Rickie Lee Jones: quirky characters and sweet love songs
The King of Pop. The Queen of Soul. The Duchess of Coolsville.
OK, Rickie Lee Jones doesn’t have quite the international acclaim of Michael Jackson or Aretha Franklin, but Jones, who won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1980 (beating out the Blues Brothers, Dire Straits, the Knack and Robin Williams), has her own devoted following, including the folks who filled the tent for her July 29 show at the Payomet Performing Arts Center in North Truro.
Jones performs without a predetermined set list. Good thing, as she had to adapt right from the start. A bit of feedback came from her acoustic guitar when she took the stage, so she switched to the piano for her opening song, a cover of the Band’s “The Weight.”
Mavis Staples also covered that song when she opened for Bonnie Raitt at the Cape Cod Melody Tent last month. Staples performed with a full band; Jones did a more stripped-down version with Ed Willett on cello. But more striking was the different vocal styles of Staples and Jones. Staples comes from a gospel background, while Jones’s pop music is rooted in jazz. Staples sings with force and clarity, letting you hear the words and react to their meaning. Jones stretches out notes and slurs words, playing with the sounds and interpreting the emotions for you. Different techniques, equally powerful.
Jones’s technique also made for an interesting comparison on “Reason to Believe,” a song composed by Tim Hardin that’s best known for a cover on Rod Stewart’s smash 1971 album “Every Picture Tells a Story.” Stewart’s version is bitter and punchy, while Jones slowed it down to make it somber and teary. Again, two different approaches, both of which work.
“The Weight” and “Reason to Believe” were among six songs Jones played from a CD of cover songs, “The Devil You Know,” coming out Sept. 18. Sunday’s show was about looking ahead, to that album, and looking way back, with eight songs from Jones’s first two albums, which are filled with quirky characters, sort of a West Coast answer to Bruce Springsteen’s Asbury Park oddballs. Just four songs came from the studio albums between those early years and the new one.
Most of the songs on the new CD, including the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” were very familiar to the AARP-eligible hipsters in the audience Sunday night, but one of the highlights of the show was a lesser-known song. “Masterpiece” by Ben Harper, who produced Jones’s new CD and supplied guest vocals on her last one, is a gorgeous love ballad. Jones’s rendition was slow and bluesy and perfect for cuddling.
Other highlights included early Jones songs “We Belong Together” and the show-closing “Last Chance Texaco,” on which Jeff Pevar played slide guitar. Pevar, who has performed with Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and Crosby, Stills & Nash, was an essential part of the trio, playing guitar, mandolin and organ. Willett on the cello, meanwhile, provided dramatic flourishes on “Living It Up,” struck some discordant notes on “Sympathy for the Devil” to convey Satan’s dirty work and plucked strings for a heartbeat rhythm on “It Must Be Love.”
Jones introduced her next-to-last song by saying, “I do this song, it’s a nice song, but I still haven’t reconciled the journey it’s taken me on.” That would be “Chuck E’s in Love,” the 1979 Top 10 hit that introduced her to the world and is still by far her biggest hit. It must be odd to have an early song overshadow the rest of a rich and sometimes daring career, but Jones seemed to have fun performing it.