Joe Henry live!

Joe Henry
Old Town School Of Folk Music, Chicago
Saturday, February 2, 2008

A rare tour by producer/songwriter Joe Henry found him in “Storytellers” mode at the Old Town School on Saturday night. During the first of two shows, he mocked his role in the world while quietly lamenting the country’s.

Henry would have been worth the admission just for his self-deprecating comedy. He said upon pitching Mavis Staples a cover song, her rejoinder was “That’s real nice Joe Henry. What else you got?” Then, drawing attention away from his bloodlines, he referred to the writing collaboration that berthed his “Stop” as being with “a singer-songwriter named Madonna from Detroit. I recorded my version as a tango; she recorded hers as a hit.” (Henry’s wife is Madonna’s sister; “Stop” appears as “Don’t Tell Me” on Music.)

Playing the piano or guitar, however, Henry doesn’t cast a pall so much as let gravity settle. Much like Tom Waits, Henry’s characters are artificially amusing, but ultimately have weighty hearts — so much was evident during the encore of “Our Song,” where the audience chuckled at the thought of Willie Mays in Home Depot until the metaphors fell like bricks. “I Will Write My Book” and “Civil War” may have wafted somewhat atmospherically, though lyrically they were hand-wringers nearly frozen by the ubiquity of strife.

From the onset, Henry, bassist David Pilch, and phenomenal percussionist Jay Bellerose played at darkness. Opening with the title track of his new album, Civilians (Anti), Henry foretellingly rejoiced, “Life is short/but, by the grace of God/the night is long!” Bellerose was an alchemist behind Henry, using an array of mallets, brushes, towels, and gadgets to mimic distant thunder or the dusty crackle of an LP. Yet even he couldn’t pull the evening back from the gorge-sized lull that hinders Civilians. The middle of the set seemed to have the audience longing for more jokey introductions to key them up for another midtempo stroll.

“Stop” lifted the veil temporarily, yet it was the pensively stirring “God Only Knows” that ultimately built enough momentum for the set-closing “Trampoline” to defiantly offer, “This time I’m not coming down.” And so the lights stayed on, at least until the second show.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly