Review: Rickie Lee Jones, St. George’s

Rickie Lee Jones was a big deal when she burst onto the late ‘70s music scene. She presented herself as an American original, a truly eccentric singer songwriter wrapped up in rootless boho chic – all cigarillos and jauntily angled red berets. Her eponymous debut album sold in enormous quantities, spawned a major hit single and lead to five Grammy nominations, cover of Rolling Stone and headline appearances on Saturday Night Live. She, rather like Norah Jones who followed her twenty-odd years later, was a seemingly instant jazzy, coffee table crossover smash. An initial burst of stardom that has not been easy to follow for either of them.

Her creativity was immersed in the literature of the beat writers, her songs reminiscent of bits of West Side Story and informed by the great jazz standards songbook. Tonight she talks about the odd experience of that initial taste of fame and the contrast of returning to her humble home when all the adulation ended at the conclusion of a tour. This was a period that was scared by alcohol and drugs for her. She famously lived a shambolic life, living in the infamous Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood with her erstwhile partner Tom Waits. Both of them seemingly living the life they detailed in their raw street ballads with little distance between themselves and the colourful occupants of their songs.

Tonight’s performance veered from the sublime to the distinctly odd.  She introduces Youngblood from that first album as having been written in the year she got crabs. It is all scathingly honest. Revisiting that old distant, troubled place must seem a long way away for the sixty something on stage tonight who now restores herself when returning home by tending to her much loved garden.

Much of the initial part of tonight’s set is drawn from that first album. Opener Weasel And The White Boys Cool finds space for a long jazzy improv section by her versatile and dextrous backing trio. Her biggest hit, Chuck E’s In Love is played early on in the set, presumably to get it out of the way. Seemingly as opposed to singing it, she chooses to skip and improvise around the melody. In contrast, on The Last Chance Texaco she takes a long pause before inhabiting the song and its characters so completely it is absolutely spellbinding.

Her voice is still unique and quirky and at times childlike and delicate, then in the next moment it’s harsh and abstract, shooting off in surprising directions. Weathered by experience she remains primarily an improvising jazz singer and a storyteller and a complete original.

She has just released a new album of, unsurprisingly oddly selected cover versions. Tonight she dips into it for playful Lee Hazelwood and Dean Martin tunes. She introduces Johnnie Ray’s Cry as a “goofy and sad song” but delivers it as a grief stricken song of experience.  For Elton John’s My Father’s Gun she sings her heart out as she fights to reclaim the American south from its current tensions and troubles. Both of these performances truly remarkable and the crowd at St. George’s were audibly moved.

She dips back into Pirates, her second album and real masterpiece, a song suite written primarily in response to her torturous separation from Waits. Sitting at the piano, her performances of both the title track and We Belong Together are simply heart-breaking and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. She then lifts the mood with a joyful Mills Brothers vocal group tribute and close with a finger clicking, soulful jazzy shuffle through Danny’s All Star Joint.

No encore. That would be all too predictable. This seemed to be all about intimacy and honesty. A night of real heartbreak contrasting with quirky playfulness and some idiosyncratic, wobbly moments. The audience at St. George’s rose to greet her at the end. She gave them her heartfelt thanks and took off down her own singular road again.

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