Mike Reid & Joe Henry Team For New Project ‘Life & Time’
Grammy-winning singer-songwriters Mike Reid and Joe Henry have collaborated on a new album, Life & Time, set for release Sept. 5 on Work Song Inc via Thirty Tigers.
Life & Time sees the two hit songwriters turning a new page: Reid was an NFL All Pro before turning to a career in music which yielded 12 No. 1s and an induction to the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and Henry penned 16 albums as a solo artist and has blazed a path as a Grammy-winning producer for Solomon Burke, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Julian Lage, and Bonnie Raitt.
The duo’s new album includes 12 songs rooted in piano ballads and feature upright bass, pedal steel and more. The idea for the collab was born when Reid and Henry first met sharing a table in the dining hall at Rodney Crowell’s Nashville songwriting camp. They exchanged shared influences, people that have contributed to their evolution as thinkers, readers and writers.
“I just heard a couplet in my head and stopped what I was doing and reached out to Mike, reminded him who I was, and asked if he might want to try writing something together,” Henry recalls. “And he uttered a phrase that we’ve repeated to each other since: “Let’s push off the dock and into the fog and we’ll see what we find.”’
Through dozens of songs written as a pair, with no agenda, Reid and Henry came to the realization that there was an album made along the way.
“There’s something very mysterious that happens to me emotionally, whatever that is… physically… when I sing Joe’s words, I just… believe them, and more than my mind, my body believes them,” adds Reid. “I feel physically a belief in this stuff. More than my mind, my body knows… feels these words, and I like that because ultimately, when I do something that isn’t working, I feel it physically in my body. I think, often, whether creating or not, or planting a rose or making a good lasagna, that part of you is always attempting to recognize itself. And the delight for me in this whole time with Joe is I got to recognize something in me that I only suspected was there. Granted, I did suspect it, but I got to recognize it before I moved on from here.”
In support of the project, the pair will embark on a U.S. tour in September, performing tracks from the album and featuring each as solo artists on selections from their separate catalogues, all with a shared backing band. The tour includes stops at New York’s City Winery Loft, Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, Philadelphia’s City Winery, and more with West coast dates planned for early 2026.
Life & Time Track List:
1. “Sleeper Car”
2. “The Bridge”
3. “Room”
4. “Stray Bird”
5. “Life And Time”
6. “Martins Ferry”
7. “Weather Rose”
8. “Whoever We Are”
9. “City Of Light”
10. “Leaning House”
11. “History”
12. “So We May”
