RICKIE LEE JONES- SERMON ON EXPOSITION BLVD

Rickie Lee Jones is joining us for a live blog session today at Firedoglake at 2PM PT/5PM EST. The best way to prepare for the session is to listen to Falling Up from her new album.

People have come across Rickie Lee Jones' music at various points across an incredibly diverse musical career that has spanned almost 3 decades. I first met her right before the release of her first album, Rickie Lee Jones (and the smash hit "Chuck E's in Love"), when I interviewed her in San Francisco for BAM Magazine... in 1979. My questions put her right to sleep-- literally. Many years later I was lucky enough to wind up as the president of Reprise Records, her recording home. Most recently she worked with Blue America on our campaign song with Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher, "Have You Had Enough?".

Last week she told me about a benefit concert she's planning in New Orleans as well as about her new album and new tour. And I recall there's a movie she just acted in down in Louisiana too. Jane and I asked her if she'd come over to Firedoglake for a chat about all this stuff and she said sure.

The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard will be released February 6, a week before her appearance on Letterman (Feb. 12) and the start of her North American tour. There's a link to her tour dates because Rickie gave Blue America 3 pairs of tickets and backstage passes for contest winners here at DWT and at Crooks & Liars and at Firedoglake. They're good for any city on the tour so before you enter (below), check it out and see if there's a show near you (or even if you want to meet her in Singapore).


Rickie described the new album to me in a way that made me think it's going to be a musical about the musician Rickie Lee Jones who dreams that she wakes up in Jerusalem and apparently is Jesus...  except that there are strange pieces of today floating around, and in the end, it was about her life after all. Or... his. Hard to say. The music is raw and immediate... Velvet Underground... Patti Smith, and the singing and performances have a foot on the inspirational ground of Astral Weeks or... hmmm... Primarily guitar, electric guitar. Rickie describes herself "doing dove sounds, howling on a donkey, and praying, serenely, always-- with an eye out for any approaching evangelists so I can keep them as far away as possible. It praises the Rabbi's words, and gives harsh commentary to the religion, something the Prophet himself would have approved, no doubt. It's not a Christian work; very little is even said about Christ or Christianity."

It's an album that tackles a subject that secular musicians rarely delve into. And, more than anything, it follows the imagination, fertile imagination, and the heart of Rickie Lee Jones. Today's Boston Globe has a good story about it.

"Listening to this record," she told me, "one of the first bloggers wrote about their experience of a Jesus/Jones character, free styles a kind of manifestation... and that is a description in which I feel quite comfortable. The song at the end of this recording called 'I Was There' describes when he/she tells somebody in the room because you've been traveling in so many universes and you manifested here, brother I didn't realize you were talking to me until you broke that bread and I saw that you were.. where have you been that you don't know what's been going on here in Jerusalem,  haven't you heard, haven't you heard about the Nazarene? You know, we thought 'we were gonna set Israel free' reminds me of Berkeley, the SDS, children of a lesser God perhaps, or, of the Russian revolution, or, of the Children Crusade...It's been going on for a long time, wars fought under the banner of religion enlightenment torn apart by creeds and manifestos. 'Every generation watches the princes of their nation file away.'"

This is a lonely after hours walk down an empty street, and it evokes another time, could be 1980, could be 86 AD. This person (presumably Rickie) remembering her life from the view of another time in space... Yet it also might be one of the disciples remembering his life through hers... And it works. The broken promises, big hopes, revolutions, misguided, a lost crew, an anthem... the same old story. It is a spell binding performance. Honest, simple, and eight minutes long. Jones plays on less than half the record, but played all the instruments on this song and a few others. She is featured playing bass on "Elvis Cadillac" and "Seventh Day," a new instrument for her.  She is playing some pretty down and dirty guitar on "Tried to Be a Man," an anti-Christian/Scientology rant dressed in drag.  

A few months ago, before the elections, I brought Rickie Lee for an interview with Johnny Wendell at the Air America studios. On the way, she told me that the recording she was then finishing up had started as a reading of Lee Cantelon's book, "The Words," which features Christ's words, categorized and includes nothing else. As Rickie started tinkering with the text it became more and more her own work-- and more and more compelling, warranting a recording and a release, quite separate from the book. The performances are one-takes, and two of them are available just as they were recorded (and filmed) on the enhanced version (which includes surround sound dvd, cd, and mp3). This is a unique, fascinating reading of Christ, in an autobiographical painting of a life looked back on, of a generation looking back, of an entire history waking and looking up, or "Falling Up."

To describe the Jesus story anew, as a generation's story, like ours, one who set out to accomplish their freedom and, like us, found themselves overtaken by the future made from the distortion of their ideas, and replaced by someone else's strange new world, is no small feat. The Sermon on Exposition Blvd is not religious, in spite of the possibilities, considering the subject matter. There in the midst of an entire career's worth of Rickie Lee Jones creation is another amazing work of fiction. But then again, it seems to be something new. She says it is because she shared her work,  and took part in the vision of someone else. She says "I think now the source, the grace, if you will,  comes from my being part of other people. This is where I find what I am looking for. "


Now, earlier we mentioned a contest. We have a pair of tickets for any of the live shows on the new tour and a pair of backstage passes so you can go give Rickie Lee a great big Blue America hello for all of us. Imagine you're a radio dj on a station that is still free enough to allow djs to create their own song sets. Listen to "Falling Up" from Rickie Lee's new album and put together a 5 song thematic set of music which includes that song. If you want to include your reasoning in your e-mail, go right ahead. By the way, you can have all Rickie Lee songs or only "Falling Up." Just make it an interesting set that your imaginary listeners would love. You've got 24 hours from the time this was posted. Send it to Howie at downwithtyranny@aol.com