Joe Henry: 2017

It is not all that uncommon to find examples of musicians who can also produce, but it is a much rarer thing to encounter a producer who is also a top-notch songwriter and musician.

Over the course of three decades, Joe Henry has produced albums for scores of artists, like Elvis Costello & Allen Touissant, Aimee Mann, Bonnie Raitt, and Solomon Burke. These albums have a sound that is both true to the artist, but immediately recognizable as having Henry's production.

Remarkably, Henry's own discography stretches back to the mid-Eighties, and his music has always been just as distinctive in its sound, stories, and lyricism. Now he's back with Thrum, his fourteenth album, and he returned to Studio A along with his son, the saxophonist Levon Henry, to share some of his latest material and talk to us about the new album.