An Interview with Rickie Lee Jones – HuffPost 11.2.09

Mike Ragogna: What’s the story behind the album title Balm In Gilead?

Rickie Lee Jones: There’s a remark in the Old Testament that’s a list of things… “Is there no this, is there no that, is there no balm in Gilead to heal my people?” So the implication was that the town of Gilead made a wonderful balm for people. Out of context, for me, it takes on a lot of meaning since my people are suffering pretty terribly. I was listening to this record and thought to myself, “Every time I listen to it, I feel a little better when it’s over. It’s kind of nice for my heart.” That’s how I came to the title, and music is kind of like a balm for us, it soothes and eases us.

MR: You approached this album in a very personal way, starting off with “Wild Girl,” a song about your daughter.

RLJ: “Wild Girl,” oddly enough, was started back in ’86. It was one of the first songs I wrote for Flying Cowboys. I was expressing some kind of feeling of a person whose life had gone wrong, telling her that all those things she dreamed of, she could still bring them back. But I could never finish it. I had the first verse, I had the ending, but I could not finish the song, and I’m talking about twenty-five years of writing a third verse. So when I went to do this record, which became a record for all the wayward songs that had never been finished, it was the very last song I did. It was done at the end of the night after I’d finished all the other things. At about eight or nine o’clock, I said, “Okay, let me just put this song down because I promised myself I’d do it and we have a couple hours.” Then I made up the last verse, there it was. It waited for the right moment, I guess, to be finished.

I did just two takes, picked one, and in two hours, I put on the other guitar, the backgrounds, and the keyboard. Then I booked myself two more days at Sheldon’s (Carriage House, LA), and tried to put the drums on with Don Huffington who’s a pretty good drummer. But I heard something in my head all those years that I couldn’t express to him. So, late at night, when everybody was gone, I sat behind the drums and put them on. But my favorite part is the horns. When the horns enter, I’m transported right back to when I wrote the song. It’s like a Welcome Back, Kotter. It caught this moment in time for me that totally crystallized. It just lasts for a few bars, and it’s just perfect happiness for me.

MR: Do you think it’s reminiscent of songs from your first album?

RLJ: Yeah! It’s from right then. I don’t know what the phenomenon of it is, it’s like a plant we took from another time and it’s growing. And it connects so gracefully. You can’t recreate what it was, and you can’t do it from here…meaning 2009. But somehow, because it had begun back then, I was able to finish it. I’m so tickled with that song, especially because, when it was finished, I could give it to my daughter.

MR: What was her reaction?

RLJ: You know, I had played her “Bonfires,” and she had to cry. She doesn’t like to cry, and my songs make her cry a lot, so she probably just sits there and waits for me to stop. You know, it’s like, “Please mother, don’t make me cry anymore…” (laughs)

MR: You recorded a song written by your dad, “The Moon Is Made Of Gold.” What do you remember about your dad and his music?

RLJ: Most of my memories with my dad are musical memories. My dad worked a lot, and we didn’t see him a lot. Every once in a while, my uncle would visit from California, bring his guitar, and there would be laughing in the house. I just remember those times, it was so exciting…the cousins would come, and there would be singing because they were the sons of Peg Leg Jones. They were very proud of their father, and they would go through the scrapbook, and they’d sing the old songs in harmony. My dad seemed to be the main singer, but my uncle did pretty well. And they had made a record of it in a train station–they used to have these record machines, it was just like a photo booth. So they went in and made a record, and we had that record all my life.

In the solo, my Uncle Bob whistled, and when we went to record this, (guitarist) John Reynolds had never heard the song before. (John) whistled the solo, and it was so moving, but not in a sentimental or sad way. I felt like they were there, and the song was finally gonna be heard by people as it had always been sung to me as a kid–with happiness and sweetness.

MR: You mentioned this was an album of wayward songs, but it also seems like an album of wayward souls. In “Eucalyptus Trail,” you write, “All my old friends have gone underground…they fell so hard, I’m the last of my kind.” And its chords and approach seem to conjure “Traces Of The Western Slopes” and “Weasel And The White Boys’ Cool.”

RLJ: It is that dark place, totally. It was started in 1996 or 1997…I think a lot of the songs were started when my heart was being broken. “I am the last of my kind in this town”–I think of me, I think of Charles Bukowski or any of us dying breed. Or “Out in the yard”–my parents standing out in the yard with a hose. That’s how I see it. I go, “What’s wrong with this picture?” (Bukowski’s) kind, “They fall so hard” out of Heaven and land in Hell, they bypass me totally. You’re right, in my mind, it’s that same place, the edge of my consciousness, where the Western Slopes are, where there’s a sea and a road, and the soul decides which way it goes…wagon wheels are turning. There’s no moral to the story, rather, they’re pictures.

MR: Do people often ask you about the stories behind your songs?

RLJ: Sometimes I worry that people would like to have me tell them why I’m writing it, what for, what the moral of it means, but I can’t do that with all the songs.

MR: Is “Bonfires” about anyone in particular?

RLJ: It was a friendship that died, and it was a really hard time for me. So, I made somebody who was strong enough to deal with it, and “she” sang that song. I think, sometimes, that’s what these songs are–they’re little, invisible friends.

MR: What was it like recording with guest artists like Vic Chesnutt and Ben Harper?

RLJ: I toured with Vic, he’s opened shows for me, and I kind of knew him and watched him sing, and I remembered what a glorious voice he had. I didn’t know if he and Victoria (Williams) had sung together, but I thought their voices would be perfect. So, I put them on “His Jeweled Floor” to be a kind of choir of angelic Protestants. Ben, I met, but I didn’t know him. He’s so handsome, it’s impossible to be around him. And he’s also a nice person. Bill Frisell worked on “Eucalyptus Trail” when we were doing The Evening Of My Best Day, and I’d subsequently done a few shows with him. He’s an incredibly gentle, nice guy. And I liked that they come from different genres.

MR: And you played almost all the instruments on “The Blue Ghazel.”

RLJ: Yeah, I didn’t play the organ, but I played quite a few of them. Actually, the guy who played the organ and accordion is going to be playing with me on tour. He’s really incredible. He’s got an accordion with his name on it: “Joel Guzman.” I’m going to have a really lovely, lovely band, and I’m excited because they’re singers, and I haven’t gotten to work with singers in so long, so that’s gonna be fun.

MR: Balm In Gilead includes a beautiful, socially conscious song, “The Gospel Of Carlos, Norman And Smith.” Can you explain what inspired it?

RLJ: It was written last September or October when I first went over to (producer David Kalish’s). It was the turning point because, before that, this was going to be a cover record. Obama wasn’t elected yet, and I had some trepidation, personally, about using any kind of race reason to do anything. I was watching the culture and watching the treatment and use of language with women, like it was okay to talk about what Hilary was wearing. She was a politician, not a model, but they’re discussing her clothes, and I’m thinking how they commit these social atrocities again and again and again.

I’d been drawing from this well of black culture (since) around 1970. This moment, it was like some magic took place because, before this time, it’s an oppressed addendum to a white culture. Magically, I don’t know how it happens, but they seem to become unified, and symbolize, to me, what I can be, (my) having come from such a fragmented family. I would look at them and go, “Wow, I could have a family like that. We could protect ourselves, and recreate ourselves in a picture of love and dignity. You’re not gonna hurt me anymore.” So, I made up this whole thing in my mind, and I musically draw from that well all the time. I was thinking of Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos, and the Australian who’s never mentioned who stood by them at that moment. We don’t know it, but he was wearing a badge of racial unity. He didn’t raise his fist–that would have been a pretty egregious thing to do at the time. But he did stand with them, so I was thinking, “I’m standing with them too.”

I thought, “Guys, you all looked the other way for eight years when Bush was here, and now that he’s out, NOW you don’t like him? Where were you when he was in!” You know, who’s to blame for not standing up to them when it wasn’t in style. It’s a loving tribute to those who stood against the tide of what was acceptable, and helped reshape the river to one that led to a black president’s being elected. And I might add that he didn’t steal the election like the guy before him, it was kind of exciting and hopeful.

MR: So this has been a very fulfilling experience?

RLJ: Everything about the record has been a really wonderful unfolding in the finishing of things that were begun long ago.