Joanna Newsom

The harpist and songwriter from Nevada City, California, whose records for Drag City run from the orchestral Ys to the triple album Have One on Me.

Origin
Nevada City, California, United States
Years active
2002-present
Genres
progressive folk, chamber folk, baroque pop, indie folk
Labels
Drag City

Nevada City

Joanna Newsom grew up in Nevada City, California, Both her parents were doctors, and television and radio were off limits at home. At a Waldorf school she studied theatre and learned to recite long poems. She asked for the harp at five, and her teacher started her on piano, moved her to small Celtic harps, and gave her a full-size pedal harp in seventh grade. She studied composition and creative writing at Mills College and played keyboards in a band called The Pleased, then dropped out to concentrate on music and went home to Nevada City.

She self-released two CD-Rs, Walnut Whales in 2002 and Yarn and Glue in 2003, the second at the suggestion of Noah Georgeson, who thought she should sell copies at her early shows. A childhood friend, Adam Kline, passed one of her demos to Will Oldham, and that led to Drag City, her label ever since. The Milk-Eyed Mender, recorded by Georgeson at home and in a Mills College studio, came out in March 2004. It never charted, but The New York Times reported more than 200,000 US sales She toured it with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver.

Ys

The year behind her second album brought the sudden death of her best friend, another major loss, an illness and turmoil in love, as Erik Davis told it in Arthur, though she insists it is not a breakup record. Bill Callahan, her partner at the time, gave her Van Dyke Parks's Song Cycle, and she played Parks the new songs in a Los Angeles motel room. He arranged, conducted and co-produced the record. Steve Albini recorded her harp and voice in December 2005, the orchestra followed in 2006, and Jim O'Rourke mixed it in New York, all on analog tape. Roy Harper's Stormcock, the album she loves above all others, partly inspired its long songs and orchestration.

Ys came out in November 2006: five songs in 55 minutes, among them the animal fable Monkey & Bear. It was her first US chart entry, at 134 on the Billboard 200, and had passed 250,000 copies by 2010. Pitchfork gave it 9.4 and The Guardian five stars, while Rolling Stone gave it two and Robert Christgau a C+. She took it on the road with orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, a four-city American run with 28 players in late 2007, then the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Sydney Symphony in 2008.

Have One on Me

In 2009 she developed nodules on her vocal cords and could not speak or sing for two months. Vocal sessions for the next record stopped while she went on recording harp and piano, and her singing changed. Have One on Me arrived in February 2010, a triple album of 18 songs running over two hours, produced by Newsom with arrangements by Ryan Francesconi. For the first time since her debut some songs were built on piano rather than harp, Soft as Chalk among them.

It spent four weeks at number one on the US folk chart and topped the year-end lists of The Observer and Uncut. Will Hermes, writing for NPR, liked it better than any triple album since The Clash's Sandinista. She toured it with a five-piece band through 2010, her busiest year on stage, and in December the Oxfam tribute Versions of Joanna gathered covers by Owen Pallett, Billy Bragg, M. Ward and others.

Divers and after

Divers (2015) was begun with Albini in 2013 and finished with Georgeson as co-producer, with arrangements from Nico Muhly and Dave Longstreth. It reached 30 on the Billboard 200 and 10 in the UK, with her best first-week sales, and she called it probably the most fun she had had making a record. Paul Thomas Anderson directed the video for its single Sapokanikan, after she played Sortilège and narrated his film Inherent Vice. She married Andy Samberg in Big Sur in 2013.

Divers remains her latest album. She played small rooms alone in 2019, opened unannounced for Fleet Foxes in Los Angeles in March 2023 with new songs, and in May 2024 held a residency at Hollywood Forever Cemetery with Robin Pecknold and Amber Coffman. Pecknold, Frances Quinlan of Hop Along and Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast are among the musicians who cite Ys. In May 2026 Nevada City declared Joanna Newsom Day and gave her the key to the city, and she said it meant more to her than a Grammy would.

Records

Songs

Bill Callahan, Van Dyke Parks, Roy Harper, Fleet Foxes, Henry Cow

Where to go next

Official

Reference

  • Joanna Newsom A full biography with a dated career timeline.
  • Ys (album) The recording, charts, reviews and legacy of Ys.
  • Have One on Me Studios, the vocal-nodule story and the year-end lists.

Discography and data

  • MusicBrainz Open, structured release and recording data.
  • Discogs Personnel and studio credits for every pressing.

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Film and video

Sources

  1. Joanna Newsom, Wikipedia
  2. Joanna Newsom, Drag City
  3. Nearer the heart of things, Arthur (2006)
  4. The Milk-Eyed Mender, Wikipedia
  5. Divers (album), Wikipedia
  6. Joanna Newsom with orchestra, JamBase
  7. Nevada City declares Joanna Newsom Day, Stereogum (2026-05)