—By Jonatha Brooke
In September, 1995, Jonatha Brooke interviewed Rickie Lee Jones for the cover of Performing Songwriter. It was the first time we’d had an artist interview an artist, and it turned out to be one of our finest articles. Below is Jonatha’s introduction and some excerpts from the interview.
I had a dream about Rickie Lee Jones last night. In the dream, RLJ and I were going to visit someone, somewhere, and she wanted to bring this beautiful meal she had prepared, a chicken in a pot, coq au vin, maybe — to have something to give. In the dream she was easy and generous, much like our encounter. And I saw it so clearly, right then, that there was this crazy, effortless, certain joy that balanced from her life into her music, a beautifully prepared, deeply cared for feast, that she carried with her. She smiled at me, emanating this secret, like a wink, and all I wanted to do was catch that glow for a while. I think I finally understood something I’d missed.
RLJ’s music is just like that dream for me. It’s a gift I carry around, I can’t get enough, and she serves it up a little different each time. Consequently, you have to seek her out, because radio’s never been as daring as when “Chuck E’s in Love” was a huge hit. I was in college when we tried and tried to figure out the words, never got them, but we thought it was so hip. She could be saying anything. Then Pirates came out. It was completely consuming. I learned every inflection, sang along at top volume in the car, in my room, whenever I was alone. I think “Skeletons” was the first song to immobilize me. That she could tell the story so simply but sing worlds into it.
I have listened to RLJ with hunger and huge satisfaction. Each album has been bold and different from the last – yet each is full of subtlety, mystery, abandon and great life. Naked Songs is Rickie Lee Jones’ eighth recording. A live gathering; solo renditions of songs that have speckled 20 years. You can hear everything — the catch of “Coolsville” in the back of her throat. The devastating whisper of “Altar Boy.” RLJ can transport you worlds away from here. She’ll take you to visit some desolate terrain, and then pull you out again with her, back to “Flying Cowboys” and more earthly comforts.
I was very nervous on the way to her hotel, nervous when I got to her room — a garden suite, tucked away in New York City. Hardcover books lining one wall, a flower-filled balcony, comfy couches, a real fireplace. But RLJ let me in without ceremony, spoke to me, a stranger, with kindness and complicity. She speaks like she sings, with great dynamics, whispers to growls, musical cadences, seamless. She told me about her daughter, about the fragile mystery of writing, the balance between the show and real life. It was a privilege to be there. I’ve been carrying that glow ever since.
I think the place that I was stunned while listening to your new record [Naked Songs] was the end of “Coolsville.” You go somewhere.
That came about accidentally and now I perform it that way.
It sounds so vivid and so in the moment. How do you get to the same place?
I think it’s effortless. The only thing that I have to be careful of — that I don’t like to do — is repeat something the same way every night. It happened last night for a minute. I went, “See this is what happens when you make a record, this is how I did it on the record and I don’t want to do it that way.” So I had this thing that happened while I was singing it . . . “What do I do instead?” Aside from that, it naturally leads to that place because it’s a raw and terrible story. So I go all the way to the ends of it and take it as far as it goes, because when the song’s over I get to leave it. I can go as deep as I want, and I know the audience likes to go there because they’re only visiting. It’s quite exciting to watch it.
Do you ever not get back out?
I always get out. I don’t want to stay there.
So are you just thinking about the next song on the set list?
I stand up from the piano and leave. I go to “Flying Cowboys,” which lifts it up and says “Come to the river, we’ll walk away from all this now.” So I talk myself out of it by the end of “Flying Cowboys.” It’s gone down and gone all the way up. So the succession of songs is really rising from the dead (laughs). It’s really exciting. I think the audience goes through it too. But I certainly go through it. As long as it’s happening to me every night, I just keep playing because it’s really exciting. When it starts to become like a show, I stop touring.
How do you differentiate those things — the show part from what’s really true?
They’re one in the same to me. That sounds odd, but the show or the words, the show or the performance as a natural extension of life—we perform in all kinds of ways. You come and you sit and you’re dressed for your performance … it’s just an extension of the ways we perform in our day. It’s just more specific and people come with something in mind for you to do to them. It’s more than that, but that’s how I see it.
Is it a job?
Oh yeah, the show part. It’s a job, but it’s a great honor. There’s nothing else in the world that I would rather do. It’s the highest job I would’ve aspired to and I got it (laughs). I come from a show business family, so the idea of a show I think is deeper in my skin than it might be in someone else’s. It’s a natural part of what I was raised to do and what we did, so it’s part of me. And though it’s a show, the way I do a show is to open up here … it’s not a show that happens out there. So it’s an odd word perhaps to hear me use, because that’s not how it feels. It’s a real exchange of emotion, but it’s a performance absolutely.
Now I know how to work with it. I don’t go too far. I don’t ever walk off the stage bleeding. So that part of it is a performance. I know how far to go and what do to and how everyone can have fun most of the time. When I come off I’m intact. I enjoy doing that. I’m not going out and doing anything I don’t like to do.
I think the thing I used to do is go too far. When you go too far the show is not good. They aren’t fulfilled. You’re not fulfilled. You didn’t succeed. Performance is a mystical thing. It’s a religious thing. When people leave they’re transformed and excited, but who can say what happened in there that caused that. You’re aware that your job is a mystical job and you have to have control, and yet be completely accessible to where you’re supposed to go.
—By Jonatha Brooke
From Performing Songwriter Issue 17, March/April 1996
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