Mike Reid & Joe Henry - Life And Time [CD]

Release Date: September 05, 2025
Label: Work Song Inc.

2025 release. In August 2022, Joe Henry, a seasoned but unconventional songwriter, taught at a Nashville songwriting camp, feeling out of place among more commercially successful instructors. On the first night, he met fellow instructor Mike Reid-former NFL star and acclaimed songwriter. Despite Henry's initial awe, Reid immediately engaged him in a heartfelt conversation about poetry, sparking a deep connection. Months later, inspired by a rhyming couplet, Henry reached out to Reid with a note suggesting they write together. Reid's enthusiastic reply-"Let's push off the dock and into the fog and see what we find"-led to an unexpected and organic collaboration. Henry sent lyrics; Reid responded with fully formed recordings. This seamless exchange repeated, producing a body of songs that felt inevitable and deeply shared, as if accessing something beyond either man's individual reach. This collection is profoundly elegiac, but also hopeful-a meditation on grief, love, and memory that doesn't shy away from sorrow, yet seeks transformation through artistic expression. It feels like a spiritual journal disguised as a folk album, or a soul's quiet reckoning with the unspeakable beauty and heartbreak of life.