In a career spanning more than 20 years, Joe Henry has left an indelible and unique imprint on American popular music. As a songwriter and artist, Mr Henry is celebrated for his exploration of the human experience. A hyper-literate storyteller, by turns dark, devastating, and hopeful, he draws an author’s eye for the overlooked detail across a broad swath of American musical styles – rock, jazz and blues – rendering genre modifiers useless. He is a perennial worldwide song-writing poll-topper.
Mr. Henry has collaborated with many notable American artists on his own body of works, including Don Cherry and T Bone Burnett (Shuffletown, 1990), Victoria Williams and The Jayhawks’ Gary Louris and Marc Perlman (Kindness of the World, 1993), guitarist Page Hamilton (Trampoline, 1996), Daniel Lanois and Jakob Dylan (Fuse, 1999), and Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau, Marc Ribot, and Meshell Ndegeocello (Scar, 2001). He has scored music and written songs for the film Jesus’ Son, produced tracks for the film I’m Not There, and also wrote the song “Stars” for the closing credits of HBO’s Six Feet Under.
As a producer, Mr. Henry’s influence has helped shape the sound of iconoclastic artists including Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, Ani DiFranco, and Aimee Mann. He earned a Grammy Award for his work on Solomon Burke’s astonishing comeback record Don’t Give Up On Me, and worked alongside Loudon Wainwright III to create the score for the film Knocked Up, material which later became Wainwright’s full-length Strange Weirdos. Most recently he produced the new Rodney Crowell CD, which will be released this June.
In September 2007 Mr. Henry released Civilians, his tenth record, which landed on many year-end “best of” lists and has been hailed as one of the artists best works. Mr. Henry resides with his wife and children in South Pasadena, California, and works from a recording studio built into the basement of his home.