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A Conversation with Joe Henry (continued)
JH: So, Frank, there's my overview, I guess.
PM: Wow! That's more than I hoped for, and it's just fantastic to hear it roll out so eloquently. But then there was another quantum leap from Fuse to Scar.
JH: Yeah, I think so too. And that's funny, because when I finished Fuse, I was on tour, and I'm thinking about what next, and I really thought I was going to make like a Black Eyed Peas record. I still had this idea of doing something that was much more in tone like a hip-hop record--a lot of samples, a lot more aggressive, a lot more stripped down, a lot more fragmented. I love how samples can feel, by their nature, really fragmented.
PM: Right.
JH: Or like on an old Sly Stone record, things just kind of pop up for a minute and then they're gone, they don't ever come back.
PM: Right. [laughs]
JH: I love when a sample happens, it's an event. It's almost like a sound effect, and I'm really intrigued by that. So that's what I thought I was going to do.
And then I found myself starting to write songs that began setting themselves apart on a pile. You write songs--when I make a record it's not just the tune I've just written, it's as I'm writing, the songs, together, start to identify themselves as a body that feels like a novel would start to take shape, I might imagine. So I set other things aside and start focusing on what that is trying to become.
And I realized the songs that were materializing on this particular pile didn't have anything to do with the kind of record I thought I was setting out to make, or the kind of record I was describing to people that I was going to make next.
My family and I had moved by then and I had a studio in a guest house--I still have a studio in a guest house, a so much better work situation. And from Trampoline on, I was describing my first primitive setup at home. I got very addicted to being able to work whenever I wanted to work. And every time I've taken on a production project, a scoring project, or I've had a recording budget for a record, I've put a fair chunk of whatever I make into my home studio in order to be freer to work the way I wanted to work and when I wanted to work.
So I started doing these very elaborate demos that became the template for Scar, where I really wanted to work with some orchestration. I began demoing songs, using strings samples and the like to see if the songs would actually live in that environment, and whether or not that was really the place I could go with them.
PM: Right. So you were doing the string samples yourself.
JH: Yeah, I was just creating melodies and roughing things out, because I knew that if I was going to make the kind of record that I was now imagining, it was going to be, on my terms, a fairly expensive proposition. You're talking about hiring an arranger, and even with the smallest orchestra it's just going to get into some real money. I wanted to lay out a map for myself to know that it would work.
PM: Yeah, you're moving right out of five into six figures.
JH: Yeah. And also I hadn't recorded live with people in a room for a number of records at this point. I had abandoned that when I started working on Trampoline. But now I was intrigued by the possibility of getting a group of people in a room and tapping into the synergy of people playing together. That was probably because a lot of the jazz I'd been listening to returned me to that idea, after it had become rather a dead idea for me. But I knew that I had new skills and a more open mind, and I was going to go back into that and take the good out of it, but not be confined by the inherent limitation of working that way. I thought I was ready to jump back in and reap some of the benefit, where I'd mostly only suffered from the limitation in the past.
So I talked to my friend Craig Street, who's a producer that I'd been friendly with for years. We'd always vaguely talked about working together, though nothing had really come of it except that I sang a duet with Me'shell Ndegeocello on a record of hers that he had produced. But I knew that what I was about to get into was going to be big enough that I needed some help. I really needed an aggressive third ear. I needed somebody. To try to be a performer, and try to be a singer, and a bandleader, and a producer all at the same time...
PM: You can't do it all.
JH: Something gets dropped.
PM: Yeah.
JH: So I got together with Street and played him the demos I was doing, and he played me some stuff he'd been working on. And we found that there was a lot in common with the basic tonality of what we were both doing. And without a whole lot of forethought, I just threw the door open to us working on this record together--over the course of a single evening, him coming over for dinner one night and me playing him a bunch of stuff. And I spit-balled with him my ideal band, who I wanted to have in a room.
PM: Wow.
JH: There were people I had really wanted to work with, Brad Mehldau being one.
PM: Right.
JH: Brian Blade who I'd been friendly with for years but never worked with. He's so gifted as a musician.
PM: So amazing, yeah.
JH: Then there's another drummer named Abe Laboriel, Jr., Craig had worked with him a lot. And again, I was friendly with him because we have a lot of mutual friends.
PM: He's the legendary bass player's son, right?
JH: Yes, he is. And a great bass player himself, though because of his father, he would never say that.
PM: Right.
JH: He's now pretty much full-time Paul McCartney's drummer, but at that time he was not that yet. But he'd played with Me'shell. And I knew he was a really heavy character, I mean, a really soulful player, really unique musician.
PM: Right.
JH: I'd always wanted to work with Mark Ribot, and had only worked with him on a track for a compilation record where he came in and did an overdub. And I'd seen him work with T-Bone. I'd been in the studio when he was working, and was really I enamored with him as a guitar player.
PM: So cool, yeah.
JH: I never had a chance to work with him. So I kind of imagined this idea of Brian Blade and Abe and Brad Mehldau and Ribot, and a bass player named David Pilch, who--
PM: I know him from the Henrys. You ever become aware of a band he plays with in Toronto called the Henrys?
JH: No.
PM: Oh, they're amazing.
JH: I should ask him about that. I'm going to see him tomorrow. I knew him because Street used him on a lot of things. And he's been touring with K.D. Lang forever. And again, we had a lot of friends in common. He would play in K.D.'s band with Abe. He played a fair amount with some other friends of mine. And I met him through Street, and we hit it off. And I love his playing.
PM: Yeah.
JH: And I think Brad Mehldau is very unique among his generation of jazz pianists--
PM: Truly.
JH: --because he doesn't always think of himself as a jazz player. He's a musician, that's his orientation, but he doesn't limit what he does based on that.
So it was a roomful of people I really had never worked with before, but an amazing group of people to have in the room at the same time.
PM: Was it intimidating at all?
JH: Well, yes and no. I mean, I guess I won't say it was intimidating, it just was wildly exciting.
PM: Cool.
JH: I guess I had enough confidence in what I was doing at that point and I believed in the songs enough. And these people all had demos of the songs and had been very receptive to them, so I knew they were coming out of thinking that the material was really great.
PM: Right, so no reason to been intimidated, then. continue
