Joseph Arthur released his first new solo album in three years last October – Come Back World. Produced by Joseph Arthur and Chris Seefried, the album features several other amazing artists including: Ben Harper, Patrick Carney, Jesse Malin and Greg Dulli.
“The interesting parts of our stories aren’t the famous people we meet,” Arthur remarked. Or the times when everything is basically working. Or when we get to lay in comfort with a partner watching Netflix and the world go by. The interesting parts are when all those things break down and you’re left in isolation to finally deal with the roots of whatever had been thwarting your existence all along. The interesting parts are when the world has turned its back on you and you have turned your back on it or them. When darkness could seemingly swallow you whole if it hasn’t already. When there is no such thing as hope and so you manufacture it from a dream which only angle is to survive. Come Back World is an album about rebirth and survival.”
Over the course of his career to date, Joseph has released fourteen albums under his own name, eleven official EP’s and has been involved with several high-profile side projects including last year’s collaboration with Peter Buck under the name Arthur Buck, Fistful Of Mercy (with Ben Harper & Dhani Harrison), and RDNM with Jeff Ament and Richard Stuverud.
Recently Joseph Arthur also launched a new Podcast called “Come To Where I’m From” which to date has featured celebrities, comedians and musician from across the board. Recent guests include, Rosanna Arquette, Mark Lanegan, Todd Barry, Keith Morris and Joan Osborne to name a few. The podcast is available in both audio form everywhere Podcasts are found (iTunes, Spotify and Google podcasts) as well as multi-camera Video format on YouTube, with new episodes launching twice a week. All episodes can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/josepharthurofficial
Joseph’s first passion is the visual arts, yet he is better known for his musical talents after being discovered by Peter Gabriel in the mid-nineties. Arthur’s artwork is a spiritual quest expressed through form, lines, and color, involving a profound search for the ‘thread’ of life, binding even opposing forces of torment and beauty. As with Arthur’s music, evocative of such vivid imagery and emotion, his paintings dance with a similar animated rhythm of form.
His artwork has received much attention from the artistic and musical community including a Grammy nomination for his album packaging for the 1999 release of Vacancy which led to the opening of his own gallery in Brooklyn, NY — the MOMAR (Museum of Modern Arthur).
Joseph Arthur’s abstract renderings are a soulful voice of today, both intense and playfully serious. The artist calls his work “a spiritual quest expressed through form, lines, and color, involving a profound search for the ‘thread’ of life, binding even opposing forces of torment and beauty.” As with Arthur’s music, evocative of such vivid imagery and emotion, his paintings dance with a similarity of animated rhythm and form.
Michael Stipe of REM says:
“To riff off a riff; to update Ginsberg’s holy HOWL; to stand this naked; to wrestle an attention deficit world into a moment’s shivering standstill, just for a spiked breath of reflection. Joseph Arthur writes, builds, paints, draws, and creates because he has no choice.”
The Akron, Ohio-born Arthur was a jazz fusion bassist when he first discovered the Velvet Underground in his late teens and forged an impressive solo career that began with 1997’s Big City Secrets, as the first American signed to Peter Gabriel’s Real World label, later joining Gabriel’s WOMAD tour in Europe. Two years later, the EP Vacancy, earned a 2000 Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. Joseph Arthur has released eleven studio albums and has been a member of several groups, including Fistful of Mercy with Ben Harper and Dhani Harrison. He collaborated with Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament to
form the band RNDM and most recently started a Band with Peter Buck called Arthur Buck.