Joe Henry has always moved at his own pace, an artist whose instincts pull him into unlikely territory. His latest project, Life And Time, began in such a way. In 2022, he found himself teaching at a Nashville songwriting camp, feeling out of place until a chance meeting with fellow instructor Mike Reid. Reid, a former NFL star turned celebrated songwriter, opened the door not with small talk but with a conversation about poetry. That spark grew into a collaboration neither could have predicted.

Months later, Henry reached out to Reid with a couplet that had come to him, suggesting they try writing together. Reid’s reply, “Let’s push off the dock and into the fog and see what we find,” set the tone for what followed. Henry sent lyrics, and Reid responded with complete recordings. Song after song appeared through this exchange, their voices joining into something larger than either man could have summoned alone.

Though Henry initially thought he might record the material himself, it was clear that Reid’s gravelly, time-worn voice carried the emotional weight these songs demanded. In his hands, Henry’s words took on the sound of lived experience, full of weather and wonder, grief and grace. The result is a collection that feels both elegiac and hopeful, a meditation on loss, love, and memory that never lingers too long in despair.

The twelve songs on Life And Time are rooted in piano but expanded with upright bass, pastoral orchestration, pied pipes, and pedal steel. They are moody and lush, textured with prismatic chords that shift like changing light, yet never so dense as to obscure the melodies or Reid’s delivery. Henry, producing the record, worked with restraint, keeping Reid’s voice and his own language clear at the forefront.

Reid, whose career bridges football glory and songwriting legend, including Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and more than a dozen other number-one hits, describes singing Henry’s words as a physical experience. “When I sing Joe’s words, I just… believe them,” he says. “More than my mind, my body knows them.” That conviction threads through the album, giving it the feel of a spiritual journal written in song.

Together, Joe Henry and Mike Reid have created more than a collaboration. Life And Time is a reckoning with beauty and heartbreak, a reminder that even in our doubts and failings, we remain worthy of love. It is, as Reid himself puts it, a chance to recognize something within before moving on from here.