Rickie Lee Jones Singer for the Brokenhearted

Thirty years ago singer/song­writer Rickie Lee Jones won her first Grammy for Best New Artist. Since then she’s been delighting fans and critics with her introspective, heartfelt songs.

A single mother of a 21-year-old daughter, Jones has always identified herself as an “outsider,” someone she once referred to as “living on the jazz side of life.” Born in Chica­go, Jones grew up in a family she likened as “lower-middle-class-hillbilly-hipster.” Grow­ing up, the Jones family moved around a lot, including stays in Huntington Beach, Califor­nia; Phoenix, Arizona; Kansas City, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Olympia, Washington.

Prone to run away as an adolescent, a 14­year-old Rickie Lee lived for a time with hip­pies in San Diego during the summer of 1968. A year later, after running away again, she was arrested crossing the Canadian/U.S. border by the FBI who deemed the teenager as being “in danger of leading a lewd and lascivious life.”

At 18 Jones moved to Venice, California, and worked waiting tables while attending Santa Monica College. Soon thereafter she started writing and singing. Armed with a unique sound the young artist was singing jazz standards in local Venice jazz dives.

By 1979 her self-titled debut album spawned a top 10 hit with “Chuck E.’s in Love.” She had an immediate impact on pop culture, enjoying the massive buzz of an indelible “SNL” appearance and an instanta­neous Rolling Stone cover, all while winning a Grammy for Best New Artist. Three decades' worth of acclaimed releases has made her an indelible influence on two or three entire generations of singer/songwriters.

Jones’s latest release, Balm in Gilead, fea­tures collaborations with Ben Harper, Jon Brion, Vic Chesnutt, Bill Frisell, Victoria Williams, and Alison Krauss among other highly talented friends.

A fan of Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, and Led Zeppelin when she wants to listen to music that will make her “jump up and down,” Jones recently spoke with Venice during a rain-soaked afternoon where she was slowly driving around town in a pickup truck with only one working windshield wiper (“not really a rain truck,” the singer points out). Preparing to hit the road one more time, Jones reflects on her career, today’s music industry, and her vagabond ways.

Venice: Congratulations on Balm In Gilead. After all this time what still inspires you?

Rickie Lee Jones: It’s what I do. These songs were mostly older songs, left over from the last 25 years, but they had been unfinished. When I started this record in October it was mostly going to be me redo­ing songs. We wrote “The Gospel of Tommy Carlos, Norman and Smith” and we just started writing new things and I decided it was time to finish these songs that had wait­ed so long. That’s what happened in this instance.

You recorded “The Moon Is Made Of Gold” which your father wrote for you. You’ve recorded that song before but how special is that song to you?

He didn’t write that song for me but he wrote it the year I was born. I don’t know if he wrote it for anybody, really.

But you heard it all your life?

Oh yes, my uncle and my dad had made a record of that song. In Chicago, they used to have, in the bus stations and train stations, little record booths, like photo booths, where you could go in and make a record and take it home. So we had this record and all my life we would play it. And also my dad and uncle would sing it. I did record it for Rob Wasser­man’s duet record back in the mid ’80s but when I decided to put it on my record I called John Reynolds who plays that kind of music; ’40s jazz guitar. And a really wonderful thing happened as we recorded the song. The first time we got to the solo he whistled the solo and that’s exactly what my Uncle Bob would do and that’s how it was on the record. And [John] had never heard it and that’s pretty wonderful. This is closer to the spirit of how my dad and uncle used to do it.

You’ve written a song for your daughter. Did you just want to give one to her?

No, I just think that happens when you’re writing and you’re talking to the people that you love. I imagine everybody with a child writes something that has to do with their child at some point.

Talk about the song “Bonfires.” It’s such a beautiful song. What inspired it?

A broken heart…

That’s the reason for a lot of songs...

I think when songs start coming out of me it’s an emotional thing. It’s me exploring my visible world or the hours of the day being so unbearable and the only real relief is to sing, and sometimes that happens at a point where things are really terrible or hard. But writing and singing provides so much emo­tional healing that I think whatever I write about what’s happening is another kind of healing that doesn’t happen out in the natur­al world. It’s an extraordinary thing to do. Maybe painters have it when they paint. I don’t know what it’s like for other kinds of artists, but that’s what it is for me. 

You moved around a lot growing up. Do you think in the long run that prepared you for a life of touring?

Probably [laughs]…it’s still hard for me to live in one place very long. I’m always thinking what it would be like to live some­where else.

Does Los Angeles feel like home?

More or less, I’ve lived in L.A. the longest. When I go away I end up back here. When I move away and visit L.A. that’s when it feels like home. That’s when I miss this place. 

Having grown up in so many places, going to so many different schools, did you grow up a closed book?

I don’t think I was but people are slow to come around to new people so you learn to protect yourself. I think people who move around a lot have a strong imagination and interior world because that’s where they have to live most of the time. It’s not by choice, I would have happily had friends if we were there long enough, but sometimes people already have their circle. I was an itinerate outsider due to circumstances wherever I went.

It’s been 30 years since you won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Was there a lot of pressure to live up to that initial success?

No, not really, because I was the best new artist. [laughs] Once that’s done you’re not new anymore, so then what are you, the best not-so-new artist? Or the best old artist? The best pop singer? In the years following that I won polls but the Grammy’s didn’t warm up to me so much. Pirates was a pretty great and important record, and there are other great, important records like all of Steely Dan’s catalog and so forth, but when you’re not in the circle of people, they’re giving each other awards for the most part, and if you’re outside to their way of life…I never did figure the Grammy’s out. Was it a mar­keting thing? When they gave an award to a record that was selling well then they would expect it to sell more. You don’t see them giving awards that often to records that aren’t doing well or artists that don’t have big sales potential. The Grammy’s, being the only award show that awards music, I was always unclear what they were award­ing. [laughs] Obviously they have favorites that win again and again. I wouldn’t have turned more down but I didn’t feel pressure to get another Grammy. 

There’s a quote where you said you and Tom Waits lived on the “jazz side of life.” What does that mean?

That was the first quote picked up from me. [laughs] I believe I meant that we were living outside the way normal people lived. It was ‘anything goes.’ We didn’t get up in the morning and eat cereal and go to work and come home and go to bed. It’s a long time ago but I think I had a little crew of people that were different. Waits and I seemed to have stepped out of a different time zone and walked right out of 1948 into 1978. And there were other people, although not exact­ly like that, also outsiders who liked jazz or Ray Charles or an unusual kind of music for 1978 if you think about what was going on…neither punk nor disco but they had their own kinds of ways they dressed and lives they lived and things they listened to that weren’t part of a movement. They were anti-movement kind of people and I was probably thinking about that a little bit. 

You used to run away a lot growing up and I read one of the times you were brought back home you were deemed to be in danger of leading a “lewd life.”

I was crossing the border from Canada into Detroit when the FBI decided not to let me into America and arrested me. I had a beret, a dress and no bra and at the time, well, women are still pretty harnessed up, but at the time there was a revolution of women going around without a bra on. But I was underage and I had a false ID and I think the agent at the border…I don’t really know why he arrested me, if it was for my safety or because he was a dick. But he arrested me and put me in jail in Detroit which was a pretty terrifying experience. And that’s why he arrested me. I thought it was a wonderful law, not that you’re living a lewd life but that you’re in danger of living a lewd life.

I guess you’ve been on the jazz side of life your whole life.

Yes, I think so. Well, when I was little and I lived a sweet, little life in Phoenix and was safe, I think there was stuff going on with my parents and relatives that I wasn’t aware of, evidence that they moved all the time, that my grandfather was in Vaudeville and moth­er was raised in an orphanage. Already right there I can tell there was a lot going on that I wasn’t aware of. But from my little kid face I just lived a sweet, little normal life. But we moved around a lot and there was a lot of trouble going on but I guess you’re right, I guess I did.

You’ve been described as the “poet of the disenfranchised.”

I don’t think there’s any one truth. So if I was the poet of the disenfranchised I’m also the singer for the brokenhearted. It can’t just be one thing but maybe whoever wrote that meant that maybe there’s something about me that still feels like an outsider, I know there is, that doesn’t quite fit in. And part of the people who feel that way find some recognition in me. I’m just guessing, but again, it can’t just be one thing. I’m not Cap­tain Beefheart. [laughs]

A while back you suffered writer’s block. That must be the worst experience for a writer.

It was really awful. That was going on in Tacoma so it was around 1998 and 2001 which doesn’t seem like that long ago, but at the time it was totally dark and I didn’t think I’d ever write again.

Some of the songs on your new record are old songs. Was it easy now to finish them?

For the most part…there was a reason they were unfinished so there was some­thing that was difficult to finish them in the first place. In the case of “Wild Girl,” I had written the first and last part of the song but not the body of it; what would the mes­sage be? What was the story going to be? Finally, when I thought of talking to my daughter and thinking of all the people my age trying to have conversations with their children about wanting to pass on some gem, and you know, you can’t pass on any little jewel. [laughs] It just doesn’t work that way. Life is cumulative and there’s no reve­latory conversation. I was thinking not only of me and my daughter, but of all us par­ents talking to our children. And, luckily, I waited 25 years and that’s when the song got to me and I had to grow up and be a parent in order for that to happen. There were only one or two instances where I did-n’t know what I had in mind when I started something and struggled to close that gap.

Between you and your daughter, who is the real wild girl?

Yeah, my mother loved that song. I think all the girls were the wild girls. 

Do you still recognize the music industry from when you started? Then there was a lot of nurturing of artists.

I don’t know what it’s like for a young person. I don’t sense generally in our cul­ture that there are any leaders and that there doesn’t seem to be a sense of duty for doing something for the quality of the thing. People are running and afraid of los­ing their jobs or money, and they seem to be corrupted pretty easily. They don’t seem to have a network of support for being altruistic or compassionate or artistic which you need to have in business for business to succeed when it’s promoting and work­ing with art. It’s a vacant and difficult time for everybody in every kind of work. I was one of the last people in the door of the heyday of music. What was wonderful was that you were nurtured, but the bad part was that too much was indulged. So much money was wasted. In my case, while a lit­tle money was wasted, a lot of it wasn’t because when they put so much at my dis­posal I was able to make so much art. Now I have to save it up and find the right place and get it out real fast. It’s good to be thrifty and be aware of money, but as an artist it would be better to go and make a record without so much financial restriction.

Do you still get the same feeling from performing as you did originally?

I think I do. It’s not as frightening for me so I don’t get as much butterflies, but I love performing. It’s another job all together and I like it. I like singing to the people. It’s elec­trifying. To me, it’s like a church. It has holy moments. It’s amazing to me.

Was it important when you were rais­ing your daughter to be grounded and not move around much?

I had planned to always stay in the same house with her but it didn’t work out. When she was six or seven we had gotten divorced and I moved to L.A., and then I moved to Washington to be near my moth­er. Then when she hit middle school I came back here. Compared to me it’s not so many houses but she thinks she moved around a lot. But what she had that was consistent was me.

What do you hope someone takes away from listening to Balm In Gilead?

I think I would like them to feel better after listening to it. I think there’s a light­ness to it. I hope I was speaking to my gen­eration, not exclusively, of course, but for them to be reminded of our journey through all kinds of music, and that your broken heart can be turned into a beautiful dia­mond. And your children, their lives are their own, all you can do is pass on the best that you have and let go. All those messages that aren’t said out loud but they’re a part of what I’m feeling when I do the work, so I hope all that good informa­tion is passed on with the singing and the writing. I hope it’s good for them. ▼

Rickie Lee Jones plays New York City’s Carnegie Hall on December 7 and the Orpheum in Los Angeles on December 18. For more info see www.rickieleejones.com.