced records for a long list of artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, Solomon Burke, Allen Toussaint, Rodney Crowell, Aimee Mann, Ani Difranco, Teddy Thompson, John Doe, and more. We have a diverse conversation about keeping yourself in the creative stream, knowing when to step away, acceptance, and much surrounding the Tom Waits quote, "How you do anything is how you do everything."
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All music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:07] Aaron: Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of The Other 22 Hours Podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:12] Michaela: And I'm your host, Michaela Anne. And since this show is still not even a year old, which feels hard to believe, We just want to say an extra thank you for checking us out if this is your first time and for coming back if you're a return listener.
[00:00:25] Aaron: Yeah, we are very humbled that you guys choose to listen to this podcast repeatedly. We really enjoy having these conversations and it just is so fulfilling to hear that it resonates with all of you as well. If there is an episode that really sticks out in your mind, maybe it's this one or maybe it's one that you've heard recently, if you wouldn't mind just sharing that with somebody that you think might dig it as well, it could be, on social media, it could be via text, whatever word of mouth is the best way for us to get in front of more listeners and the fact of the matter is the more listeners we have, the longer we can do this and the more ideas we can share with you guys.
And we would love to do that. So if you could take a minute and pass along your favorite episode, we'd really appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah,
[00:01:06] Michaela: we're not your typical music promo show. We're not promoting the latest single, the latest record, We like to talk to artists about the off times and we want to focus on the behind the scenes tools and routines they found helpful in staying inspired, overcoming obstacles, remaining creative and sane while building a career around art.
[00:01:27] Aaron: Which is an incredibly insane thing to do because as Anybody that has tried to do that knows. There's so much that is outside of our control. And so we'd like to focus on what is within our control, our creativity, our mindsets, all of that. And we approach our guests with the general question of what do you do to create sustainability in your life and your practice so that you can sustain your creativity?
And we have an amazing conversation to share with you today with songwriter. writer, producer, Joe Henry, who, Has been a big influence on me for a lot of years, a couple decades at this point. And I think I kept my cool, but I was very excited about the whole thing. Yeah, we were
[00:02:12] Michaela: 22 years old and we went and saw him play at the Blue Note I was working at Nonesuch Records and was right out of college and was like, my boyfriend and I are really big fans of Joe Henry. And David was like the president of Nonesuch Records then vice president was like I'll take you guys to the Blue Note to
[00:02:27] Aaron: see him. Yeah. My friend Taylor Martin, who's a great songwriter in Asheville, North Carolina, gave me.
Joe's record Scar when I was 19. It was a burned copy and I essentially wore it out and was just floored the first time I heard it. And I went on to buy most of the rest of his records on iTunes. You played it really
[00:02:46] Michaela: cool. You didn't even mention that when you
[00:02:47] Aaron: talked about that song.
Well, I, you know. I stole your record. It really influenced me and then I bought all of them. So it's funny, when I turn on iTunes you know, I don't have an internet connection. So it just shows me that the records I own, it's like a lot of Joe Henry records and then a lot of records that Joe Henry has produced like A Bright Mississippi by Alan Toussaint, which is, one of our favorite records.
He's produced records. For Solomon Burke, he's produced records for Bonnie Raitt.
[00:03:10] Michaela: Amy Mann, Ani DeFranco, Rodney Crowell. Let's see, this is a long list that we wrote down so we wouldn't forget Elvis Costello, Teddy Thompson, John Doe, who was our guest last week, Shelly Wright Aoife O'Donovan, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Birds of Chicago.
The list is long. Yeah,
[00:03:28] Aaron: and it was really refreshing to hear that there It's really no delineation for Joe between being a producer and being a songwriter. It's still, shepherding the recordings into existence which is a really beautiful thing. We've had producer artists on here before, but as I've recounted Joe, I don't think we've had somebody that really does the two, on such an equal level.
Level. And if I was to sum up this entire conversation in one word, I'd just use the word acceptance. Joe has a really grounded open, holistic view of creativity and creating and accepting life Where it is and what it gives you accepting the song that comes, you know He shares a great story near the end of the episode about trying to really do everything he can to steer this song away from spot that felt too close felt uncomfortable to him and the fact that he couldn't and it still made a record and he accepted it and said had two options.
I could say yes, or I could say no And it was a really beautiful thing, a lot of talk about staying in the stream of creativity and not getting in the way of that. Which is a beautiful analogy.
[00:04:36] Michaela: yeah, there was so much wisdom there are so many times these conversations, I don't want them to end. And this is one of those that I wish we could just talk about life and probably not even talk about records. And we would glean so much wisdom from Joe, so we're so appreciative.
He gave us his time and without further ado, here is our conversation with Joe Henry.
[00:04:55] Aaron: Did I see that you live in Maine now?
[00:04:57] Joe: I do. My wife and I moved here during the pandemic been scheming it for years and would have gone much better for us had we been able to do it years earlier. But, COVID made the whole Portland area of Maine look wildly attractive to so many people in New York and in Boston and places like that, where people thought during the lockdown.
Maybe it's not such a good idea to live on top of, you know, 30 million other people. Maybe we'll go to this beautiful little folksy, progressive town.
[00:05:25] Aaron: Yeah.
Are you in Portland
[00:05:26] Joe: proper?
No, we thought we would, Be when we first were making this plan, but we wound up about 45 minutes north In the woods on a dirt road by the water. We're on a tidal that just comes off the Atlantic Ocean.
[00:05:40] Aaron: Yeah. Cool. I grew up in Waterville,
[00:05:42] Joe: Okay, so, you know,
[00:05:43] Aaron: Absolutely. It's beautiful over there.
[00:05:44] Joe: Yeah. it's really beautiful
[00:05:45] Aaron: we actually spent three weeks up there this summer and we're looking around Portland and all that and I was just floored at what the housing market is like
[00:05:53] Joe: Yeah, I really
[00:05:55] Michaela: scheming.
We have a two year old and we've been like, maybe we should move to Maine and be closer to family. And we were like, Oh, okay you essentially need a million dollars to even get like a decent house
[00:06:06] Joe: that's not the, that is true and it's not what we expected when we first were in a position to be serious about, making the jump. So through a long and mystical, serendipitous route, as often is what comes into play in my life. We wound up seeing this piece of property out in the woods and we'd never even remotely considered building a house.
We've always lived in really old homes and restored a bunch of them. So the idea of building a house just was not in our scheme at all. But There we were going, what are we going to do? Okay, here's this piece of property, there's a builder attached. She's already got a plan that works on this property that we can, make work for us if we make some changes.
Or we can go. back to L. A. and just stare at Relitter. com every day. but Maine is, wonderful, and I understand if you have a young child why that would be incredibly tempting, we raised both of our children in Los Angeles, definitely upsides to that, but it would have really been great to have been near family, as you described, because we were not for the most part.
I met your son, Levon, years ago because we both went to the new school jazz and he was a little bit after us and I was an intern and then got hired at Nonesuch Records
All right.
[00:07:15] Michaela: I think he was one of my interns
[00:07:17] Joe: He may well have been. I
know he was working there for little spell.
[00:07:20] Michaela: Yeah, or I left and I would come back every once in a while to do like temp stuff so maybe it was during that or he was an intern of mine, but small world.
[00:07:29] Joe: I'm pretty close with David Byther for a really long time and that's probably how that connection got. made but Levon was also taking a class from Bob at the new school so, It's a small entangled world.
[00:07:40] Michaela: That's how I got into the Nonesuch world was because of taking Bob's class at the jazz school.
And then I ended up working there for a few years.
I was there when we did the Bright Mississippi,
[00:07:50] Joe: Oh, yeah.
[00:07:51] Michaela: one of our favorite
[00:07:52] Joe: Oh thank you. That was a really special one for me. You know, people like to ask that question, if you've been a record producer for other people, you know about favorite.
Projects. And it's such a hard question are a lot of projects that are. special for any number of reasons. But if I'm asked that question invariably without reaching for it, the bright Mississippi comes to mind and for a lot of reasons. But it was a remarkable opportunity for me.
[00:08:17] Michaela: Yeah.
that record. We put it on this morning because I just was thinking about it all. I mean, We saw the performance at the Village Vanguard when it was the whole you record band except it was Christian Scott. I think on
[00:08:29] Joe: That's right. Because Nick Payton was otherwise engaged.
[00:08:33] Michaela: but that feels like a historic moment that was so cool that we got
[00:08:37] Joe: I was really lucky when that was going down that my wife just said, why wouldn't you just go and be there for the week? And I don't know if we can afford to do that. they're not offering to put me up or anything. But she just said, I just feel like you should be there.And the whole reason, that I got up every night, Alan invited me up to introduce the band and then sing. It was really about introducing the band because A, he couldn't remember anybody's name in that band because they were all unknown to him. It was really funny when he would say to me something like, Oh, you know, your piano player was really killing me last night.
I said, Oh, you mean Brad Meldow? You mean your piano player? He kills everybody! But he didn't hang on to anybody's name. And I realized that the real reason he wanted me up every night was to introduce the band. Because he couldn't remember them. He was afraid of not remembering them. And I said, well, AT, I'll just write it on a card for you and leave it on the piano.
And that would have meant he had to wear his glasses on stage, which he wouldn't do either. So I said, okay, then call me up every night. I will introduce the band and then if the price is that I get to sing something, then I'll sing something.
[00:09:39] Aaron: that's great. you kind of touched on something that we really wanted to speak with you about we've had other artists, producers on the show before, You're really the first that in my judgment, it's really two equal parts in my perception
[00:09:53] Joe: Mm.
[00:09:53] Aaron: side. Has that always been, a driving force for you?
Has that always been like a dual interest thing or
[00:09:59] Joe: No.
[00:10:00] Aaron: is did you fall into one or the other
[00:10:02] Joe: I was an artist. And that's all I ever imagined being. I'm a songwriter, so that's how I think of myself, even when I'm producing. I think of myself as a songwriter who's producing a record. Because it's it's the lens that I look through. It's, the overriding sensibility is that everything begins with a great song.
An evocative song. And I never once considered being a producer for anybody else. But My third album, I was on A& M Records at the time, and, T Bone Burnett, who has been my friend and career long mentor, he had produced a record for me when I was still living in New York called Shuffle Town in 1990.
And my wife and I moved to Los Angeles just before that record would have come out. And for whatever reason, T Bone Just invited me into his world
be his acolyte, his second and he just thought I would be good at it. And I didn't understand that he had a vision for me like that, but I needed work.
I wasn't making very much money, as an artist myself. And he just out of the blue one day just pulled me in and, I realized what I really love is making records and it doesn't seem to matter to me much whether it's my voice and my song coming out of a pair of speakers or somebody else's.
I love the engagement of creating something for posterity that wasn't 10 minutes ago or 20 minutes ago, however long it takes to discover and pull a song into the boat. But it really was, because of T Bone. And I've thought a lot about this over many years that I have been incredibly lucky and in a very anomalous way.
There are not many people who have maintained, as you've alluded to, sustained careers where they're being both an artist and a producer. There are a lot of producers who began as artists and then became primarily record producers and stopped making records on their own, for instance. But I've had in my working life, two extraordinary, mentors for people who have continued to be both producers and artists.
One, Alan Toussaint, the other one T Bone Burnett. And, fascinating bit of trivia, they have the same birthday. very strange to me that these two characters who so serendipitously and uniquely. It entered my life and stayed there, both modeling for me what it meant to just have music making in total as your artistry, rather than saying this is me as an artist, this is me as a producer.
I stopped seeing any dividing line between those two things after a very short time of producing records on my own. I just realized I loved recording songs. I loved when a song happened. And everybody in the room knows it's happened. It's like a seance. Everybody knows that some spirit has moved through the room and changed things.
I just find that endlessly, exhilarating.
[00:12:46] Aaron: Yeah. would agree. I always relate to making records like carving sculptures. like longevity of a record.
[00:12:53] Joe: Yeah.
[00:12:54] Aaron: performing songs on stage live, music is such a unique art form it's so fleeting and it's so in the moment and it takes both the audience and the performer.
I love that. That's absolutely incredible. But longevity of a record is something that's always really stuck with me.
[00:13:07] Joe: Aaron, I agree with that and share that feeling. And I think it's also interesting talk about, or something I think about quite often.
An assumption, I think, by a lot of lay people who are just music lovers and listeners, and when I say just, I don't mean that's meager, because it's not, but people who are engaged in not creating and broadcasting music, but in receiving it into their lives in whatever way that they do.
I think that people think about recordings as being kind of static artifacts, except that they're not. Every time we. Drop a proverbial needle, on a record or hit play and whatever apparatus we have, whatever is the delivery system and music gets into the air, which is the only time it is actually music.
You know, Everything else is just the possibility of music. But as soon as it's in the air, it becomes a living thing. It impacts, changes the color of your day, changes course of my blood circulating in my body. So if I. Right now, we're to put on, Louis Armstrong from 1928, doing 12th Street rag or something, then he's in the room.
He's been conjured into the room. It's changed things for me. He might linger in my mind all day. He's influenced the way that I'm walking around in this earth in real time. So it's a mystical engagement and when I've taught songwriting, for instance, I'm always half blushing through the whole thing because I have to tell people number one, I live for this, and I have no idea how it happens.
I really don't. I can talk a long time and do about refinement. The mechanics of refining something that's in process. I understand that very well. But I can't talk about the initial spark that drives everything. without talking about it in fairly mystical terms, because to me it's a mystical engagement.
I don't think of songwriting as something I'm doing. I think of songwriting as something that's happening to me. I'm just aware on certain days, oh, this is happening to me now. Like some people with vertigo, they go, oh, Yeah.
it's happening right now. That's what it's like for me when a song sort of is offering itself to be written, is that.
I know that something is happening to me if I care to pay attention to it.
[00:15:12] Aaron: That's so well said, I really like that. I want to know a little bit more about, you said, this process of refining. that becomes a little bit more tangible, a little bit more intentional when you get down to refining process. How do you keep the kind of mysticism about the song? How do you not get in the way of what is coming?
[00:15:30] Joe: It's taken me a long time to develop the habit of it, but I always go back to the quote from the great, so called avant garde composer John Cage, of who I'm a great admirer and have been my whole adult life. And Cage said, Be careful not to confuse the creative process with the analytical process.
They both have their place, but they're not the same engagement. And when you're in the creative process, you're just sort of spooling off raw fabric, in a way. That's how I think of it. soon as I catch myself wondering in my conscious mind Do I like it? Will anybody else like it? Will my wife like it?
Will My manager, anybody who would suggest that they like what I do, generally, will this be moving to them? Then I'm not, in the stream anymore. I'm not being swept away by the river of the creative process. I'm up on the bank looking down at it, having ideas on its behalf, but I'm not being swept away any longer.
I'm now trying to drive what's happening rather than allow myself just to be. Mhm. And then I've learned to not ask questions, but just be a dutiful, it's like being a courtroom stenographer, you're just taking it down as best you can, knowing that what you're doing is just trying to gather enough raw fabric that later you can come back, you know, and tailor that fabric into a pair of slacks you can wear around very easily, but that's a really different Part of the process, when you come back and you start fine tuning and your taste starts to enter into things, Because I also write poetry and have since I was in my mid teens I'll come across a word and understand that.
This is a poem. That's the right word. If this is a song It's the wrong word because that's not a musical word there's certain Words, I just understand well not Come off my tongue in a musical way, they just they're clunky. They just don't have any romance in their physical sound.
So I think a lot about the physical sound of language I'm not a songwriter who thinks much about self expression, I'm really thinking about discovery and Part of my thinking is that I'm not trying to use the language of music to say what I mean.
I'm trying to listen to the musicality of language to hear what it means. Mhm. I'm not trying to get it to speak for me. I'm trying to speak for it or let it speak through me. So I'm not trying to write about something that happened to me. I don't mind My diary for something to write a song about.
It doesn't mean that aspects of my real life don't surface in some way, and I'll recognize that sort of after the fact. But it's not anything I'm ever thinking about when I'm actually writing a song. I'm just trying to be, a dutiful, servant to it. A good custodian.
[00:18:13] Michaela: Has that evolved for you over time or has that kind of just been your innate approach to music? Because I, feel like, of course, everyone has their different relationship to songwriting. Maybe they are, making sense of their life by expressing what they're trying to, you know, make sense of their experiences or whatever.
But I think also you can see how, and as a songwriter myself, of just different eras of my life, different phases, it served a different purpose for me and my personal life, regardless of my career aspect. And I'm just curious, like when you were younger, was that kind of entry point approach to songwriting, your drive, or has that evolved
[00:18:54] Joe: it's the way that I've always worked, Michaela. what's changed is my awareness of it. I instinctively walked from the very beginning the way that I think I walk now, though I think I walk better. But the fact that in my very young life as a listener, I was so quickly taken by, narrative Songwriting.
And that doesn't mean like necessarily linear narrative. This happened and this happened sometimes very impressionistically. We all understand that, a story is, getting told. I happen to think that every creative discipline that exists is storytelling. That's the whole reason that any of it evolved.
But I think as time has gone on, because I began my listening life. With songwriters that I felt like I understood even instinctively as a very young person, six and seven, that they were not writing about their own lives, but that they were writing fiction. because very soon after, for instance, my 10 or 11, within a year or so of that, there was Randy Newman.
And... I feel like even when I bought Good Old Boys when it was brand new and I was 13, or something like that, I didn't think that he had a wife named Marie. I didn't really believe he lived in Birmingham, Alabama. None of that even occurred to me. I heard his songs like I read Eudora Welty. Or Flannery O'Connor or Nathaniel West. It just operated in that way on me. And I felt a freedom. I felt invited into the story beyond my own. Because as a very young songwriter, I didn't think I had enough experience in my life to merit, Oh, I need to write this so that everybody can experience my truth.
That just didn't occur to me. I found that writing about what I could see, not what I necessarily experienced, was in itself an experience.
[00:20:37] Michaela: I'm curious the way that you described songwriting and then before that, the way that you described just records and the mystical miracle of capturing music and being able to listen to it, 50, 70 years later, I was getting like chills thinking about it and having one of those feelings of, yeah, this is insane.
But I feel like. as our ways of listening to music have evolved and technology has evolved, have you found it challenging or changing, how to stay connected to that mysticism?
[00:21:11] Joe: Oh, not in the creation of it. it's not a struggle to stay in it. You know, I think you're talking about changes in delivery system, for instance. But to me, that's all after the fact. It's always changing. It's always been changing. People have asked me any number of times. you seem to be like an album oriented artist.
What's that like for you in a period of a revolution where there's iTunes and Shuffle and Spotify and my response is, that doesn't mean anything to me at all. Even when all I had was a vinyl record, I put the needle wherever I damn well wanted to put the needle and I'd play the same song for entire days.
I really would listen to. And still do if there's a song that gets through the end of my skin and nothing else is supporting that environment and I want to stay in it. I'll leave a song playing all day long. I just can't get out of it. But it doesn't matter to me what the delivery system is. You can't control how anybody consumes the work once you put it out into the world.
I mean, I have my taste, my concepts about how one delivery system sounds versus another. the ways in which the so called limitations of the ways that we work are not necessarily limitations. If you don't want to see him that way, they're just different colors on your palate. Sometimes, the and I've seen this as a producer all the time because almost all the records I make with few exceptions, they happen in three or four days and, you know, you encourage people to understand that.
what feels like a limitation to people when you say, here's our budget. And so the first thing to figure out is, who do we want to be in the room with us? What room do we want to be in? What does that leave us? Oh, it means we have to make this record in two days.
And that's what we did. We make a record in two days. And that can really, brush people back. That limitation feels onerous and it'll never get done. But sometimes those limitations are the very thing that just insist that you are fully committed, making decisions in real time, not wasting time.
You know, It means that in every moment of a session, if it's only a couple of days or three days, that, you gotta be going for blood all the time. And some of us really thrive on that. That immediacy. Because that's what I want to feel when a playback happens. For instance, I don't believe in pre production, so called.
one time I was pushed into it, it was the perfect example of why I would never do it. Because the song found its moment of discovery in a rehearsal space. And then two days later in the session, everybody's looking over their shoulders saying, hey, what was that thing you were doing Monday?
And the drummer's like, well, I was doing this. don't think that's what you were doing. Oh, I'm sure it is. I recorded it on my phone. Oh, it doesn't sound, it doesn't feel the same. of course it doesn't. In that moment of discovery, whatever happened, whatever spirit moved through the room that made everything coalesce and feel like music, that's the thing I want to have recorded.
It's not about discovering it early and then now we show up and just do it in front of better microphones, read it into the public record. That's nostalgia already. That's reporting on something that already happened. I want to record the moment of it happening. The moment where the song, however it might, stands up and identifies itself.
[00:24:17] Aaron: so say you are in a situation where there are two days to make this record.
How do you shepherd that, moment into being without getting in the way of the stream.
[00:24:27] Joe: One of the ways I do it is that a big part of my job as a producer is to be a good casting director, who do I bring into the room? And I only invite people into the room, who really enjoy that kind of work. Engagement who like working at that pace and with the stakes being what they are.
It's difficult if there's somebody who is made apprehensive by that method of working rather than feel really liberated by it I do. But as far as being in there it's really just, allowing things to find their own pace because they're going to ultimately. Once you identify whatever that pace seems to be, and it can change song to song, I just make sure that,I'm supporting that momentum, however I can identify it, If that makes sense.
If I realize that some people need to take a break, Either we all do, or I send a couple people away, and we focus on something else for the moment, an overdub that we wanted to grab before moving on, or arranging something. Whatever it might be, but I still look for ways for work to continue to happen so that the game doesn't go cold.
[00:25:26] Michaela: I'm always curious because, This podcast is also like how to stay connected to your creativity while building a career. So the business and career ambition aspect is there as well. And I'm curious how you've navigated that if you've had to, if your mind has, had to actively be like, we're not thinking about that stuff, especially I'm always curious for people who started making records before we had.
Social media and now there's such a immediate feedback of I put a song out and how many likes is it getting or what comments like there's such a quick
immediate relationship to how it's received and what people say that I feel like an observation of myself and my community that's around my age.
I think it's messing a lot of us up in a lot of ways. And I'm curious if that has ever come into play for you, if as you've seen that evolve, or were you in a deeper foundation? that hasn't played large of a role in your career of making records.
[00:26:31] Joe: Well, It hasn't played as big a role for me as it likely has for you. Because when I was beginning, there was no social media, there was no digital recording, there was no way to do something really credible at home, unless you were independently wealthy, even at the lowest level to get into recording in any way that sounded like what you meant for it to sound like was not something that most of us knew how to do at home.
You couldn't afford it or you didn't have the know how. I didn't have either. I needed the patronage of a label, in whatever way I could find it. So that was different at a certain point, it cost what it cost to be in a room. With gear, somewhere. and there's things about social media I have enjoyed, it doesn't weigh terribly heavy on me.
It probably should more, because it's more responsible than I probably give it credit for the way in which music gets translated out into the world, or people find out about it, because even though... Social media has broadened the scope of availability and access. It's also, in some ways, narrowed everybody's thinking about where to go.
because there's a few social media platforms, and you think that everything in the world is going to funnel through there. Just because it could, doesn't mean that it will. You still have to stay active and pursue the things that might be of interest to you and turn over a few rocks to find it.
But it hasn't really concerned me terribly. I think it might be distracting for a lot of people, in regard to what I was saying before about staying in the creative process and not allowing the analytical mind to corrupt that early part of the process. Because we can do things so quickly and immediately, and put them out instantly if you wanted to, I think that creates a sort of...
Attention deficit where you're always in process, imagining it finished and already imagining the way that it will impact whoever might hear it. When obstacles to something being released into the world get dismantled, you can find yourself out in the middle of the road before you're even aware that you are, if that makes sense.
So I do think social media allows a lot of things to happen and allows a lot of artists freedom that they never had when they required a publisher or a label to do something even on the most base level. I really applaud freedom that, is on offer I was once.
keynote speaker at a music conference that was mostly international journalists and A& R people. on the opening night, it was at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, there was a keynote evening, myself and Janelle Monae and Niall Rogers. And at one point, a person in the audience, who was an A& R person at a major label, stood up and said something.
Basically, you know, the problem with digital recording is that any kid in his basement with a laptop thinks he can make a record. And I said, Yeah.
but you know what the upside is? Is that any kid with a laptop in his basement can make a record and he doesn't need your fucking permission to do it.
So, you know, that concept of, absolute freedom, which... levels the playing field a bit between content creators, so called, and people who then take it out into the world. That part of it is fantastic. The part that can be so immediate that it doesn't even really encourage you to take a minute with it and live with it and consider it, I think can be, detrimental to the work at times.
[00:29:49] Michaela: Rodney Crowell was on,
[00:29:50] Joe: My very dear friend.
[00:29:52] Michaela: He's so wonderful. We love him. But was talking about like what the delay was in gratification or even in disappointment when you'd put a record out that it would be months before you would, go on tour like really start to feel the impact and I feel like now it's like album release day.
The record comes out at midnight and by like 9am it's like how many reshares are you getting? I'm like who has time to even listen at that point?
[00:30:15] Joe: And I think, additionally, the problem you're describing, too, is how quickly people have evaluated what they determine is the success or the lack of success of any project. By nine the next morning, you can already decide that the record has already had whatever life it's going to have and it's over because you didn't get enough shares between midnight and when it released.
nine in the morning when people are paying attention. I think anything like that, that inclines us to quickly devalue something because it didn't perform instantly, is not conducive to the work.
[00:30:48] Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. That reminds me of this practice that I've been hearing more and more about of labels and publishers basically like testing songs on TikTok. So they'll take a song and they'll put it on TikTok and if it doesn't get a response, it just gets shelved. And it might not even be a fully formed song, it may
just be like the chorus of a song.
And if it doesn't get a great reaction, they deem it not worthy of completing. And
[00:31:11] Joe: mean that that basic concept of taking your own Sense of valuing something out of the equation and throwing it out to an abstract audience of people you don't know and allowing them to tell you that this is worth doing or let them tell you it's not worth doing.
that is death to creative pursuit.
As soon as you surrender your own authority I mean, I've certainly written many, many songs that even people who like me don't pay attention to. And I still might say it doesn't matter to me ultimately, because I know that's what I meant to do. That's what that song is supposed to be. And I'm really proud of it.
I'm not less proud of it because nobody else connected with it. It's still what I meant. It's still a successful outing for me if I was true to the intention of what the song asked to be. and conversely, if I took something that I didn't feel good about, I didn't feel that I was able to meet the intention of the idea as it arrived and yet put it out anyway, because other people seem to like it.
It's not. It doesn't work for me. I think it's problematic, or I think it's trivial, you're allowing that to stand as part of your body of work because somebody else whose name you don't even know, has overridden your sense of value, it's like letting somebody else override your sense of morality, you know? it's a slippery slope.
[00:32:31] Michaela: Do you have to do any daily practice or practice to stay connected to your purity of intention of creativity while Also, navigating the realities of life and career and paying bills and making enough money and all of that stuff I'll just speak for myself of how much I want to like detach from the outcome of the work that I do, but then I go down this kind of logical step of well, but I need it to be like to make enough money to pay our mortgage, to pay for it, all of those things.
But. I think it's very difficult to create when you're in that mindset. So do you have any sort of practice or, discipline that keeps you there
or gets you back there if you ever get pulled to the kind of numbers place?
[00:33:19] Joe: Oh, I can get pulled in that direction all the time. I don't have to tell you, I'm not a household name. I have no trouble walking the streets. I haven't been so successful that I don't have to think about what it means that, here I've written another song that I'm incredibly excited about that.
Nope, it won't mean anything to anybody else at all. I'm well acquainted with that sensation. But as far as my own habits to keep my blade sharp. I do try to write something every day. And it doesn't even need to be a song necessarily. I write a letter to somebody.
I'm still thinking about language and the way the language works. I'm still making choices, aesthetic choices, even when I'm sending a text to my daughter. I still care how it reads. Whether she, thinks that was a particularly good text or not. I'm just in love with the musical sound of words.
And I realize that if I'm writing something every day, I'm just keeping myself fluid. That's not to say that sometimes it's not really great to step back altogether. My son, Levon, is this incredibly gifted reed player. And I remember when he was at the New School, or when he was at the Performing Arts High School in L.
A. before that, if he didn't... Shed for four hours on any given day, he was pretty wiggy about it, like I've blown it. I won't be great. I won't get to where I need to get if I'm not hitting this every day. And I say, Lee, some days you step away from it even for a few days and you come back and not only haven't lost any ground, you might hear something completely new that you missed because you were so by rote.
Driving a particular nail, of the way that you practice and you can miss something else that will surface if you just let yourself really disconnect for, a few days. Having said that, I don't do a good job disconnecting for days at a time unless I'm traveling in a way that circumstance just insists on it.
But even then, if I'm on a plane, I'm writing. I just, I like to write in motion and I just take advantage of it. But I'm trying to write something every day. I try to play guitar for an hour or so every day. Sometimes because I'm writing. Sometimes I'm just trying to build that muscle a little bit.
I'm not somebody who, unlike Levon, I didn't learn how to practice. I learned to play guitar sitting in front of a record player. Like a lot of people of my generation. Yeah.
And, I played when I was writing a song. I didn't have one idea how just to play to get better at playing. Levon helped me there a great deal.
When I would start listening, his discipline, when he was living at the house still, to practice, was unreal to me. He may spend all of Saturday. literally eight hours playing.
[00:35:53] Michaela: Yeah,
[00:35:54] Joe: I...
[00:35:54] Michaela: in the practice rooms on the
[00:35:55] Joe: Yeah, and and I got to the point where if I heard him practicing, I just got my ass in gear.
I thought well, if I get in motion every time I hear he's in motion, maybe I'll get somewhere.
[00:36:04] Aaron: Yeah, I... with Leevon's approach so much. I went to a performing arts high school as well, the new school, and I was that guy that was practicing all the time. And there was a lot of, in retrospect, like very crippling anxiety around that. There was
[00:36:16] Joe: Yeah.
[00:36:16] Aaron: of I have to do this, I have to do this.
[00:36:18] Joe: Yeah.
[00:36:18] Aaron: me years to really understand that stepping away and re approaching, you know, I was very much of the approach of. No, I can squeeze this square peg through this round hole and it will work,
And, drums are my first instrument, which, is a much more physical instrument than reeds.
So there's a lot of, four limb coordination that actual physical rest and stepping away, I could come back and do independent things and syncopated things that I wasn't able to
[00:36:46] Joe: Sure. When I was just teaching At Rodney's songwriting camp in Nashville in August, it was hosted at Vanderbilt. That's something that I would say that my class is, a good bit about, stepping away in the midst of writing. I just always say, don't stress.
Don't ever label something writer's block. Don't give it that kind of authority. Don't treat it like an illness, a natural. Moment of stillness in your process, whatever it is, is not, oh my God, my, my gift has left me, Now Jeff Tweedy will get every song, there's so many other things to do the song is not there to be written, it's like you have an apple tree in the yard. If the apple is not ready to pick, you're not going to do it or you are. Yourself any favor is just to go out and continue to yank on it.
Go do something else with your time. Go start dinner. There's gotta be grass to mow or, laundry to do. There's gonna be something. And that's also part of keeping your creative life in process and in regard to, family life And when my children were young, I worried a lot.
When Levon was born about how I was going to protect my writing life from my obligations as an involved, dedicated partner and parent. And I very quickly realized that A, was not going to be able to protect time. we don't have nannies, there's no way to just, check out for the day.
But I also realized that I wasn't getting any, any less work done. I was just.
using my time in really different ways, and I have a record called, Fuse, I wrote and recorded almost that entire record being our infant daughter's primary caregiver throughout the day. I had a studio in the garage, and I only could work when she was napping, and I had one of those old, Play school baby monitors in my studio and as soon as she went down for a nap, I bolted out into the garage and could work.
Sometimes it was 45 minutes, sometimes it was two and a half hours. I never knew, but I started to realize really quickly that I was not getting less work done and it wasn't less quality either to my estimation. Yeah.
I just learned to, divide time different.
[00:38:47] Michaela: Yeah, I think Trusting in your own creativity, the ebb and flow of your creativity and also really trusting like you said that living life and taking care of your home and your family is all part of it
can be challenging and I think is a really great reminder and it's something I've been learning the last two years we have a two year old and then obviously the pandemic and my mom had a stroke when I was pregnant
it turned our whole lives upside down
[00:39:15] Joe: Sure.
[00:39:16] Michaela: I have spent like the rest of my pregnancy up in Michigan helping my family and in the hospital and then spent the next two years trying to figure out how to be a mom with.
My own mom needing
[00:39:26] Joe: Hmm.
[00:39:27] Michaela: becoming paralyzed and all is just
[00:39:29] Joe: Wow.
[00:39:31] Michaela: but also beautiful incredible stuff and Throughout I could not write Anything so then I had this other layer of grief of oh, maybe that's done maybe I'm just
[00:39:42] Joe: Hmm.
[00:39:42] Michaela: be a songwriter anymore and The last few months, it's like the dam broke, and I'm writing all the time, and it feels so incredible to feel that flow again.
it's really more importantly made me think how important it is to trust these other parts of life are so important as well, and maybe you just don't have the capacity, the time to do every single part. All the time and to trust that it is going to come back and when you give that energy and focus on The other parts it feeds that energy to be able to then, Synchronize and coalesce and come out
in song form
[00:40:22] Joe: I think you're completely right
And it was my friend Michelle Ndegeocello, who first really helped me understand that. I was having this conversation with her back When I was making the record called Scars. That was 2000, I think. And she was playing on that record and, Levon was only
He was like eight or nine. But I remember talking to her about that idea of trying to sequester away and protect my creative time and things like that and, She was you know, what are you talking about? First of all, you can't. And why would you? Because, your life is what all these songs are growing out of.
It doesn't matter whether you're writing about your life or not. You have a life that's allowing your practice. It's not separate from it. And I thought about, my first real love as a reader of poetry and a writer of poetry was William Carlos Williams, who was An obstetrician and, at a certain point of his success, he didn't quit being a doctor so that he could be a poet full time, he led a life and he wrote about it.
And his work as a doctor was, is no small part of his artistry. so when Michelle helped me see that, I started recognizing those connections elsewhere and how often. I found myself with artists that I loved, I didn't look at what they were doing and try to separate what I imagined about their lives and the work that they were creating.
I saw it all as one single impulse, you lead a creative life. This is how you process. I think of myself. As a songwriter, even, when I'm driving a car, I'm a songwriter who's driving a car. I don't have to be writing a song every moment to be a songwriter. It is who I am.
It is who we are. I use the example of, a doctor. If a doctor is a golf course, on his or her day off, and a person on the fairway next to you falls over from a heart attack, you're still a doctor. Even if it's your day off, that is part of your being and Punch in and you show up and I think as creative people That's the lens through which we are looking at everything.
You know that great quote that's attributed to Tom Waits, how we do anything is how we do everything I've noticed that to be true more and more as my life has continued You know, I'm the same kind of partner, father, friend, son, brother, as I am a songwriter I still approach kind of everything that I do with the same ethos.
[00:42:39] Michaela: If you had gone through life with the approach of, oh, I need to sequester my time to write songs and go create separately alone. If that had been your mentality throughout life. your kids would have grown up in a really different way for instance Maybe Levon wouldn't have become a musician.
I think about that of like our child seeing us
[00:43:01] Joe: Hmm.
[00:43:02] Michaela: and play music and Not trying to be so precious about No, I need to go be in quiet alone in my room to be able to work on a song before I came out Our child is currently obsessed with Daniel Tiger, and I'm honestly just really sick of the song, so I let her put on headphones to listen to it, and then I
[00:43:20] Joe: Hmm.
[00:43:21] Michaela: oh, I'm gonna grab my guitar and sing a song that I just wrote this week, and she has headphones on, but she sees me playing guitar.
She's listening to her own music, but she's yelling because she can't hear over headphones. Play twinkle twinkle Yeah,
[00:43:35] Joe: I'm listening to this, but I want to make sure that you're holding it down out there, Mom. Yeah.
[00:43:39] Michaela: trying to work on mommy's song no twinkle twinkle
[00:43:42] Joe: Has of the things that comes out of that impulse that you describe of wanting to be, like, if not in the special room with the door bolted, this idea of like, if you could go up to the mountain cabin, you know, you're sitting there with perfect view into the valley and, You got a fire going and you have a, clean, fresh notebook or whatever, I'm certain I would write nothing, you know, or I think if the people who think that you have to be in those kind of idealized moments to write are people who wind up writing songs about writing songs, which holds absolutely no allure for me whatsoever.
[00:44:18] Michaela: when you were living in la a music city with a lot of community around, how has that changed things for you moving to a more remote area?
[00:44:25] Joe: think I'm still finding that out, but It's not unfamiliar to me, even though I've never lived like we live right now. I've never lived out in the woods by the water, where I lay in bed at night and, we have no curtains on our bedroom windows because we just face into the woods and I just hear the owls.
there's nothing else to hear. It's astounding. I've not lived like that any time in my life before. And yet, I did live in a more rural, Circumstance, My own high school days in Michigan. Are you a Michigan native?
[00:44:53] Michaela: my parents are, but my dad was military, so I grew up elsewhere, but they all, my brother, everybody lives in Michigan, so
I'm,
[00:45:01] Joe: Oh Yeah
[00:45:02] Michaela: one who's gone off.
[00:45:03] Joe: My situation wasn't military. My dad worked for the auto industry and they used to keep it Michigan. They don't anymore I don't know where they keep it now, but by the time we wound up in Michigan and I was in high school my parents lived fairly rural outside of town and
Where I now live is not like that. It's much more remote than that. But it's very familiar to me. It's like something that my body is calibrated for. And I feel like I'm returning to some idea of it. And what it really allows me is just privacy that learned to live without.
You know, In our first married life, you know, when my first record came out. I was living in New York at that point, and I found being a songwriter in an apartment building to be excruciating. I never felt like I was not being heard, and if you don't feel free to, be terrible for a while, you're not really free. And now can set myself up, I can go down, and I do frequently go through the woods by the water, my neighbor has made me a bench that sits down there. And I can go down there and practice, all day long, and there's nobody. And that's an incredible amount of freedom. I don't know how it's changing things for me.
I mean, I'm always somebody who has employed, a lot of the natural world as far as imagery is concerned. So I don't think that when I do it now, it's not because I'm here. Even though being here, I think, amplifies it and affirms it to a certain degree, but it's like a return to some life I never knew I had more than it's a radical change my thinking, if that makes any sense.
[00:46:34] Aaron: we spend a lot of time talking to people about, the importance of community in creating and making music and all of that. Do you miss that? Being in the
[00:46:42] Joe: Oh, it's the
thing I miss about our move. I really don't miss Los Angeles as a place day to day. I miss. Our deep community, we were there for 31 years, and I, fell into some relationships there musically over a long period of time, these people that I collaborated with, over and over, over decades, were also my, closest friends.
There's a lot of that that I,miss. But my writing life has always been very solitary. Mhm. Mhm.
My recording life has been incredibly, community based and so in that way I've really enjoyed the balance of the two things. My wife is a textile artist she's so much happier working in collaboration with people.
and because it's not an engagement that she's been involved in with her whole life, it's of the last decade really. She doesn't have the same kind of habits that allow her, for instance, to just know how to start a project if there's not something compelling her. Like somebody's had a baby and she wants to make them a quilt.
She knows how to respond to that moment and be in motion. But when there's not a quilt to be made for somebody who's had a baby or just gotten married or something like that, she doesn't always know how to just... find the open door, just to begin anything. And I've learned that, really well over a long period of time when I'm alone, I'm a good self starter.
But my community, as far as, recording, that's been a big thing. And even when we in L. A. still before we made the move because COVID was in full swing. I was getting very used to having to do everything at home myself. And even when I was making. My most recent record, which I made at home during the pandemic, and everybody who played on it, did it, remotely when I've always been a live in the room kind of guy, it was a completely different way to work.
was not less inspiring, just in a very different sort of a way. I still found it really exciting, way to operate. it will never replace what it means for me to be in a room with people. My nearest and dearest collaborators, but I've witnessed myself as a recording artist working at home alone, incorporating a lot more of the same sensibility that I do as a writer when I always witnessed them being very separate in execution, I've also entered in this last year, into a collaborative writing relationship with a man who lives in Nashville that's not Like, anything I've exactly experienced before.
You know, I've written songs with a lot of other people over years, but always very circumstantial. Working with Michelle on Deguiocello, I wrote a song with Michelle. Working with Moe's Allison, I wrote a song with Moe's. I've written songs with Madonna, not in a room together.
But they've been kind of one off, random things. Maybe we've written four or five of them. But,
[00:49:21] Michaela: pass it back and forth type of
[00:49:23] Joe: yeah, I was sitting here like a full, complete lyric. Gotcha.
But when I was teaching at Rodney's camp in Nashville last August, not this past August, but a year ago, 2022, I met a man who's in his mid seventies named Mike Reed.
Do you guys know who Mike Reed is? We do Well, for one thing he's got, he's a fascinating man. He's in his mid 70s, and in the 1970s, he was a defensive tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals. So he was kind of a star in the NFL. And at the point when he recognized his body could not endure, by his description, one more game of punishment, he walked away from his career in the NFL, he was probably in his mid 20s, later 20s, and moved his family to Nashville and made a go as a songwriter.
You know, He wrote Bonnie Rant's much beloved I Can't Make You Love Me, for starters.
[00:50:12] Michaela: story.
[00:50:12] Joe: Yes.
but I met him really quickly at Rodney's camp. We were both teaching last August. And we just happened to, on day one, find ourselves walking across the campus together to the dining hall. And he starts asking me about what poets I read.
He's heard enough of my songs to know that I probably read poetry. And we got into this remarkable conversation about poets we loved Months went by after that. One day I just texted him out of the blue just as an excuse to say hello. And said, Mike, would try to write something together?
And I was flying that day. I sat down on the plane. I wrote a complete lyric. I sent it to him. 24 hours later. He sent me back a finished song, him doing the demo atsinging at the piano. He's a beautiful singer and a beautiful piano player. And no conversation. I just sent a full lyric.
He sent back a completed song and it was perfect. There was not one conversation, no back and forth about how it needed to be different or might be different, whatever. Mm hmm. And then we did another one and another one. And at this point, we're... I think we've written 25 songs together in the last, 12 months.
And that's been the most sustained, collaborative situation I've ever been in as a songwriter. I never even contemplated being in a situation like this. But it's been really significant in blurring that line, where I used to think, my writing life is over here and it's singular and it's solitary.
My recording life is over here and it's very communal. Working with Mike has just scrambled everything a way that I think needed to be scrambled.
[00:51:44] Aaron: That's really beautiful. So isthe genesis of the song, does that go both ways? Will he send you an initial idea and you take it and run, or is it always genesis from you and you send it down to him kind of thing?
[00:51:54] Joe: It's always begun with me, even though I've encouraged him to do other, I've also encouraged him to change words that I write and just refuses. He just won't. He said, I wouldn't change T. S. Eliot, I won't change you. I don't know why, that's just between he and his god.
But, it's been really remarkable I know that what I'm writing lyrically has taken him somewhere that he has not been before by his own, description. But for me, too. He writes melodies really differently than I hear melodies. I tend to be a very, blues oriented, writer, melodically. Not just in regard to what we think of as classic blues form but we know when hear a blues tonality in melody and articulation, that's just where I come from. Everybody I listen to in my formative years, I think we're referencing blues as singers and as writers.
And Mike has that, but he also comes from a lot he's deep in the classical world as a listener. He's been very involved in kind of so called pop country songs, throughout the nineties for instance. It's a really interesting place that we seem to be taking each other, that's not happening, I'm not sure what the point of collaborating, if somebody's not taking you somewhere that you can't go on your own.
[00:53:06] Michaela: I love that. That's one of my favorite things to do.
[00:53:09] Joe: Yeah.
It's been addictive for me, in regard to Mike, I get up routinely at about five in the morning. It's a good writing time for me. And, ever since we started this a year ago. I'll come down at first coffee and frequently just, write a full draft of a lyric in 15 or 20 minutes without allowing myself to think about it too much.
And if it feels buzzy to me, if it feels resonant even if I don't understand it, I always know if it feels complete and authentic to me or not. I have a lot of songs where I say, I don't have any idea what that's going on about, but I know that I mean it. Because it's vibrating for me and I just understand that's what that means.
It is alive for me. As soon as I have that, I just send it off to Mike. And then wait for something to return. it's incredibly fascinating and inspiring to me, when it happens. Because when the songs are finished... I can hear how it's different than what I would have done on my own, but I don't think of them as separate pieces, any successful song, to be finished, for me, has to feel like, the lyric and the music together, you can't imagine one without the other. have just become an inevitable whole. If I still feel the disparity in those elements, know that it's not finished,
[00:54:19] Aaron: Has there been any talk between you two of what comes next for these songs or do you keep it just in creation for the sake of
[00:54:26] Joe: Oh, no, at this point, because we have 25 songs or whatever we've got, there was a moment early on, I think at the point when we had 10 or 12, because loved these songs dearly, I assumed that they would be the, my repertoire for my next record, because Mike, even though he made a record for Sony in the early 90s.
He's not for a really long time been a recording artist. He just thinks of himself as a writer. But, I don't think I can own a lot of these songs as well as Mike does. I even recorded, with him playing piano. I went down to Nashville for a couple of days back in February just as this experiment was coming to my conscious mind and spent one day in the studio with Mike.
With him playing piano and me singing everything. Just blew through everything. We didn't listen to playbacks. We just tore through 12 songs. So that I could hear them in my voice try to hear whether I thought I could, embody them. And for the most part, I realized that my versions were not doing to me what Mike's versions did to me.
Right now I'm in the midst of producing a record with Probably 12 of these songs, with Mike singing them. I just think that's how they should be heard, or at least initially.
[00:55:31] Aaron: Mhm. That's beautiful. Yeah love the thought of you taking a swing singing and then having the presence and the respect for the song to be able to step away and be like no is your voice here.
[00:55:41] Joe: How I really understood that is my brother Dave, who lives in Louisville. Who's been my closest friend in life, outside of, my immediate family now. And Dave is a writer. He visited me in Maine. Back in March when Melanie was, in L. A. for a week. And, Dave knew I was writing these songs with Mike, and he said, Hey, play me a few of these songs.
I want to get some sense of what you guys have been doing. And I had Mike singing all of them, but I also had versions of myself singing all of them, that we have to date. And I realized that, even with my brother sitting in front of me, I didn't play my versions. I played Mike's version. And as soon as I realized that's what I was choosing to do, because I thought he would hear the songs better that way, that told me a lot.
[00:56:25] Aaron: That reminds me of a story that Rodney shared with us about sitting with Guy Clark when Rodney was younger and how Guy would ask him to look him square in the eye and just say his lyrics to him.
what Guy was getting him to do is that every time Rodney would avert his eyes, he knew that it wasn't
[00:56:42] Joe: He didn't fully believe in it. Yeah. I've heard that story too, and I've thought a lot about it. When I've written something, and I, I've played that game with myself. If I was in front of Guy or, Rodney is more my Guy Clark than Guy Clark has been. Is there any point of this where I would look away?
it's been a really interesting litmus, to hold. And interesting to that point, the last time I had a producer other than myself, was T Bone Burnett in 1990 when I made my... third record. but I've continued to work with T Bone in every possible way since then.
And recently, when he heard my newest record, T Bone said, Joey, I want to produce another record for you, before I'm done. it might be the last thing he does, I don't know. But I said, Man, I would really love to see what we would do now. it sounds really alluring to me to want to just let go and not worry about the production and just be the singer, and we talked on the phone yesterday aboutwalking towards this concept and what he's asked me to do, T Bone just said, just set up your microphone at home.
I know you have, a rig set up. And just speak all the songs to me. Just record all of them, but speaking them. Don't sing and don't play. Just talk them. And then I'm going to hear, what key we need to be in, all these things we're going to hear about tone. Because when you're in your speaking voice, you're not carrying around this idea of how we've all been distorted by a concept of what singing means and the people that we love as singers.
And he said, we invariably reach for, a sort of a posture as singers, once we get into that mode of, I'm singing now. So he said, I just want you to, recite these songs and record them and send them to me and then we'll know everything. So I feel like there's some part of that same concept that Guy was pushing onto Rodney that, that's probably at play here.
[00:58:27] Michaela: Yeah. It's no makeup or anything.
[00:58:30] Joe: No makeup. Yeah.
[00:58:32] Michaela: The
[00:58:32] Aaron: bare bones. Wow. Yeah. That's something that I realized in the first few episodes of this podcast. I was editing them personally, which is extremely tedious because. everybody can tell when human speech does not feel correct, whether it's the cadence, whether it's
[00:58:48] Joe: Yeah.
[00:58:48] Aaron: behind it, there's nowhere to hide.
You innately know think that transcends language too. It's just the human voice and the delivery is, just raw and there
[00:58:57] Joe: Yeah. I'll tell you something that's interesting about that to me is, I don't really like to hear my speaking voice recorded. I don't do well with that. Now, I've learned to like my singing voice fine. I know what it does. And I've learned how to employ it, for the most part, in ways work for me.
But there's a song of mine. And let's say I'm not an autobiographical songwriter, but I wrote a song years ago called Scar. It's on the album of that same title. And when I was writing that song, I could remember it vividly, that I understood that I was writing about my own marriage. And I became really uncomfortable with it, Because that's not what I do.
I don't write about my own life overtly. But the song wouldn't allow me to manipulate it. I tried to make it more just kind of universal, more generic. I did everything I could to steer it away from being so pointedly personal. And at a certain point I realized I couldn't do it. I had two choices.
I could say yes thank you or no thank you. But the song was not going to be other than what it was presenting itself to be. If I wanted it, that's how I had to accept it. And I accepted it. And I think it's a really good song for the most part. But when I performed it, it's the one song that when I sing it on stage, I hear my speaking voice in my singing voice.
And the first time it happened to me, It so threw me that I didn't remember the next verse. I just was so brushed back by hearing my speaking voice in my singing voice. And I have to believe it's And because I was aware that the song pertained to my actual life in some way that my songs don't typically, that I wasn't in character, I wasn't Joe Henry the character, I was myself in lower case,
um,
[01:00:34] Michaela: and vulnerable. Yeah.
[01:00:36] Joe: Wow. was really startling to me. I didn't know that I could hear my speaking voice in my singing voice.
[01:00:42] Aaron: that you said, I could accept it. And that's been like such a, theme of this conversation that I've really taken away from this just, accepting welcoming the song, the creativity, the... The life. Yeah, the music in the room.
[01:00:55] Joe: Again, how we do anything is how we do everything, I think life, And certainly I'm a fair amount older than you both, but as it goes on, life asks more And more frequently for acceptance. I think when we're much younger we think that everything's about our will. We're going to everything we want it to go because if we have the will to do it.
And thenyou know, you live on for a bit and you start to find out that no, in fact, there's very little things that I am driving. And, how much about life is about, surrender. And I don't use the word surrender to mean resignation. I mean Surrender in terms of radical acceptance.
[01:01:31] Aaron: Yeah. Yes. Take
[01:01:33] Joe: Which is, supercharged. It's not resigned. It's not like lay it all down, that kind of acceptance. I'm talking about that kind of just really embracing of what's on offer is incredibly empowering. But I'm not sure that I knew that as a terribly young person.
[01:01:48] Michaela: Wow. that feels like something I want to spend the next hour talking about with you. So hopefully someday we'll, we'll meet you again.
[01:01:54] Joe: Sure. I'm happy to.
[01:01:56] Michaela: before we say goodbye, I just, it's more of like a. sharing with you and a thank you rather than a question.
But years ago, when Glenn Frey passed away, posted on your Facebook page a story of opening for him. And I can't remember the context of opening, I just remember some like remnants of, a challenging career commerce time and that being on tour with him felt exciting, but then you were playing these theaters where only like... a couple hundred people were there or something.
And observing that sting of, this is Glenn Frey from the Eagles and selling out arenas and now when he's on his own, he only can get a few hundred people. And you wrote in this really beautiful way of almost like feeling this embarrassment or concern that he walked past you and patted you on the back and said, we play for who comes and had a big smile on his face.
[01:02:48] Joe: Yeah.
[01:02:49] Michaela: And I read it that one time, when did he pass away in 20? 16, I think, or
[01:02:54] Joe: Something like that.
[01:02:55] Michaela: anyways it's stuck with me so much because I've just, I've thought so many things of he feel that sting? Was he putting on a,happy face for you is that how he genuinely felt? But it's still the mantra of we play for who comes has stuck with me however many years it's been since I read that post. So thank you for sharing that
[01:03:15] Joe: Thanks for acknowledging it. I also don't know if he actually felt that instinctively, or it was some posture he was assuming. And it almost, at this point, doesn't matter to me, because there are plenty of things that I, know, authentically I believe, even if I can't feel it, even if I don't want to do it, even if I don't know if I'm going to do it well, I still believe in whatever this thing is.
And sometimes it's just about. Assuming the position, certainly true of my parenting life, there are certain things I did not feel qualified or ready for, up for, eager for, and yet the moment required me to be right there, and that still was me actually there, even if inside I was protesting or fearful, feeling inadequate, whatever I might have been.
I'm I put myself in position anyway, and for my,wife and children, I think that me being there in whatever way I was there, that was still me being there. And Glenn he still passed that on to me. And no matter what he had to do to get himself to that moment and feel that and impart it to me, it mattered nonetheless.
And he went out and played the show like he meant it.
[01:04:20] Aaron: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
[01:04:21] Michaela: And that takes me back to how we do anything is how we do everything. Yeah.
[01:04:24] Joe: Well, Now that you hear that in your head, you'll be amazed at how often it will come up.
And prove itself, over and over.
[01:04:31] Aaron: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Jo, thank you so much for carving out time in your morning
[01:04:36] Joe: No, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
[01:04:37] Aaron: with us.
[01:04:38] Michaela: Enjoy
[01:04:38] Joe: thank you both.
[01:04:39] Michaela: fall.
[01:04:39] Joe: Yeah, I wish you could see it. it's incredible.
[01:04:41] Aaron: Yeah, it's the perfect time of year right now.
[01:04:43] Joe: It is.
[01:04:44] Aaron: Alright, Jo. Thank you very much.
[01:04:46] Joe: Thank you. Take care.
[01:04:47] Aaron: You You too.