Singer/songwriter
Joseph Arthur was discovered by
Peter Gabriel in the mid-'90s and soon signed to the artist's Real World label.
Arthur's debut, Big City Secrets, was then released in 1997 and went practically unnoticed. Not discouraged by industry politics, the native of Akron, OH, continued to make music and dove into his Earth-inspired abstract art. His eclectic brooding is similar to the likes of
Leonard Cohen,
Joe Henry, and the late
Jeff Buckley, and his time spent with
Gabriel exposed his musical styles to a global palette.
Arthur participated in
Gabriel's annual WOMAD shows and spent the latter part of the '90s on the road with residency tours in the Northeast and Northwest, which included opening dates for labelmates
Ben Harper and
Gomez.
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Singer/songwriter
Joseph Arthur was discovered by
Peter Gabriel in the mid-'90s and soon signed to the artist's Real World label.
Arthur's debut, Big City Secrets, was then released in 1997 and went practically unnoticed. Not discouraged by industry politics, the native of Akron, OH, continued to make music and dove into his Earth-inspired abstract art.
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His eclectic brooding is similar to the likes of
Leonard Cohen,
Joe Henry, and the late
Jeff Buckley, and his time spent with
Gabriel exposed his musical styles to a global palette.
Arthur participated in
Gabriel's annual WOMAD shows and spent the latter part of the '90s on the road with residency tours in the Northeast and Northwest, which included opening dates for labelmates
Ben Harper and
Gomez.
In 1999,
Arthur released the seven-song EP Vacancy and received a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package, thanks to his design with co-art director Zachary Larner. Following brief critical acclaim,
Arthur released his sophomore effort,
Come to Where I'm From, one year later on Virgin Records. The album showed
Arthur's musical fondness for basic
country-rock and
Americana, and he spent the rest of 2000 headlining club shows across North America and serving as an opening act for
The The. Two years later,
Arthur issued the four-EP series Junkyard Hearts, a precursor to his third opus, Redemption's Son. North American dates with
Tracy Chapman followed in summer 2003, then one year later the critically acclaimed Our Shadows Will Remain appeared.
After starting his own label, Lonely Astronaut (distributed by Sony),
Arthur published a collection of his artwork entitled We Almost Made It, complete with a mostly instrumental accompaniment, The Invisible Parade, in the spring of 2006. A few months later, fans were greeted with his fifth record, Nuclear Daydream, as well as a tour that featured
Arthur with a full live band, something he had never done before.
Arthur also provided vocals on "Sublime," from
the Twilight Singers' iTunes-only five-song EP A Stitch in Time. In April 2007, he partnered with his band once again to record Let's Just Be, his second album with his own label. The following year brought even more material, with
Arthur releasing no less than four EPs during the first seven months of the year (Could We Survive, Crazy Rain, Vagabond Skies, Foreign Girls) and a full album,
Temporary People, in September. ~ MacKenzie Wilson, All Music Guide
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