I'm going to plug the virtues of Joe Henry--I never hear anyone talk about him so I'm guessing others might not be familiar with him. In my mind he's second only to Tom Waits in terms of the singer/songwriter/storyteller genre, and his influences and styles are just as eclectic (and a voice that can be just as challenging as Waits' but in a different way). For the unfamiliar, I'd recommend anything from the Fuse or Trampoline albums--Great Lake, Skin and Teeth, and Like She Was a Hammer, Trampoline, and Ohio Air Show Plane Crash.
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