Mike and I went to hear Joe Henry live at Largo on Friday night – he just released his new album, “Civilians” and this is one of his rare appearances. Though I’ve known of him for a while, I didn’t know much about him or his music until Mike and I met Jay just shortly after he’d recorded “I Believe to My Soul” with Joe (which we promptly bought at Starbucks one cold Grand Rapids day after it came out). I’ve been listening to a lot of his music and music he’s produced since then. We were also aware he’d been recording because we used (almost) the same team that he did for my album. We obviously like the same musicians. Apparently, we’ve got some other random things in common, too, like English degrees from the University of Michigan…
:)
We’d heard from Patrick himself how amazing this record was going to be and we had been listening to the tracks available on his website, so we were definitely excited for the show. They stuck us in the middle of the front “row” of tables, so close to the little stage that I could read the setlist, most of it, anyway. Which I tried not to do-it felt sort of wrong to remove the element of surprise-but it was almost impossible. We were so close that when the band was all getting on stage and tuning, there was some kind of feedback when Joe plugged in his guitar and he looked down at me and joked, “was that you?” Pretty funny.
Needless to say, we were VERY attentive, which was certainly not hard considering how great a show it was. The band included all our favorites – Jay Bellerose on drums, Patrick Warren on keyboards, Greg Leisz on guitar, etc. (“everything else” as Joe put it), Dave Piltch on upright bass and Jen Condos on electric bass for just a song (what a sweetheart. And I love watching her play. My hero…ahem, heroine). There was an incredible energy in the room – an energy that was almost intimidating – it was like VIP night there, with all my favorite songwriters and musicians on stage and in the audience. And the band played perfect arrangements for each song. I couldn’t help thinking about what I know about Joe as a producer, and how “well-produced” the whole show was, while still so natural and relaxed (which seems to be his production style, too). His lyrics are incredible and sitting about two feet away while he sang them allowed us to catch every nuance!
Do yourself a favor and check out his album. As I mentioned, he actually has some tracks available on his website, amusingly titled www.joehenrylovesyoumadly.com.