Interview: Simon Joyner

Emile Zola once wrote that “A work of art is a corner of the creation seen through a temperament.” The same can be said about the songs of Simon Joyner — they can be sad, joyous, scary, simple, or elaborate, but they are always unmistakedly his. 

Every line in a Joyner song has the potential to make you laugh or make you want to cut your heart out. And his lyrics are always paired with melodies that are so familiar, it’s as if they have always been there, waiting for someone to pick them up. 

Joyner’s body of work is extensive: he’s been releasing albums since the early ‘90s, documenting the varying aspects of his own corner of creation. Ghosts (2012) is a fever dream of distorted visions and stark nightmares, whereas Pocket Moon (2019) sometimes has the feel of swapping stories while drinking wine with a loved one on a hillside in the French countryside. Alternately, 2024’s Coyote Butterfly, his last full length album, confronts a different kind of horror as it is made up of songs grappling with the untimely death of his son Owen. 

Earlier this month, Joyner released a new EP made up of covers of Lou Reed and Bob Dylan songs. As is the nature of the music business, proceeds will support his upcoming tour, this one with a six-person band that will include a Wednesday, Sept. 3, headlining show at Static Age Records. In advance of hitting the road, Asheville Stages talked to Joyner about Reed and Dylan, his approach to covering other songwriters, and the opportunity to perform with a large band.  

Scott Bunn: I’m really enjoying the new EP. Why did you choose Lou Reed and Bob Dylan for a set of cover songs? 

Simon Joyner: There's a radio show that has asked me for a Bob Dylan cover every year for a program they do on his birthday, so while I was in Phoenix recording the Coyote Butterfly album, we did the "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" cover for that radio show for this last Dylan birthday show. But it turned out so nicely that I thought it would be cool to do another song, too, and put out a 7". I thought it would be nice to tackle another giant who means a lot to me, so Lou Reed seemed the way to go. I think I'm equally influenced by each of them. 

Then, once we had the 7" with “Augustine” and "I'm Set Free," it was so fun that we decided to keep messing around with more songs and this somewhat more adventurous EP emerged from that, something we could sell to help raise some dough for this tour we're doing.

SB: Why these particular songs? 

SJ: John Wesley Harding and the [self-titled] third Velvet Underground album are really interesting to me because they are around the same time and both songwriters seem to have experienced some kind of crisis that has them seeking answers in surprising places. The religious parables of John Wesley Harding coming on the heels of Blonde on Blonde must have been as shocking as hearing Lou Reed sing about Jesus and “Beginning to See the Light,” you know, as opposed to some of the other places his searching had led him to on the previous two albums. So, there was a kinship there. That was for the 7". Then, for the EP, I just chose songs I thought would be a challenge to do justice to. They aren't the most common songs by either, except maybe “Pale Blue Eyes.”

SB: Do you approach recording a cover song differently than something you’ve written?

SJ: Oh, sure. You know, you have to wrestle not just with the original but with all the other covers of the song which have come before and see how you might approach it in a way that feels like your music but also respects the integrity of the original song. It's a balancing act for sure. If a song is great enough, it's hard to mess it up. You can't do damage to the song, only to yourself.

SB: How do you consider performing a song like “Pale Blue Eyes”? It’s strangely become a standard of sorts. Do you think about trying to put your own spin on it? 

SJ: Yes, exactly. That's one where it's nearly impossible to cover it because so many have done it, which made it a special challenge. I don't know if we pulled it off or not but I don't think it sounds so faithful to be boring, at least, and it doesn't really sound like we're covering someone covering someone covering the Velvet Underground, either. My goal in covering a song is for it to sound like me singing a song I love in a way that seems fresh. I don't do covers live very often but it's fun to record them sometimes for special occasions.

SB: In the song “Cotes du Rhone” from your album Ghosts, you quote the lyric “phony false alarm” from Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Do you have any other overt references to Dylan or Reed in your songwriting? 

SJ: Maybe. I'd have to think about it. There are a lot of references in my songs to other works I appreciate —a way of tipping my hat and acknowledging an important influence, and I think it's always fun when I catch references in film, music [or] fiction to other works. It's sort of a way to compound the impact of something by layering it with a reflection of something else; addressing something similar but in its own way.

SB: In your own writing, are you more influenced by older artists that you’ve known for years, or do you find inspiration from young artists and bands? 

SJ: It's both. Perhaps there's more influence from older artists just because there's a larger body of work to draw from, and the separating the wheat from the chaff has been done to some extent. And you don't have to listen to every record that came out in 1971, for example, to know which ones don't have something special happening that will inspire you, whereas you do need to listen to a lot more currently coming out and do a lot of that sorting through in real time. 

There's always been great music being made and great lyrics being written, and there's always been a lot of stuff that doesn't fall into either of those categories clogging things up or distracting people from some of the better art being made. Sometimes it takes decades for the great work to be noticed. 

SB: Going back to your previous full length album, Coyote Butterfly, I admit that, as a parent, it's hard for me to listen to those songs without becoming a withering mess of tears. I also recognize the honesty and bravery it took to put them into the world. What’s your relationship to those songs coming up on a year of the album’s release?

SJ: Grief is always going to be with me. It changes shape but it's always here. We are coming up on the third anniversary of my son Owen's death. There are still really tough days — it can be a little thing that sets it off, or a dream or a memory. Other days, it's easier to go about enjoying life still. 

Healing isn't really a linear experience like with a broken leg, or something, but a series of experiences where you accept the reality of your loss and choose to forgive yourself or allow yourself to go on living. It's like I'm a ship on the sea and I move with the water now, whether it's calm or choppy. The only way to not break apart is to go where the grief takes you.

The songs on Coyote Butterfly are about it all, so I will always relate to them. I only play a few of them live — they are difficult to sing. I have just completed a new album called Tough Love, which certainly has some songs on it which are dealing with loss and grief but mostly in a less directly autobiographical way. I'm finding it possible now to return to other character's stories and infuse them with my experiences. For Coyote Butterfly, I needed to confront everything in a more direct way and that has allowed me to return to other kinds of writing. I don't know that I'd have continued making music or writing songs if I hadn't been able to write about Owen directly first.

SB: With the EP’s announcement, you said that proceeds will help fund the costs of taking a six-person band on the road? Why the big band? 

SJ: I did a tour in Australia and New Zealand in February and March, and two of my band members over there were Leah Senior and Jesse Williams. They mentioned that they had a U.S. work visa with some months left on it, so if I was putting together a U.S. tour, they'd love to join the U.S. version of the band, too. So, I wanted to bring them over for this. 

And then I had recorded with Caleb and Micah Dailey in Phoenix for both the new album, Tough Love, as well as the 7" of Dylan/Reed covers. So, I thought it would be great to bring them along, too, especially if we were going to do some of the new songs. And my good friend Myke Marasco, who used to run Grapefruit Records with me in Omaha, had moved to LA, so I wanted to spend some time with him and asked him to play drums for the tour since he played on Tough Love, too. 

It just turned into a big band situation — it's not financially wise but it'll be a great experience and more artistically satisfying which is all I really care about, honestly.

SB: Does the band give you the chance to play songs you don't normally do? Will you do new arrangements of old songs or try out new material?

SJ: Yes, there are songs of mine that work best in a band context, so it's nice to be able to perform some things that I wouldn't play solo. I love playing solo, too — there is an intensity that you have to bring to those performances because you are relying strictly on your voice and guitar and the words and must find the nuance in those three things and use each judiciously so that the audience feels like they've been on a journey. It can be exhausting to only have those three tools in your toolbox but it's a challenge for sure, which I appreciate. But having the band will allow the music to be more varied and take on more of the work of communicating experience, and that's a nice change, sometimes, to give the other musicians some of the heavy lifting. 

We'll do an assortment of old songs in new ways and some new ones from Tough Love, as well as a couple from Coyote Butterfly. It's nice to be able to present the songs in a way that resembles what people experience listening to the albums, even if we change the arrangements. There's something about watching a band that has great chemistry, too. I always enjoy being part of that experience and I think the audience enjoys a band in a different way than they approach a solo singer/songwriter performance. Playing solo is a little too much time with myself and my preoccupations, honestly. It's really nice to get away from me sometimes or at least share the light, as it were.

IF YOU GO

Who: Simon Joyner & The Nervous Stars with Leah Senior + Jackie Kelsh
When: Wednesday, Sept. 3, 8 p.m. 
Where: Static Age Records, 110 N Lexington Ave., staticagenc.com 
Tickets: $12 advance/$15 day of show

(Photo courtesy of the artist)