Rickie Lee Jones on her tour and latest album. By Brian Wise.
Somehow, Rickie Lee Jones’ latest album, Balm In Gilead, escaped major attention here towards the end of last year when it was released too late to make our best of lists. Yet in America and Europe it garnered the singer-songwriter some of the best reviews of her exceptional career.
Released almost exactly thirty years after Jones’ eponymous debut album, Balm In Gilead, found her in fine voice, with a terrific cast, beautiful playing and atmospheric production.
It’s not that Jones had made some sort of comeback. She received similar acclaim for her previous album of two years earlier, Sermon On Exposition Boulevard. Added to The Evening Of My Best Day (2003) and It’s Like This (2000), it is Jones’ fourth studio album for the decade. Along with a live album and the excellent Anthology Duchess Of Coolsville.
And Coolsville was where Jones spent the first part of her career. Back in 1979, the great Lowell George recorded her song ‘Easy Money’ for his only solo album Thanks I'll Eat It Here. Then Jones’ debut LP of the same year spawned the smash hit single ‘Chuck E's in Love.’ Jones was suddenly being likened to Tom Waits, whom she knew, and even compared with Joni Mitchell. But, just like those two greats, her music would never become predictable.
Albums such as Pirates (1981) and Girl at Her Volcano (1983) and even The Magazine (1985) saw her veering from jazz to pop. Flying Cowboys, in 1989, was produced by Steely Dan's Walter Becker and featured the Blue Nile. Don Was then produced the exquisite Pop Pop (1991), a covers album that also featured Robben Ford playing nylon-stringed acoustic guitar along with jazz musicians Charlie Haden and Joe Henderson.
While the ‘90s saw Jones recording either covers albums or fairly challenging ones (such as Ghostyhead) the turn of the millennium saw her writing rejuvenated.
This one, exactly, was directed at her. ‘Wild Girl’ was written long before she was born and this song would not go away. Finally, when I thought this is about Charlotte I was able to finish the songs instantly. So it had waited all those years for me to figure out it had always been about this mother’s relationship with this little person. You try to set your children free without losing them.
Now that Jones is back touring as well as releasing albums, having raised her daughter Charlotte, her profile might start to match the critical acclaim.
Balm In Gilead, named because of Jones’ belief in the healing power of music, has some great guest vocalists, including the late Vic Chesnutt, along with Victoria Williams, Alison Krauss, and Ben Harper. The music ranges through country and jazz, while the lyrics explore some of Jones’ recent pre-occupations – about God, death and bringing up a child.
“It’s been a long time, huh?” responds Jones when I ask here why it has taken her so long to get back to Australia. She cancelled a planned tour in 2004 and her only other visit had been in the early ‘80s. This time she is working in what she describes as a ‘power trio’ format. The electric bass player is Joey (Jose) Maramba (‘he’s a pretty amazing musician’). The keyboard/percussionist is Lionel Cole.
Is there any particular reason it’s taken you so long to get back to Australia?
I think it’s just business, you know. We have to get an offer that makes enough for us to come and tour.
I have toured a lot more in the last two or three years than I have in most of my career. This year I’ve been touring all year. I’ve been to Europe twice. I’ve been touring off and on for this record for one year but pretty intensely since last October.
I guess you’ve been busy doing other things like raising a family.
Raising my daughter, yes. She’s 22 now so that kind of coincides with the increase in touring, I think.
I believe that you recently played Carnegie Hall.
I didn’t play Carnegie Hall. It’s funny you should mention that because I was going to play Carnegie Hall with my friends but I didn’t. I cancelled it and came back three months later. Later maybe, it’s not time for Carnegie Hall. That’s going to be my big swansong.
Your swan song? What, are you thinking of retiring?
I don’t know. Let’s see if we can make some money, make a lot of money then we can do our swan song but right now I have to work. If I can make some money, believe me, I’ll retire.
If you were going to make some money wouldn’t you keep going ?
That’s the problem with capitalism: when is it enough? I’ll think about what’s enough just in case I get it.
Let’s hope you don’t get quite enough to retire then. You get enough to live on but not quite enough to retire.
I think that’s what’s going to happen.
What’s it like going out on the road these days compared with your younger days?
It’s way better. I love performing. I don’t know if it’s my evolution or my age, or both, but when I get on the stage I know it’s where I am meant to be, it’s what I do. I like this band, I like my crew, I love my work. When I was younger I had a lot of energy. I liked performing but I most definitely suffered from stage fright and from fear of being judged. But I don’t have it any more. If you like me, I’m so glad; if you don’t, I hope you didn’t buy tickets.
Your latest album, Balm In Gilead, is getting some of the best reviews of you’ve ever had.
Yes. Good. That’s funny because I just listened to some of it a few days ago and I thought it was really good. When I listen to things at a distance sometimes they’re not as good as I thought they were. It’s a beautiful record.
The production on it is fantastic and you are the producer for most of it.
I am the overall producer. It evolved. When it first started I was going to redo old songs but, of course, as soon as I got into the studio I started writing. So then it was a couple of new songs and a couple of old songs and then I just changed the direction and decided to make a new record. That happened until the very last day of recording. On the last day of recording I did ‘Wild Girl’and did it in two takes and put on the piano and the guitars, then I booked myself somewhere else and I put on the drums, then hired a couple of horn players and brought them in and did the horns. So it was creating itself, bubbling up, until the very last day.
It’s an amazingly talented cast of musicians helping you out.
I would say that’s David Kalish, the co-producer. That was definitely his job and his ideas. He invited Reggie McBride, who was my bass player on my first tour, and he came and played on a few things. I ended up playing drums on a few tracks. I invited Victoria Williams and Vic Chesnut, they invited Alison Krauss and we just kept thinking of people as we made the songs.
I wanted to ask you about the duet you do with Ben Harper, ‘Old Enough.’ I’ve read that some of the songs were quite old, maybe 20 years old.
That was recorded actually some years ago. I think we did it back when we did The Evening Of My Best Day and Ben sang on that. ‘Wild Girl’ was one of the first songs I wrote for Flying Cowboys, so it was in the mid-‘80s that I wrote that song but the second and third verse I just wrote before I put the record out. Then the last song I wrote, Bonfires,’ was written just after Christmas, 16 months ago.
I felt in a way it’s got the energy of a debut because that’s the only time you write songs over your whole life, that first record. So it’s got a wide range of my experiences from a little girl.
Can you tell me about the significance of the title, Balm In Gilead.
Well, I think that it just felt like it was a balm. I felt when I listened to it that it seemed soothing. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to others but I wanted to talk to my age: to people whose parents were getting older, who’d raised children, who share the world I share. Nobody markets to them, nobody talks to them and I thought I want to send some music out o them about what it‘s like to bury your mother, what it’s like to raise a daughter and all the points in between.
I think your mother passed away a couple of years ago.
Yes, she did. We were very close, she was a kind of a matriarch. I learned a wonderful thing about my mother, and so maybe myself, when she got this illness. She would try to talk and maybe instead of saying, ‘Where’s my shoe?’ she’d say, ‘Get some bread.’ I’d say, ‘Mum do you want some bread?’ and she’d say, Oh, no!’ And she’d laugh. Whenever she’d make the mistake she would laugh so hard and I realised what a gentle, wonderful spirit she was. My Mum is pretty tough and I would not have been able to see this without this illness. So, little gifts everywhere. It was hard burying her. I don’t have any parents now and I miss her all the time. Often, I feel like she’s there actually and I think of her every day.
So I wrote this song, ‘His Jeweled Floor,’partially and largely just thinking it would be nice for people to have a beautiful hymn to sing when they bury people. It’s a song about the song going to heaven and was inspired by a Sufi poet, Rumi. So I guess the God thing and the love thing has now become a part of the thread of everything I do now. Just for me personally, there’s no other conversation to have.
Some of the songs seem directed at your daughter.
This one, exactly, was directed at her. ‘Wild Girl’ was written long before she was born and this song would not go away. Finally, when I thought this is about Charlotte I was able to finish the songs instantly. So it had waited all those years for me to figure out it had always been about this mother’s relationship with this little person. You try to set your children free without losing them.
Balm In Gilead is available now on import or iTunes.