INTERVIEW : 2000-05-11 Joe's woes - Why America won't listen to son Joseph Arthur's un-Real-World music (by Chris Yurkiw)
Maybe it's because Joseph Arthur is a quixotic Anglo-American singer-songwriter on the glossy Real World music label. Maybe it's the whole "protégé of Peter Gabriel" thing--an association with a figure who's not horribly in vogue these days. Or maybe it's that the music of Akron, Ohio native Joe Arthur is just slippery enough to elude easy comprehension.
For whatever reasons, Arthur's 1997 debut album Big City Secrets remained one giant secret in North America, and in the wake of the recent release of his compelling follow-up, Come to Where I'm From, Joe's starting to get that sinking feeling again. I catch him visiting his mother in Akron on an off-day from his unique touring that sees him revisit cities over the course of a few weeks, and Arthur's just been scanning magazines for any kind of blip about the new record...
"Nobody wants to cover me or something," says Joe. "I don't think people like my music. Nobody will write about it, nobody pays attention to it. I mean, fuck me, I don't know what you gotta do, but I keep making soulful records in a world where there aren't that many soulful records, and nobody'll even say they've heard it. I don't even get bad reviews."
But go to Arthur's main fan site and you'll see copious and glowing feedback from around the world--especially Europe and France (there are many American artists who channel their culture--not the least blues and jazz greats--only to be appreciated from the outside). Or listen to Come To Where I'm From and be moved by Arthur's mysterious mix of recognizable elements--the standby acoustic guitar, some ambient electric, synths, and even breakbeat backing--odd linear trajectories of songs that seem to go one way and just stop. Or check him live, where he uses a record-delay to loop bits he's just played to create a self-contained samplin' band.
"I think I've sold more records in Spain than I have in America," says Arthur, "and I can't even fathom why. I mean, I've played three gigs in Spain. I don't know what they're doing over there, or what they get... To be ignored by your country is just brutal, you know? It hurts. It hurts the soul."
Here's another theory: maybe nobody can deal with an ostensibly hip singer-songwriter who repeats the line "May God's love be with you" in the lead-off song to his new album?
"Yeah, there is something subversive about it," says Joe. "It somehow becomes a punk rock thing to say because it goes against the grain. I do do that: when things are going one way I tend to want to go the other way. And I just thought that other people would respond to that, but so far nobody has.
"If I do become hugely rich and famous I will deserve every fucking penny of it. Because they've made me fuckin' take my skin off and jump into a vat of rubbing alcohol for this shit--seriously. They've made me fuckin' lie down on coals until my bones are burning."
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