Rickie Lee Jones at the Union Chapel
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| Photo by Katja, as posted on Rickie's Facebook page |
Union Chapel, 9 July 2010
“I tend to play really long shows these days and I don’t even realise,” says Rickie Lee Jones, beaming that unmistakable smile of hers, after someone wandered on stage to whisper in her ear that she had almost reached the curfew. “Years ago I’d only play for an hour and 15 minutes and I couldn’t wait to get off!”
This certainly wasn’t the case tonight, as Jones appeared to be enjoying every minute of the show, a huge grin often coming over her face in the middle of songs and when the audience roared their approval at the end of each number, seeming genuinely pleased by the reaction.
Although older (and blonder) than the famous bereted smoking hip chick who adorned the cover of her debut album, she still has plenty of that jazzy, boho chic, wearing a red dress, chiffon top and patterned trousers. Backed with two hugely talented musicians (one an amazing Japanese bassist, who used a violin bow on his bass, Jimmy Page-style, to eerie effect, the other a baby-faced multi-instrumentalist who looked barely out of his teens who played everything from violin to mandolin), her set varied from upbeat sophisticated pop to long, moody atmospheric numbers to sweet acoustic songs performed alone, all sounding perfect in the beautiful acoustics of the Union Chapel.
Maybe taking inspiration from her talented backing band, Rickie also refused to be tied to one instrument throughout the show, after a cool opening with the acoustic guitar-driven Falling Up, disappearing behind the drums to play some slow, shuffling, jazzy beats to the gorgeous Satellites and midway through switching from her guitar to piano for some of her best loved songs from her first album and its follow-up Pirates, such as We Belong Together and Living It Up, which ended with Rickie back on electric guitar for a rocking, building finale.
Given just how famous her first album is, and the artist that she is, I was surprised at how willing she was to offer up tracks from it, happily playing a superb Last Chance Texaco, Weasel And The White Boys Cool and On Saturday Afternoons In 1963. It wasn’t until the second half of the show that she began to feel comfortable, and maybe confident enough in her audience, to play some newer songs from her last two superb albums, The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard and Balm In Gilead. His Jeweled Floor started out as a country number that grew into a trade-off of sounds between Rickie and her band. More touchingly was a song called Wild Girl, that she admitted to starting before the Flying Cowboys album that she had abandoned after a crisis of confidence (brought on by a shitty, uncaring A&R guy at her record company) and only finished a couple of years back for her daughter. This, along with another song called Bonfires, sung alone on her guitar, were simple but moving. It was moments like these that really made the show for me, the prime example of this was a song that she explained “works better when you know the meaning behind it”, the stunning Away From The Sky. Written just after John Lennon’s death, it was based on a dream, she explained, where she saw Lennon, Yoko and Sean on bicycle at a seaside town in England and he began singing to her, while the second verse was completed after the death of her uncle. I don’t know whether it was down to her moving account of the tragic circumstances surrounding the creation of the song or the emotion and passion in her rendition, but the end result was stunning, her voice soaring in the sadly beautiful chorus, and almost moving me to tears.
With such a long set not surprisingly there were plenty other highlights, a joyous It Must Be Love, a rather sultry yet uplifting The Horses and a nicely raw It Hurts but I did wonder if she would venture to play her most famous song, the classic Chuck E.’s In Love, the number probably a lot of people had turned up hoping to hear, if nothing else. I wouldn’t have minded if she had understandably skipped it, especially if she was playing it reluctantly, but I must admit it was a thrill when she finally ended the show with it. “Here’s a song that we play sometimes, more often than I’d like, but people seem to like it,” she half-joked, but while it may well have been true she smiled all the way through, the long-time fans in the front row leaping happily to their feet and, seemingly encouraged by their reaction, she gave her all to the tale of her friend Chuck’s new romance, a song she has probably sang thousands of times, but still making it sound fresh and thrilling: like the first rush of love in fact. And you can’t ask for a better way to end a show than that.
This certainly wasn’t the case tonight, as Jones appeared to be enjoying every minute of the show, a huge grin often coming over her face in the middle of songs and when the audience roared their approval at the end of each number, seeming genuinely pleased by the reaction.
Although older (and blonder) than the famous bereted smoking hip chick who adorned the cover of her debut album, she still has plenty of that jazzy, boho chic, wearing a red dress, chiffon top and patterned trousers. Backed with two hugely talented musicians (one an amazing Japanese bassist, who used a violin bow on his bass, Jimmy Page-style, to eerie effect, the other a baby-faced multi-instrumentalist who looked barely out of his teens who played everything from violin to mandolin), her set varied from upbeat sophisticated pop to long, moody atmospheric numbers to sweet acoustic songs performed alone, all sounding perfect in the beautiful acoustics of the Union Chapel.
Maybe taking inspiration from her talented backing band, Rickie also refused to be tied to one instrument throughout the show, after a cool opening with the acoustic guitar-driven Falling Up, disappearing behind the drums to play some slow, shuffling, jazzy beats to the gorgeous Satellites and midway through switching from her guitar to piano for some of her best loved songs from her first album and its follow-up Pirates, such as We Belong Together and Living It Up, which ended with Rickie back on electric guitar for a rocking, building finale.
Given just how famous her first album is, and the artist that she is, I was surprised at how willing she was to offer up tracks from it, happily playing a superb Last Chance Texaco, Weasel And The White Boys Cool and On Saturday Afternoons In 1963. It wasn’t until the second half of the show that she began to feel comfortable, and maybe confident enough in her audience, to play some newer songs from her last two superb albums, The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard and Balm In Gilead. His Jeweled Floor started out as a country number that grew into a trade-off of sounds between Rickie and her band. More touchingly was a song called Wild Girl, that she admitted to starting before the Flying Cowboys album that she had abandoned after a crisis of confidence (brought on by a shitty, uncaring A&R guy at her record company) and only finished a couple of years back for her daughter. This, along with another song called Bonfires, sung alone on her guitar, were simple but moving. It was moments like these that really made the show for me, the prime example of this was a song that she explained “works better when you know the meaning behind it”, the stunning Away From The Sky. Written just after John Lennon’s death, it was based on a dream, she explained, where she saw Lennon, Yoko and Sean on bicycle at a seaside town in England and he began singing to her, while the second verse was completed after the death of her uncle. I don’t know whether it was down to her moving account of the tragic circumstances surrounding the creation of the song or the emotion and passion in her rendition, but the end result was stunning, her voice soaring in the sadly beautiful chorus, and almost moving me to tears.
With such a long set not surprisingly there were plenty other highlights, a joyous It Must Be Love, a rather sultry yet uplifting The Horses and a nicely raw It Hurts but I did wonder if she would venture to play her most famous song, the classic Chuck E.’s In Love, the number probably a lot of people had turned up hoping to hear, if nothing else. I wouldn’t have minded if she had understandably skipped it, especially if she was playing it reluctantly, but I must admit it was a thrill when she finally ended the show with it. “Here’s a song that we play sometimes, more often than I’d like, but people seem to like it,” she half-joked, but while it may well have been true she smiled all the way through, the long-time fans in the front row leaping happily to their feet and, seemingly encouraged by their reaction, she gave her all to the tale of her friend Chuck’s new romance, a song she has probably sang thousands of times, but still making it sound fresh and thrilling: like the first rush of love in fact. And you can’t ask for a better way to end a show than that.
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