Life After 27

Singer, songwriter, artist, painter Joseph Arthur is a visionary whose potential is only limited by his own imagination. His music has been compared to Nick Drake and Donovan, British artists who share the American’s penchant for dreamy moodscapes. Arthur’s newest release, Come To Where I’m From, opens up like a good novel — grabbing you right from the beginning and holding your attention throughout. Come To Where I’m From is a beautiful creation: introspective, thought provoking, hypnotic and hopeful.

Arthur is currently touring the eastern portion of North America, having just finished the European leg of the Ben Harper tour, during which we managed to reach a slightly homesick Joseph Arthur while he was in Italy.

Hey, how are you?

Joe, Joe is fine.

Yeah, I’m in Medina.

Yeah, my tour manager lost his and the one that I got from the French record company doesn’t dial internationally so it’s utterly useless — I don’t know why they even gave it to me. I don’t even know anybody in France.

Well, not bad — pretty good. The album is already out in France and when I go to record stores there they’ve got like big posters and shit and the whole nine yards.

It did at first, but you kind of get used to it. It’s a little surreal.

No, I’ve toured Europe before, quite a lot actually — I toured for my first record. I like it, but when I watch TV in the hotel and I see an image of New York I kind of stare longingly into it.

I would love to go home for a minute. I went to LA and I was supposed to be there for two weeks and have a week in New York before I came to Europe, but I ended up getting held up in LA and went straight to Europe from LA. I haven’t been home in so long.

Yeah – I’m just writing notes on the road, she put it together.

No, she did it all on her own volition.

Yeah, the fan site is like the only site and she’s great at it. We get information from her. I communicate with my family through her Web site.

Yeah – she’s looking after my image. She wants to make sure I stay mysterious.

Well I don’t really give a shit.

That’s a great compliment, I think that’s the biggest compliment for a record. There are albums that I can tell are great — creatively great — and I listen to them once or twice and that’s it for some reason. Some albums that are not even as good as those other albums in ways, I can listen to over and over again and I don’t care.

That’s an elusive quality. I’m glad that the record is like that for you.

Oh yeah — I did that with Gomez. The version with Gomez is so good ‘cause they are really fucking good. I want to record a whole record with those guys.

Really?

Ahh… All my junkie friends are getting straight jobs.

28

Exactly, I can’t believe you picked up on that. That’s because you’re 28. It’s a weird age.

Yeah, it’s like the ‘adolescent death’ age. People get it at different times. I got it at hard at 27. I’m way more comfortable being 28 than I was being 27.

27 is the rock star death age and the reason why, in my opinion, is it’s most likely the age when your adolescence has to die. You want to recapture some of that old glory you had when you were young, so you take unnecessary risks. I’m way more happy now than I’ve ever been in my whole life, but at the same time I wish I was 20. 28 is a weird age because you don’t really know who you belong to. You kind of belong to the kids but you don’t really and you sort of feel ridiculous… here’s an example: Today, man, I just bought a jean jacket and then afterwards I’m like — can I still even wear a fuckin’ jean jacket? I bought it, it was cool, it was cheap, and I was like, fuck it; I don’t have a good jean jacket. I don’t even know if I can wear one. I haven’t even gotten used to the whole, ‘am I an adult’ thing?

It depends on the question. If somebody says "what’s Peter Gabriel like?" Or something like that, that could be interesting. I always get asked, "what was it like when Peter Gabriel called you up?" I’ve had that question like one million times. But at the same time it’s a great story, a fairytale story and I’ve got to give it up. The story is amazing but the price you have to pay for it is…

That’s a fair price, I suppose.

I was reading through a lot of your notes on the road and it seems like you’re doing a lot of interviews and it doesn’t seem that you’re too stoked on them.

It seems like people really actually do read that shit because since I wrote that I’ve had people ask me stuff like "so, man, you’re sick of Peter Gabriel?"

Yeah. it’s interesting to document it when it’s going down. It’s kind of kept me sane on the road — given me a focus. It helps me stay focused.

Definitely, I do have to be careful of it a little bit.

Yeah, I’ve had some weird things. For one, my girlfriend got really upset with me about one of the things, which was just a conversation with this girl — anyway, she was really upset with it.

It goes again to the 28 thing. Basically I did everything I could do and I survived so I might as well hang it up. The sobriety aspect is actually one of the greatest things about this whole tour – the clarity of it all. It is a gift man, it’s so fun. The writing I do for it tends to make it seem darker than it is and there is a darkness to it but at the same time I totally enjoy it. If I was getting fucked up and stuff I’d be really burnt out right now and I’d be hating it.

I wouldn’t be doing half the things I’m doing if I were getting loaded. I’ve been sober for a while and I paint and all that energy that would go into that go into things that are positive.

They’re sort of maybe based on that a little. I was going to call the album Cockroach, but I then I decided to call the record Come To Where I’m From because Cockroach seemed too hard for what the record was. Cockroach would have been a good title for some of the songs, but Come To Where I’m From has the color of the songs. The bugs on the picture are kind of opposing cells in a way, or opposite sides of the self, at odds with each other. If you cover up the blue eye and the blue half of the face then you see the profile of the image getting ready to eat the bone – that’s like his dark side, the other side is his light side. The bone represents his humanity.

Yeah, that’s why I’ve been telling everybody about it. There’s no way in hell anyone would figure that out.

Probably in that I had a rough childhood — but I say that in a way that everyone’s had a rough childhood, sort of. — in that my imagination was worked out a lot, I lived in my imagination a lot when I was a kid. I think that is still there with me, and now I can have fun with it and explore it.

In a weird way I think maybe I am. I don’t have any morals of judgement thing, but I do have the sense that there is a creator that is watching and paying attention and is basically good. Kind of good and forgiving — I definitely think there are other things flying around the universe that we can’t see.

No, just general. I see so much evidence of it in my life and maybe it’s just a coping mechanism. I sense that this is a good world. This is fun. I really wouldn’t want life to be anything other that what it is now.

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