Joe Boyd

Joe Boyd is a record producer and writer, known for his memoir, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. Artists he has produced include Nick Drake, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., Taj Mahal, Fairport Convention, Richard and Linda Thompson, Maria Muldaur, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and 10,000 Maniacs among many over the course of a nearly sixty-year career. As a film producer, his credits include Amazing Grace, Scandal, and Jimi Hendrix.

After graduating from Harvard in 1964, he tour-managed Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto among others, then served as production manager for the 1965 Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals. After Newport, he moved to London to open Elektra Records’ office there, then started the legendary UFO club, original home to Pink Floyd and Soft Machine and center of London’s psychedelic revolution. Through his work with the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, John and Beverley Martyn, and Sandy Denny, his production company, Witchseason, set a new course for folk and folk-rock music in Britain.

Boyd moved to Los Angeles in 1971 to become Director of Music Services for Warner Brothers Films, where he supervised scores for Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange and co-created the documentary Jimi Hendrix. In the mid-to-late ’70s, he produced records by Maria Muldaur (“Midnight at the Oasis”), Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Toots and the Maytals, and James Booker.

After spending 1979 in charge of Lorne Michaels’s start-up film production company, Broadway Pictures, he launched his own label, Hannibal Records, which he ran for twenty years. Hannibal released albums by a diverse mix of Anglo-American artists ranging from

Defunkt and John Cale to Richard Thompson and Robert Wyatt. Joe and Hannibal were also at the forefront of independent labels bringing global artists to Western audiences, including ¡Cubanismo! and Alfredo Rodriguez, Toumani Diabaté and Ali Farka Touré, Virginia Rodrigues and Moreno Veloso, Trio Bulgarka and Ivo Papasov, Muzsikás and Márta Sebestyén, Ketama and Songhai.He left Hannibal in 2001 and wrote White Bicycles. Since its publication, he has traveled widely, lecturing, reading, and performing in a double-act with singer Robyn Hitchcock. 

Boyd’s new book, And the Roots of Rhythm Remain A Journey through Global Music, was published by Ze Books in September 2024 to high critical acclaim. A sweeping history, the book celebrates the impact of the world’s musical traditions on Western popular culture and vice versa and shows how personalities, events, and politics in places such as Havana, Lagos, Budapest, Kingston, and Rio are as colorful and momentous as anything that took place in New Orleans, Harlem, Laurel Canyon, or Liverpool. 
During the years spent writing And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, he has co-produced records with his wife, Andrea Goertler, by Albanian group Saz’iso and Bosnian sevdah artist Damir Imamović. His popular podcast, Joe Boyd’s A-Z, takes listeners on musical adventures from around the world. In 2019, he completed unfinished business from his time at Warner Brothers Films by serving as Executive Producer on Amazing Grace, Alan Elliott’s acclaimed film of Aretha Franklin’s 1972 recording session which had lain unseen in the vaults for forty-seven years. A gifted raconteur, he appears frequently on the BBC and other global radio and television outlets.

We’ve spent the past couple of months completely immersed in and utterly captivated by the nearly 1000 pages of his extraordinary new book, And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music. We’re thrilled to welcome Joe Boyd to Big Ears, where he will talk about his book as well as present a multimedia presentation about his work. Joe will also serve as
guest curator for an exciting facet of Big Ears’ soon-to-be announced film programs.