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MAGNET Exclusive: Premiere Of Simon Joyner’s “Yellow Jacket Blues”

Twenty-five years separate Simon Joyner’s first LP from Pocket Moon, his forthcoming record (Grapefruit, October 25), which includes “Yellow Jacket Blues.” The Omaha singer/songwriter has been held up as an example of peak songcraft by fellow tunesmiths as disparate as Conor Oberst, Gillian Welch and Beck. His bank account probably doesn’t match any of theirs, but if you measure success by how many songs he has written that show you the truth in all its messy complexity, he’s one of the richest writers around. 

Joyner’s antecedents and inspirations aren’t hard to spot. You’ll see a bit of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan in his elegant handling of rough situations and lyrics that confront you, outflank you and show you the way home. He’s a guy who can roll a dream of Lou Reed and some lines borrowed from Yoko Ono and Woody Guthrie into a literally barn-storming (as in played on a piano that was mostly wrecked when a tornado knocked down Joyner’s barn) protest against good old-fashioned American injustice. But he’s also the guy who can lay out a cross-generational family fight so empathetically that you’ll feel like you’ve walked in both sides’ shoes. 

Most of the time, Joyner works with a close circle of Nebraskans, but his most enduring musical compadre is Arizona producer/guitarist Michael Krassner. This time, Joyner let Krassner pick the players, and the result is an album that stands apart from most of his discography in subtle ways at the same time that it’s of a piece with the whole catalog lyrically.

“Yellow Jacket Blues” is by no means the first time that first time that Joyner has reached into his bag and pulled out C&W sounds and Biblical imagery. This time, however, he’s stepped back and let the rest of the crew buff the arrangements until they attain a muted, immaculate, but non-distracting glow. The sounds nicely frame the song’s cinematic flow, which takes in a literary argument, a misanthrope’s bloviation and a bedbug scare en route to posing an insight that the same force that drives bugs to drown themselves in your drink brings about new life.

We’re proud to premiere “Yellow Jacket Blues” today on magnetmagazine.com. Check it out now.

—Bill Meyer