INTERVIEW : 2007-04-12 Life is a funny place (by Dave Jaffer)

Joseph Arthur redefines cool as only the previously not-cool can

You may have heard that Joseph Arthur, who's usually the type to go it alone, is now running with a band, The Lonely Astronauts. And despite his seeming need to live life at a frenetic pace - he's moving, opening a gallery, mastering his next solo record and preparing his upcoming tour right now - he's pretty sure that the first Astronauts record is the product of an approach to creation that conflicts, somewhat, with his "poetry is a state of crisis" style.

"The philosophy of the whole record was sort of a letting go," he says from his home in Brooklyn. "That's why I called it Let's Just Be, because it was like everything about that record [came from] a Zen-like approach. Just letting things be how they are."

So how did it all come about?

"We were on tour, supporting Nuclear Daydream [Arthur's last solo record], and the band developed off of that album and that tour, and it turned from, like, a band backing me up to a real band with collaborative songwriting. We were really tight and focused, [so] I was like, 'Let's go into the studio and make a record.' I thought we could make a record in like a week, you know?"

Translation: It happened accidentally.

Arthur, who was discovered (though he and I share a certain contempt for that terminology) by Peter Gabriel in the early '90s, is very much an "in the now" sort of guy. So much so that when I ask him questions about his past, and how his career came to be, his voice grudgingly betrays a private, nostalgic side. Then boom - suddenly
he's a kid again, wide-eyed and virginal, reliving the experience:

"Back then, it was overwhelming," he says, zoning out into memory. "It was literally like life became kind of a dream. I think it's the only way you deal with something like that. You go into some semi-state of shock. [I went] from cooking at a restaurant and selling guitars at a guitar shop to hanging out with Joe Strummer."

"When I landed there, it really was kind of like Utopia," he says, laughing almost hysterically. "And when you're there, you're kind of, like, trying to act like you fit in. You don't want to give away the fact that you're blown away."

Translation: Even the coolest guys are, at their core, as wide-eyed as the rest of us.