Musical odyssey: Joe Henry brings acoustic 'Reverie' to town - (I'm so happy)

Musical odyssey: Joe Henry brings acoustic 'Reverie' to town

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter/dhoekstra@suntimes.com January 25, 2012 5:32PM

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Joe Henry

JOE HENRY

† 7:30 p.m. Jan. 27

†Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln.

† Tickets, $23-$25

† (773) 728-6000;
oldtownschool.org

Updated: January 26, 2012 9:29PM

Joe Henry is a deeply sensitive American singer-songwriter whose records are like black-and-white films with vivid characters.

The subtitles are composed from the colors around us.

On the side he has pro­duced and mentored important American artists, who, in many cases, have slipped beneath the starry shadows of pop culture: Solomon Burke, Betty LaVette’s breakthrough album, the Carolina Chocolate Drops (their 2010 Grammy winning “Genuine Negro Jig”), Mavis Staples (the “I Believe in My Soul” compilation) and many others.

Henry, 51, carries the sound of an heirloom metronome in a modern high-rise. He is inspired by his position between time and place, which is why his visit to Chicago to promote his latest album “Reverie” (ANTI) should not be missed. Henry and his studio band launch a three-city tour at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 27 at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

“Reverie” is an all-acoustic project Henry recorded about a year ago in his basement studio. The bass, drums, piano and Henry’s voice and guitar touch on the longing tones of folk-gospel in “Odetta,” and blues-tango in “Sticks and Stones,” reminiscent of “Stop,” his ballad that his wife Melanie Ciccone passed along to her sister Madonna â€" which she re-did in 2000 as “Don’t Tell Me.” But time waits for no one, someone said a long time ago.

“I never write with an idea in mind,” Henry said last week from his home in South Pasadena, Calif. “For me, writing is the act of finding out what I’m writing about.”

For example, “Odetta” is not about the late folk singer Odetta.

But Odetta is speaking to the character who is looking for affirmation as Henry sings, “. . . Where broken ships still drift and pine/For some new world reverie/Odetta . . . Odetta . . ./Please come and discover me.” Henry said, “After the fact I had a pile of songs that seemed to share a common voice. Only after recording them did I reflect on the idea that time was the thread that connected them in some way. Not all the songs are about time, but every character is struggling with what time is doing and the challenge of it as a constant dancing partner.”

Henry will perform “Reverie,” top to bottom in its entirety at the Old Town School. The great thing about being a Joe Henry fan is to have witnessed his growth as an artist. He is a much different and more abstract musician than the edgy “Americana” rocker who toured in the early 1990s with the Jayhawks as his band, singing anthems like “Good Fortune” and Hank Snow covers. Henry’s detail and integrity only ignites his sense of adventure.

The dichotomy of “Reverie” is that it was recorded in a snappy three days. Band members played as close together as they could, using the aggressive Duke Ellington-Max Roach-Charles Mingus mashup “Money Jungle” as a template. Instruments were blurred. Windows were opened to capture the sounds of chirping birds and barking dogs. The ambience became another voice that stitched the album together. “Reverie” has no sonic break. Life moves on and this is certain.

“The idea was something that struck me in a moment that was authentic to this little movie I was making,” Henry explained. “I was at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona having just arrived for the beginning of a tour. I was looking at some of Picasso’s very early work where I realized it was a deliberate craft, yet it felt spontaneous and raw. I was aware that whatever he was doing in these paintings, I wanted to do with songs. It was much more influential to me at that moment â€" and currently â€" than any other musician.

“Wandering around the museum alone, I heard the whole record. I knew who was going to be in the room, how we were going to set up and that I would put microphones at the open windows and make all the light happening around us a part of the picture. Stringing the songs together with ambient noise is very suggestive of the fact that time is pushing forward and all these songs are happening in real time. Songs don’t happen in a vacuum. When I’m writing songs people pass through the room. People are mowing the grass. The idea that once we have a song and we have to disappear in this black digital silence to record it just seemed foolish. And when I’m producing other people at my house, extraneous noise is a stress factor for me because I don’t work in a hermetically sealed environment. Maybe Bonnie Raitt his latest production, see sidebar doesn’t want dogs barking all over her record, believe it or not.”

Henry is a subtle champion of pre-World War II pop melodies, not unlike the way the late Etta James turned Harry Warren’s 1941 composition “At Last” into her own blues-pop song.

“When I go back to music as a listener and not for production jobs, most of the music I listen to is from the late ’20s to the early ’50s,” Henry said. “Not because I’m nostalgic, even though I can be. I listen to early Sinatra and interpretations of standards as much as I listen to anything. It is because that music sounds incredibly alive. I’m a Duke Ellington freak. I listen to Duke every day. I’ve been listening to a lot of late ’50s early ’60s folk music because the song forms resonate with me right now. I love the raw, early stuff.

“All those songs come from a very old discipline.”

They are timeless.