Simon Joyner is a solitary songwriter born in New Orleans but based in Omaha (Nebraska).
Born in New Orleans in 1971 from Alabama-native parents, he moved to the north
still a child, but kept visiting the south frequently.
His formative years as a songwriter yielded very personal collections like
Umbilical Chords (One-Hour, 1992) and
Iffy MC (Sing Eunuchs, 1993 - Unread, 2003).
Most songs told sad stories of simple lives and were played by Joyner himself
on guitar and little else.
Room Temperature (One-Hour, 1993) is another album entirely played by
Joyner (guitar and harmonica), still in the proud tradition of
Woody Guthrie
and early
Bob Dylan.
There are fiery tunes that could be more musical with a band: Folk Song For Sara, Ghetto Blaster, Leavenworth Cafe Blues,
and Vegetables (positively hysterical).
There are melancholy meditations, notably The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is a Straight Line, evoking
Donovan and
Gordon Lightfoot,
whose emotional bottom is represented by the
anemic lament and perhaps self-portrait Double Joe ("Life is just the fleeting opportunity to do a belly dance on an atomic particle").
The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll (Sing Eunuchs, 1994), his first
vinyl record, added electric guitar, drums
(courtesy of his friend Chris Deden) and piano.
The intention was probably to bring out a raw although lo-fi version of Joyner,
but the result is mostly awful. The hard-rock songs with distorted guitar sound
like amateur's night.
One can rescue
Appendix,
the lively and slightly delirious I Went to Our Lady of Perpetual Healing
and
the stately piano meditation Target.
In the same year Joyner also contributed
Burn Rubber and Fluoride to
the split single Why You All So Thief? (Sing Eunuchs, 1994).
Heaven's Gate (Sing Eunuchs, 1995 - Brinkman 1996) focused on the
delicate, melancholy, dreamy side of his singing and songwriting.
The quantum leap forward really came from the arrangements, that
found a way to add atmospheric textures to the sadness,
thanks to a small chamber ensemble of
organ, violin (Alex McManus, a member of Lambchop and Vic Chesnutt's band),
cello (Joyce Roper), banjo, mandolin,
accordion (Bill Hoover) and percussions (Chris Deden).
The blues trance of Obituary
and the touching accordion-tinged waltz Catherine,
stand out, but a core of the album is represented by the
elegies that exude universal sadness, like The Black Dog.
Funereal dirges like Kerosene, Three Well Aimed Arrows and
especially the eight-minute Farewell to a Percival bring back memories of
Leonard Cohen.
The aggression this time is limited to the folk rigmarole of Alabaster with mandolin and banjo.
Songs for the New Year (Sing Eunuchs, 1997) is more of the same,
although the arrangements mostly fade into the background.
Joyner conducts his ghostly band,
that has enrolled Bob Garfield on lap steel and George Peek on bass,
meanwhile calmly making his (lyrical) point in
the seven-minute The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll and in
I Wrote a Song About the Oceans,
and gently daydreaming in Parachute and in
Born of Longing.
The tone is often nostalgic and dejected.
The seven-minute Two Friends take a Bow for the Record
sounds like a prayer with psychedelic overtones.
The accompaniment is often merely symbolic:
the seven-minute When Will the Sun Rise Again?
rides an organ drone while the guitar is reduced to scant chords.
The peak of this colloquial folk is the naked eight-minute Disappear From Here,
musically plain and even dull, but rich in contemplative imagery and mood,
a strange inner phenomenon that becomes a hallucinated self-requiem ("I know when it's time to say 'so long', there'll be static in the air and the music will be gone").
Joyner established himself as a major voice in modern songwriting and
arranging with the sprawling double-album
Yesterday Tomorrow and In Between (Sing Eunuchs, 1998), one of
the milestone recordings of that year, a glorious and highly personal
summary of the aesthetics of Bob Dylan,
Neil Young and
Leonard Cohen.
For this impressive endeavour, Joyner surrounded himself with seasoned
professionals such as
guitarist Mike Krassner of Boxhead Ensemble,
keyboardist Scott Tuma (formerly the founding guitarist of of Souled American),
drummer Glen Kotche of Wilco,
Joseph Ferguson and bassist Ryan Hembrey of Pinetop Seven,
violinist Alex McManus and pianist Deanna Vargona of Lambchop,
and pianist Liz Conant.
The ensemble excels at both stark piano ballads (Ballad in the Past)
solemn laments (Christine),
and tender singalongs (Don't Miss Your Lover).
Joyner does not hesitate to wear the hat of a
dramatic storyteller for Sinner's Song,
or to lead the band into the street jingle
Bring Down Goliath.
The cinematic and catchy eleven-minute closer The Passenger waltzes over a modest street-organ drone.
The standouts are the gloomy ten-minute meditation Eight Verses, his best impersonation of Cohen yet, but with psychedelic overtones,
and the delicate singalong Yesterday Tomorrow and In Between, which emanates perfumes of Dylan's Blonde on Blonde.
Joyner hasn't forgotten how to plunge into depressing moods and here we get That Was You and Goodbye So Long Farewell Goodbye.
The year was crowned by the single
One For The Catholic Girls (Wurlitzer Jukebox, 1998), with
the Fallen Men, and by the
The Christine EP (Secretly Canadian, 1998), that collected unreleased
tracks dating from 1994 (John Train's Blues,
Courting Mary, Everything's At Stake,
Yellow Precious Letter ).
The six-song EP The Motorcycle Accident (Roomtone, 1999) marked a reunion with the Fallen Men (Chris Deden on organ, Lonnie Methe on violin and Brad Smith on percussions).
The Lousy Dance (apr 1999 - oct 1999) boasts a completely revamped line-up: Ken Vandermark on clarinet, Jessica Billey on violin, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Charles Kim on pedal steel, Ernst Long on flugelhorn and trumpet, Will Hendricks on piano, accordion and vibes join the core quartet of Chris Deden on percussion, Ryan Hembrey on bass, Glenn Kotche on percussions and Michael Krassner on electric guitar. It sounds like a little orchestra but in reality each contributes only tiny touches here and there.
Lambchop's chamber folk would be the obvious
reference, but Joyner's songs still have Leonard Cohen written all over them
and, in fact, stick to an even more skeletal format, perhaps to suit
his soul-searching poetry, which has never been more romantic and erudite.
When She Drops Her Veil is a Cohen singalong with lounge piano and Neil Young's martial tempo.
At their best, these songs become metaphysical journeys, like the ghostly
seven-minute lament Fool's Gold on Main St and the placid lullaby
The Rain Asked For A Holiday (with neoclassical strings).
The utter lack of energy in It Will Never Be This Way Again is almost a provocation against most folk-rock, which relies on rhythm and riffs.
This drowsy gait is shored up by the horns in the eight-minute John Train Blues.
Having further tuned down (and slowed down) his songs, Joyner achieved
an almost Zen quality, but also slightly reduced the power of his art.
The album is just one little step below the previous one.
Hotel Lives (Truckstop, 2001) opens with
the oneiric guitar timbres of Hotel Suite, one of Joyner's literate
poems, only accidentally delivered as a song,
a confession of loneliness and confusion uttered in a raucous Dylan-ian voice.
Insomnia advances at Neil Young's solemn pace, with a bit of Billy Joel's
lonely self-agonizing.
Billy Joel comes to mind also in the upbeat and bouncing
seven-minute ode to drinking My Life Is Sweet, with flourishes of spanish
guitar.
And Only Love Will Bring You Peace has the tender, naive, ecstatic
feeling of Donovan's baroque lullabies.
But Cohen's slow and deep crooning is just round the corner, lulling
Blue Hammer, a nostalgic
black hole that only radiates symbolic images,
Now We Must Face Each Other, a slow-motion
cello-driven fanfare,
or She Without Shelter, a waltz-paced yodeling whine.
The slow, quiet, firm seven-minute rant of Your Old Haunts
is one of his sweetest compositions ever,
Joyner is clearly relishing the renewed sparseness of his sound.
Depression is acute in The House, a funereal chant drowned in
drones of strings.
The nostalgy is no less naked on
How I Regret That I've Done Wrong.
Joyner has vastly increased the complexity of his compositions
(You David Maria and Me shoots stark piano figures against a voodoo beat
while strings murmur in the background,
the nine-minute country-rocker Geraldine with saloon-piano and loud
drumming)
and their
allegorical charge sometimes approaches that of Nick Cave's parables
(especially with lines like "only the guilty are ever really innocent").
Following the trend of the previous album, this one is a sparse, subdued affair.
The band has been completely revolutionized and,
except for an occasional trumpet, cello or clarinet, the guitars rule again.
He also released the
single Here Come The Balloons (Tongue Master, 2003).
Three epic ballads loom over
Lost With the Lights On (Jagjaguwar, 2004), Joyner's tenth album
featuring Michael Krassner, Fred Lonberg-Holm, guitarist Eric Heywood,
pianist Wil Hendricks and Dirty Three's drummer Jim White:
the martial and slightly drunk Dreams of Saint Teresa,
that perfects his fusion of Leonard Cohen's mood and
Blonde on Blonde-era Dylan's pace;
the romantic Evening Song to Sally, whose resigned lament is
permeated with Latin overtones a` la Desire-era Dylan;
and Blue, a slow waltz-like dirge that tests the depths of loneliness.
The rest of the collection does not live up to the high standards of these
three songs, but the lullaby Birds of Spring, the calm and plain
Flying Dreams, the sad singalong Four Birds and even the
electric blues romp of Forgotten Blues prove Joyner's eclectic
and poetic talent.
Strange Blues (2004) was an improvised collaboration with the Refrigerator's guitarist Dennis Callaci.
Beautiful Losers (Jagjaguwar, 2006) collects singles and compilation tracks from 1994-1999
Skeleton Blues (Jagjaguar, 2006) was a humbler work compared with
its predecessors, but it still contains some stellar performances.
The nine-minute Open Window Blues, that ends with a lengthy guitar-driven jam, blends the ambient jazz of
Peter Green's End of the Game
and the intricate guitarwork of
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
The tender, stately eight-minute ode The Only Living Boy In Omaha sounds
like Warren Zevon covering
Street Legal-era Dylan
with string arrangements by VanDyke Parks.
Alas, there isn't much music in the desolate ten-minute My Side of the Blues and even less in the anemic Epilogue In D.
Medicine Blues is more energetic band effort but the result is more
bombast than substance.
Out Into the Snow (Team Love, 2009) is less inspired in the choice
of melodies and arrangement than its predecessor.
There is a lot of Dylan beneath the verbose storytelling: the
nine-minute The Drunken Boat sounds like a
Hawaiian, slow-motion, version of Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone,
(with a surreal coda of staccato strings)
and the seven-minute Out Into The Snow could be a calmer version of
Dylan's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.
On the other hand, Ambulances is an
enchanting lullaby in the vein of Leonard Cohen.
The melodramatic peak is the dreamy and slightly drunk seven-minute Last Evening On Earth with gospel organ and Doors-ian guitar.
A close contender is the lugubrious, sedate lament Peace In My Time that
a shivering violin lulls to sleep.
The elegant string arrangements combine well with the steel guitar but sometimes
they clip Joyner's wings, tame his eccentric side.
The sprawling double-disc Ghosts (Sing Eunuchs, 2012)
opens with the ghost of
Lou Reed that haunts many of the songs with
their deranged dissonance and fatalistic tone.
After some nightmarish noise, Vertigo intones a Reed-ian litany that
within three minutes gets amplified by staccato piano, distorted guitar
and tom-tom drumming.
The Lou Reed influence blends with
the Dylan of Desolation Row, plaintive violin and country chorus
in the catchy and energetic Last Will And Testament.
The desolate, disjointed Red Bandana Blues, which is basically a duet between the voice and a petulant psychedelic guitar, is the prelude to what happens next: a progressive disintegration of the music amid a feast of guitar distortion.
The nine-minute The Tyrant is so slow and so little musical that all the time it feels like it's going to suddenly implode.
His singing becomes a spectral colloquial in
If It's Alright With You (It's Alright With Me) Pt. 1
but over abrasive blues-rock jamming.
The limping rhythm and atonal violin of Will You Stand Up For Me? leads
to one of the spectacular numbers,
If It's Alright With You (It's Alright With Me) Pt. 2 with an
arrangement of
trotting beat, psychedelic distortion and surreal pizzicato violin.
The destructive force of this method is visible in
Answering Machine Blues, where anemic dissonant instrumental sounds
and a lazy drumbeat seem to lull each other to death.
By the time you reach If I Left Tomorrow, you got used to the guitar
distortion and the song sounds surprisingly straightforward country-rock.
The counterpart to these noisy songs are
delicate, fragile elegies like Swift River Run and The Last Parade, sometimes exuding a degree of melancholy that equals an emotional collapse,
like in Hard Luck Heart, with an
accompaniment that is borderline non-musical at all, like in Cotes Du Rhone.
The album ends with Ghost, three minutes of collective noise, perhaps
his kind of "metal machine music".
New Secrets (2013) was his second collaboration with
the Refrigerator's guitarist Dennis Callaci, with the rocking The Frayed End of the Rope, and it was followed by a
collaboration with the whole Refrigerator band,
Was It Something We Sang? (2016).
Grass, Branch & Bone (Woodsist, 2015) is the opposite of Ghosts:
a collection of humble, mostly acoustic short songs in a more traditional
folk and country version.
Joyner sounds like
Nashville's version of Donovan in Train To Crazy Horse, intones the
slow country dance You Got Under My Skin, and gets
subdued beyond the musical level, although somehow the submusical realm can
still sound haunting like Old Days.
He barely has the energy to croon the refrain of
Nostalgia Blues, which is otherwise a dirge radiating at a funereal pace.
A very, very minor entry in his catalog.
Rehearsal Tape (2016) collects casual duets with Cursive's cellist Megan Siebe.
Joyner and Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter David Nance re-recorded the Rolling Stones' album Goats Head Soup (1973) as Goats Head Soup (2017).
The double-LP
Step Into The Earthquake (Ba Da Bing, 2017) was his sociopolitical
statement after the election of the neofascist Donald Trump.
It was also the album where he seemed to rediscover how to sing regular
songs.
Change the lyrics and standout
I'm Feeling It Today could be a catchy, jangling remake of
Dylan's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall done by the
Byrds with Dylan guesting on harmonica.
The album has several charming tunes
(the gospel-ish Hail Mary,
the simple waltzing Earthquake, and
Annie's Blues in the style of Dylan's Blonde on Blonde)
but also quite a bit of filler.
The seven-minute I'll Fly Away marks an unwelcomed return to the non-musical style of Grass, Branch & Bone.
The 19-minute I Dreamed I Saw Lou Reed Last Night comes to the rescue:
after six minutes of harsh drones and free jamming, the drums and the guitar
engineer a percussive orgy while Joyner intones a decadent litany that actually sounds like Reed fronting Sonic Youth.
Another effective arrangement comes in Flash Forward To The Moon, from the spectral and sinister opening to the expressionist flow of dissonances via Neil Young-ian bursts of distorted guitar.
But it's I Dreamed I Saw Lou Reed Last Night that saves the album from
oblivion.
Unfortunately,
Pocket Moon (Ba Da Bing, 2019) sounds a follow-up to
Grass, Branch & Bone with even less inspiration.
You're Running Away David
and
Yellow Jacket Blues
offer the most musical moments but are not exactly groundbreaking.
Songs From a Stolen Guitar (2022)
was recorded during the covid pandemic, with the musicians
(viola player Megan Siebe,
guitarists David Nance and Max Knouse,
drummer Ryan Jewell, bassist Wil Hendricks, keyboardist Ben Brodin,
and
Michael Krassner on guitar and piano)
physically in different locations and contributing very little.
The highlight is the eight-minute Morning Light
in the vein of early Donovan.
A band, the Echoes,
revisits old Joyner songs on
One Carried a Lantern (2023).
This Is Where the Ocean Begins (2023) revisits old Joyner songs with Michael Krassner and Fred Lonberg-Holm.
