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Info for Blood from Stars

Experience the mesmerizing album "Blood From Stars" by Joe Henry, now available in a Digipak edition with bonus tracks. Released by Earmusic, this album showcases Joe Henry's unique blend of folk, rock, and Americana influences.

With his soulful vocals and poetic lyrics, Joe Henry takes listeners on a journey through introspective themes and heartfelt storytelling. The songs on "Blood From Stars" are rich in emotion and depth, offering a captivating listening experience that resonates long after the music fades.

The Digipak edition of the album includes bonus tracks that add an extra layer of musical exploration to the already compelling collection. Each track is a gem in its own right, contributing to the overall sonic tapestry that Joe Henry weaves throughout the album.

From haunting ballads to upbeat anthems, "Blood From Stars" is a masterful display of Joe Henry's songwriting prowess and musical artistry. Whether you're a longtime fan or new to his work, this album is sure to leave a lasting impression and earn a special place in your music collection.

Immerse yourself in the evocative world of Joe Henry's "Blood From Stars" and discover why this album continues to captivate audiences around the world.

"lood from Stars is the album Joe Henry's been getting at since Scar. He's worked with jazz musicians often, but he's never made a record that employs the form so prominently. His band includes Marc Ribot, Patrick Warren, Jay Bellerose, David Pilch, and now his son Levon on saxophones and clarinet, as well as vibist Keefus Ciancia. Engineer Ryan Freeland is as important as the players: he managed to give this record its strange yet welcoming sound. It begins with the short "Prelude," played by Jason Moran. It introduces all the characters here, with a note or two here, a chord flourish there. Some are immediately identifiable; others you've never met before and perhaps hope never to. Henry's love of traditional jazz has blossomed -- the album sprawls over history, genre, and song forms, but there is no consciously retro aspect in its presentation and it is not a jazz album. Many of these songs are based on the blues (and even folk-blues); some are standards-style pop; some walk out the jazz of New Orleans, St. Louis, and Kansas City from the early 20th century; some even rock -- a little. Many are dressed in horn arrangements and offbeat sounds that seem to enter in from the rafters. They drift in and out and are allowed to play a part in the songs. Who cannot relate to the swinging blues (à la "St. James Infirmary") led by piano, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and a minimal trap kit? The music seems to come from antiquity in "The Man I Keep Hid," but Henry's voice is right firmly in the historical present: his protagonist voices his desires and how they are thwarted -- usually by himself -- as horns, organs, piano, and rhythm section swell and offer the chaos just under the surface of the singer's voice.

"Channel" follows it, a love song about disorder that is played as anything but. Henry's character asks simple questions that offer significant difficulties in his inner world, but he embraces them: "I want my story straight/But all the others bend/From wondrous to strange/To beauty at the end...." It's a haunting melody that would be -- if we had them anymore -- a parlor song. Both songs reflect something lost and hidden in the wires and satellites of modern life: that individuals -- no matter how lost, determined, angry, displaced, hopeful, or praying for redemption at any cost -- still have human voices that speak, at least on the inside, constantly. Musical traditions bend and blend into and through one another and are painted by the sounds Freeland allowed to enter from the ghosts in the walls, the ceilings, or up from the floorboards. "Death to the Storm" reveals this better than just about any track here, a simple blues with Ribot's electric guitar weaving through Henry's lines and phrases about characters -- including the protagonist, who could have come from Steinbeck, Dos Passos, or O'Connor. "Bellwether" -- another early 20th century jazz-blues -- is a modern tale of Sisyphus. He's climbing a hill, digging a well, changing his name, leaving his shame, etc., until the story gets better. Ultimately, Blood from Stars is the most sophisticated, redemptive, and romantic album Henry's cut; the love songs are simply raggedly breathtaking. It reflects an America that wasn't so much lost as consciously wiped away near the end of the 20th century. Its remnants still live, however, in the shadows of memory, and in the broken-hearted ghosts that continue to haunt its landscape and atmosphere, and sometimes even its people. Henry welcomes them, lending his voice to theirs in of all these songs." (Thom Jurek, AMG)

Joe Henry, vocals, acoustic and electric guitar
Jay Bellerose, drums, percussion
Keefus Ciancia, keyboards, piano, vibraphone
Levon Henry, tenor and soprano saxophone, clarinet
David Piltch, electric bass, editorial guidance
Marc Ribot, electric, acoustic and gut-string guitar, bowed banjo, coronet
Patrick Warren, upright and tack piano, field organ, keyboards
Special guests:
Jennifer Condos, electric bass on "Stars"
Mark Hatch, flugelhorn on "Progress of Love"
Marc Anthony Thompson, additional vocals
Jason Moran, piano on "Prelude"

Recorded and mixed by Ryan Freeland at The Garfield House, South Pasadena, CA
Engineering assistance provided by Julian Cubillos
Additional recording by Kevin Killen at Avatar Studios, New York, NY, March 21, 2009 Produced by Joe Henry

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Blood from Stars

Joe Henry

Joe Henry
In a career spanning more than 25 years, Joe Henry has left an indelible and unique imprint on American popular music. As a songwriter and artist, Henry is celebrated for his exploration of the human experience. A hyper-literate storyteller, by turns dark, devastating, and hopeful, he draws an author’s eye for the overlooked detail across a broad swath of American musical styles — rock, jazz and blues — rendering genre modifiers useless.

Henry has collaborated with many notable American artists on his own body of work, from T Bone Burnett, Daniel Lanois, and Van Dyke Parks on one side of the spectrum, to Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau, and Bill Frisell on the other. A three-time-Grammy-winning producer, Henry has made records for Bonnie Raitt, Hugh Laurie, Lisa Hannigan, Elvis Costello, and Solomon Burke among many others.

Additionally, Henry has taken his musical talents to film and television. He has scored music for the films Jesus’ Son, Knocked Up, and Motherhood, as well as produced tracks for the film I’m Not There. His song “Stars” was featured in the closing credits in the fourth season of HBO’s Six Feet Under.

In 2013, Algonquin Press published, “Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him,” a book co-written by Joe and his brother Dave Henry.

In 2016, Henry teamed up with Billy Bragg on the collaborative album Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad. The pair were subsequently nominated as “Duo/Group of the Year” by the Americana Music Association.

As a solo artist and a producer alike, Henry’s records are marked with a consistent sonic depth, attention to narrative, and emphasis on the beauty of spontaneity.

This album contains no booklet.

Blood from Stars Joe Henry

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