1999 for Wall of Sound

"Light fuse, get away" – those four words pass for safety instructions on most fireworks. They may also describe the cautious actions of a few old Joe Henry fans, afraid that the singer-songwriter they once knew and loved will be nowhere to be found once they push play on his new album, Fuse. The loss, to be sure, is theirs. Henry's latest is the year's most beguiling record, a sinewy, soulful, abstract, and cinematically scaled work that finds him grooving where he used to be strumming, with help from members of the Wallflowers, Daniel Lanois, and T-Bone Burnett. The album also features three songs which will be performed by actor Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) in Toni Kalem's A Slipping Down Life. Pearce plays a singer-songwriter in the film, which made its world premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and Henry produced the recordings of Pearce singing his songs. Henry tells Wall of Sound about his new friends, his work on the film, and his transition from acoustic troubadour to studio collage artist.

How did you hook up with the Wallflowers?

I've known the Wallflowers for years. I met them when they were making their last record and T-Bone Burnett was working with them. They knew T-Bone knew me, and they invited me down to the studio one night. Jakob and I just kind of hit it off – both being fathers, we have sons roughly the same age who go to the same school at the moment. That was our point of departure and our friendship grew out of that. He knew my records. He's a delightful man, and we just stayed in touch. I've had a few offers to tour with them, none of which I've been able to take advantage of unfortunately. But I did a few shows last summer, strictly for laughs – one in L.A. and two in San Francisco – using three of the five Wallflowers in my band. When I was working on the record in my garage, I would take a song as far as I could alone and usually just move on. But at some point I was working on one song and I could see where it needed to go and I needed to get it there before I could leave it alone. So I called Rami [Jaffe] and Greg [Richling] and they came over that day. I told Rami I need a kind of Ray Charles electric piano thing on this track And there it was.

Jakob sings on "Skin & Teeth." Have you guys done any writing together?

Jakob and I talked for a brief moment about writing a song together for the film A Slipping Down Life. They were looking for songs that would be the main character's body of work. He and I had been talking about writing something together, just to try it, and I brought that up as a possible outlet. But it never got beyond a single conversation. We did write a song together for Rosanne Cash months later. She has not recorded it yet. As I understand it, she has some kind of pregnancy-related laryngitis. But I think she likes the song quite a bit. We wrote it with her in mind to see what it would be like, which took the pressure off of both of us, as in I'm not writing a song secretly hoping the Wallflowers might record it.

Talk about your work on A Slipping Down Life.

I have to confess, I didn't write the songs for the movie. I met the director when she was just starting and it's a very music-driven movie. Guy Pearce's character is a songwriter. They wanted me to write songs specifically for the film, but by the time they actually came to me with a proposal they were really under the gun, and I was in the middle of making my record. I didn't have enough time to set aside to do it well, so they took three songs from my new record – "Monkey," "Angels," and "Skin & Teeth" – and decided it was OK that they existed somewhere else. They will live in the film in the context of the story. But I did produce Guy Pearce singing what they then shot picture to. Because he's performing in a live situation, it was more of an acting job than a production job. I wasn't trying to make a record; I was trying to create what would feel like a live moment. The character performs – he sings, he plays guitar, he has a drummer, and that's it. I thought it was great that the director was willing to have the music exist and be that naked. We recorded it and then they shot picture to it, but we recorded it live and raw. In fact, we ended up using his reference vocals from the floor instead of re-singing them later. Things break down and there are times in the film, as part of the story, where he's not having a good night. Always seems to come up around my songs for some reason. They were very broken down, degenerating performances. That's what was interesting to me about producing the tracks in that situation.

You began your career categorized as a singer-songwriter, then you made what some might call an alternative-country record, and now you're off in a completely different musical direction that's as produced and carefully constructed as your early records were organic and acoustic.

I never made acoustic oriented records because I was any kind of a purist. I was just trying to hear myself and clean the slate because I had had bad experiences with a producer on my first A&M record that was more about him than any kind of record that I wanted to make. My response to that was not letting things get out of the room; if you record live to two-track, everybody's sitting in one room and to do that you gotta play quiet. That's where I started learning to do that, not because it was my chief interest musically. But people make that assumption all the time, as if the more "live" you did it, it has that much more integrity. I could not agree any less. I categorically abhor the notion that acoustic music cut live-in-the-studio is a red badge of courage. Like when people say, "I saw Sting and he came out in the encore with an acoustic guitar," as if he were throwing himself to the lions. That's ludicrous. That kind of music can get really static. It doesn't hold my attention. And when people hear "singer-songwriter," they assume that's what you're about and that's what you're reaching for, some kind of "honesty" in music. Which is why I resist that tag. I've said numerous times that I think honesty is the most overrated quality in music.

What about the audience that fell for your early work? Do you worry that you might alienate them with this transition?

If I had 10 million of them, I might be a little worried. As it is, I can probably take them all out to dinner, explain the whole thing, and there will be no hurt feelings. Everybody I grew up listening to, their records were always different. It's not supposed to be the same cast of characters, just part two or part five. I came of age at a time when there was so much available musically. And why wouldn't you be influenced by all of it? It's not like picking a college; you don't have to pledge allegiance to one fraternity, which people assume you do. And it's really limited to talk about your influences only in terms of other music. For instance, I'm a really good cook. And I know learning to be a better cook, and getting more bold and confident has impacted the way I record music. I think of it in really similar terms, especially in relation to the cut-and-paste method of recording I really like. It's a very easy parallel.