Joyner, Simon

Joyner, Simon

The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll (30th Anniversary Edition)

Homeless

***REISSUED!!! Omaha, Nebraska native and singer/songwriter SIMON JOYNER has been writing about the dizzy and dark aspects of the human condition since 1992. The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll was originally released in 1994, on Sing, Eunuchs!, exclusively on vinyl, and marks the first major critical milestone in Joyner’s lauded career. John Peel famously played it in its entirety on his BBC radio program and Joyner’s underground cult status was solidified; in all of John Peel’s years in radio he had only played a record in its entirety three other times. “Pound for pound, Simon Joyner is my favorite lyricist of all time. He has shades of all the greats (Van Zandt, Cohen, Dylan) but exists in a space all his own… He truly is an American songwriting treasure.”—Conor Oberst

Joyner, Simon

Coyote Butterfly

Grapefruit / BB Island

Coyote Butterfly is the first album of new songs in two years from singer-songwriter, Simon Joyner, following the overdose death of his son, Owen, in August of 2022. Drawing on the kaleidoscopic nature of grief, Joyner explores his loss through a series of imagined dialogues and raw confessions. The album is a tribute to Owen, but what Joyner generously delivers is an intimate glimpse at his attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible. The album is bookended by field recordings overlaid with minimalist guitar laments. The first, a spring thrum of sparrows and red-winged blackbirds, functions as an invitation to the elegies which follow, while the last, the late-August drone of cicadas returns us to a life of sweat on the skin, sirens in the distance, and the things we cannot change but must somehow accept. In between these instrumentals, Joyner grapples with regret and fear, shame and love. From the opening song, “I’m Taking You With Me” to the gut-wrenching remorse of “My Lament,” Joyner lays bare the struggles of those left in the wake of personal devastation. On the title track, we hear Joyner perform an elemental incantation, a heartbroken ode infused with forgiveness. The final song of the album, “There Will be a Time,” is a meditation on a future where such suffering, both personal and universal, might be softened by understanding. The musicians playing alongside Simon on Coyote Butterfly are among his closest friends; David Nance, James Schroeder, Kevin Donahue, Ben Brodin, and Michael Krassner. It’s thanks...

Joyner, Simon

Songs From A Stolen Guitar

Grapefruit

“Artists are not athletes. The career of the athlete is, by mortal necessity, compressed and brief. No one expects to see a professional slugger in their sixties out on the diamond, much less see them vying for a pennant. Artists, on the other hand, tend to age like wine—think Dylan, Cohen, and Cash—with the most rarefied among them capable of swinging for the fences with every at bat. Omaha singer-songwriter Simon Joyner, who recently turned fifty, is such an artist, and while I’d certainly enjoy seeing his face grinning at me from a box of Wheaties, I’d rather he continue making albums like Songs From A Stolen Guitar.  “Songs From A Stolen Guitar was recorded across several different cities. Joyner recorded his vocals and guitar live in Omaha; bassist Wil Hendrix added his parts at home in San Francisco, Michael Krassner recorded his guitar and piano overdubs at home in Phoenix, and drummer / percussionist Ryan Jewell recorded in Colorado. This musical chain letter then made its way back to Omaha where David Nance (guitars and backing vocals), Ben Brodin (organ and vibraphone), and Megan Siebe (viola and backing vocals) overdubbed—separately—their respective contributions “The remoteness of the individual players on Songs From A Stolen Guitar, while necessarily eliminating some of the ragged spontaneity of much of Joyner’s previous work, yields a sort of silver-lining effect: Joyner’s songs, produced more meticulously and perhaps more intentionally here than on any of his previous albums, cut through that much cleaner, foregrounding both his dazzling...

Joyner, Simon

Pocket Moon

Grapefruit

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  “‘Singer-songwriter’ is a frustratingly confining term; to truly understand exactly just how confining, look no further than the recorded works of Simon Joyner, an artist whose work consistently transcends the narrow parameters of genre classifications and record shop bin cards. Though his music has always honored, reckoned with—wrestled with—the tradition set forth by his songwriting forebears (Cohen, Van Zandt, Ochs, Dylan, Reed to name a few), Joyner can always be counted on to defy expectations; as a lyricist, melodicist, and arranger, Joyner likes to keep us on our toes.  “For his new album Pocket Moon, Joyner opted to engage in a risky artistic challenge. Instead of leaning on his fertile pool of Omaha musicians (the amorphous Ghosts band), he asked friend and frequent collaborator Michael Krassner to assemble unknown players on his behalf specifically for this recording. He then traveled from his home base to Krassner’s ‘7-Track Shack’ studio in Phoenix to record the album, abandoning the literal and figurative comfort zone of old habits and home field advantage. Simultaneously sparser and more immediate than 2017’s obliquely topical Step Into The Earthquake, Pocket Moon is instantly one of Joyner’s finest albums since his redoubtable 2012 double album masterpiece, Ghosts, or to some ears the excellent, sonic 180 he managed with his follow-up, Grass, Branch & Bone. Krassner’s wrecking crew is sturdy, versatile, and complementary. Utilizing a wide range of instruments and textures, the band contributes additional nuance to each of the ragged, sublime songs...

Joyner, Simon

Step Into The Earthquake

Shrimper

***Available again on deluxe double-vinyl gatefold action!!!  Simon Joyner is among America’s best songwriters, so says Gillian Welch, Conor Oberst, Kevin Morby, and others. With his new double album, Step Into The Earthquake, he strikes for the personal while acknowledging that the times they are a-changin’ around us again. Things are leaning shitty right now, and the characters in Joyner’s songs experience the dissolution of comfort amid anxious concerns regarding our turbulent times. To record, Joyner’s band, The Ghosts, holed up with longtime collaborator, Michael Krassner (Boxhead Ensemble), in Omaha’s ARC Studio, developing songs from skeletal foundations to full-on group efforts. Joyner’s vision may be dark but it stops short of nihilism. Where do we go from here? The best move toward answering that question is knowing where we stand right now. This expansive album offers a poet’s truthful view, however disconcerting, that to survive whatever is coming for us, we have to confront and understand it first. So, go ahead and step into the earthquake. “Omaha has given us the reigning heir to Henry Miller’s dark emotional mirror, Townes Van Zandt’s three-chord moan, and Lou Reed’s warehouse minimalism: his name is Simon Joyner.” —Gillian Welch “Pound for pound Simon Joyner is my favorite lyricist of all time.” —Conor Oberst “Simon’s always been a secret handshake amongst me and my peers. He’s a pioneer.” —Kevin Morby

Joyner, Simon

Only Love Can Bring You Peace - Selected Lyrics

Magic Helicopter Press

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  For twenty-five years, Nebraska songwriter Simon Joyner has crafted haunting, honest songs about the unsettled dust of lovers and strangers. A pioneer of the Omaha music scene, Joyner has earned the praises of Conor Oberst, Beck, Gillian Welch, John Peel, John Darnielle, and more. As Dennis Callaci explains in his heartfelt foreword, Joyner has spent those years and earned those praises for songs about the "sorrow and southbound turns" of "the put-upon, the tortured, builders of arcs." Only Love Can Bring You Peace is the first selection of Simon Joyner's lyrics (assembled and edited by Simon and his wife Sara) to appear in book form, showcasing the images and characters of over 15 albums, EPs, and rare releases. It also features two interviews with Joyner (from Aquarium Drunkard [2015] and Circumstantial Evidence [1996]), rare liner notes, and illustrations from over a dozen guest starring friends. Whether you're new to Joyner's work, or you've had his songs stuck in your head since 1992, this book serves as a sturdy companion to what Callaci calls "the grass, branch and bone of a lifetime."

Joyner, Simon

Grass, Branch & Bone

Woodsist

*** Available on vinyl again - note cheaper price!! Renowned American singer-songwriter Simon Joyner first came to prominence during the lo-fi movement of the early ’90s alongside contemporaries like Will Oldham, Peter Jefferies, the Mountain Goats, Smog and Alastair Galbraith. Joyner was championed early on by the late British DJ John Peel, who famously played Joyner’s 1994 LP, The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll, start to finish on one of his BBC programs, making Joyner more well known overseas than in his own country. Considered a forefather of the Omaha music scene, he’s released critically acclaimed albums on various independent labels every few years for over two decades. He keeps a low profile and tours only occasionally, spending most of his time working and raising a family, allowing writing and music to remain an artistic outlet rather than an occupation. Grass, Branch & Bone is Joyner’s thirteenth proper album and a sonic departure from 2012’s Ghosts. While that record was a double-disc collection of dark, dissonant songs confronting death and loss in the vein of Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night, this new one is sparse by comparison, running with the likes of other singer-songwriter outcast aftermath albums like Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, Gene Clark’s White Light, David Blue’s Stories, Jerry Jeff Walker’s Five Years Gone, Townes Van Zandt’s Our Mother the Mountain and Cohen’s Recent Songs. It’s a natural progression—after a funeral, one takes stock and reflect upon his or her own life. Grass, Branch & Bone...

Joyner, Simon

Ghosts

Sing, Eunuchs!

Love and death: these are the only themes. So it’s been in Simon Joyner’s twenty years of making records—from 1992’s Umbilical Chords cassette to his new double LP, Ghosts. Over the course of a thirteen-album career in which he’s produced a multitude of sounds and musical influences on a multitude of independent labels, he’s only made two other proper double-albums (1997’s Yesterday, Tomorrow and In Between and 2001’s Hotel Lives). Both are classics of his discography, and Ghosts follows in their footsteps, creating and inhabiting a world in which Joyner’s thematic preoccupations can be explored carefully and fully.  Recorded on reel-to-reel in Joyner’s warehouse on a sixteen-track tape machine over many months, Ghosts sounds unlike any Joyner record. The influence of dark, ’60s and ’70s private-press psych and folk records, as well as the noisy, transcendent music of New Zealand heroes like This Kind of Punishment, Alastair Galbraith and The Dead C are highlighted on this experimental, full-band song-cycle that pays subtle as well as brazen homage to several influential double-albums (perhaps most obviously with its Exile on Main Street-inspired gatefold artwork). Joyner’s music gathers acolytes rather than casual fans, contributing to his “songwriter’s songwriter” status and inspiring comparisons to other artists like Bill Fay, Townes Van Zandt, David Blue, and Leonard Cohen.  Ghosts is an all-analog album (recorded and mastered), and available vinyl-only with a full digital download included.

Joyner, Simon

Songs For The New Year

Shrimper

Nine tracks of introspective realisation, and lyrical beauty via piano, organ, violin, lap steel, cello, accordion.