Listen To New Music From Joe Henry

Joe Henry will release Blood From Stars August 18th; it’s the singer/songwriter’s 11th album and third for Anti- Records. If you swing by the Anti- website they are streaming two tracks from Blood From Stars — “Bellwether” and “Death to the Storm.”

Already Henry has a tremendous body of work, and Blood From Stars continues his talent for covering a variety of musical styles and genres. He’s the ‘unlabeled’ artist.

The raw and soulful Blood From Stars combines elements of folksy-jazz and the blues, definitely influenced by two recent records he produced – Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s A Stranger Here.

The album was recorded in Henry’s own studio and features his son, Levon Henry, on saxophone.

“Sometimes we had to do overdubs with him as opposed to recording him live, because he was at school,” Henry recalls. “But then he’d come home, finish his homework, and come downstairs to join the festivities. It was lovely and strange, and yet it felt perfectly natural to direct him.”

Henry says that the new album is more emotionally available than his 2007 release Civilians.

“It’s much more electric, in the literal and also the emotional sense of the word.  It is raw, with many loose threads hanging.

“Partly, I just loved what happened when this particular group of musicians heard a song and had to respond to it in a very immediate way. I can always go back to what I thought [the song should sound like], but if you limit them to your own imagination, then you’re just cutting yourself off from the richest resource you have.”

Over the years the Grammy-winning Henry has worked with artists ranging from Ornette Coleman, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint to T-Bone Burnett, Brad Mehldau, Madonna, and Ani DiFranco.

Track listing for Blood From Stars:

• Prelude: Light No Lamp When The Sun Comes Down
• The Man I Keep Hid
• Channel
• This Is My Favorite Cage
• Death To The Storm
• All Blues Hail Mary
• Bellwether
• Progress of Love (Dark Ground)
• Over Her Shoulder
• Suit On A Frame
• Truce
• Stars
• Coda: Light No Lamp When The Sun Comes Down