Sharks, A Post-Apocalyptic Dixieland And Her Fight With Warner Bros

Veteran vocalist and songwriter Rickie Lee Jones has never seemed to be afraid of much, if her music is a guide in any case. Over her nearly four decade-long career she’s embraced numerous musical styles and made them her own — touching upon everything from rock to jazz to R&B to pop to soul and so forth — with nary a care for convention, nor what her fans will make of these twists and turns.

And it seems that this lack of fear extends past creative malleability and into all facets of her life; when she starts speaking to The Music about her new album The Other Side Of Desire, talk quickly turns to Australia and our leisure time activities, the chanteuse eventually unveiling the most unlikely of reasons that a person would ever decide to take up scuba diving as a hobby. 

“I love diving. I got certified when I was about 35 or 40 because I had a horrible fear of sharks — a morbid fear of sharks. I just wanted to get over it, and I did!” she chuckles. “I only saw a couple in the distance on the Barrier Reef — they’re more animals that you feel rather than see — but I did see a big one in the Florida Keys, I think it was a lemon shark and its eyes were as green as mine! It came within just three feet of me, he swam really slowly by me and then turned around and swam really slowly by me again. He was just checking me out — we were looking at each other’s green eyes! It was pretty incredible. 

"There will be tattooed kids marching down the street with brass and banjo and some other goofy instrument."

“I love sharks now — I go to a lot of sites these days that are for protecting sharks and anti-shark finning, trying to educate people about this wonderful ancient animal that’s unchanged in evolution — they got smaller but they’re essentially exactly the same as they were 300 million years ago. I always tell people that it probably seems to them that the earth is their planet and we’re guests [than the other way around].”

Jones has undertaken something of a sea change herself in recent times, having made the move from Los Angeles to New Orleans in an attempt to escape the rat race and find musical inspiration. The artist — who sprinted out of the blocks back in 1979 with her eponymous debut album and its jazzy smash hit single Chuck E.’s In Love — had been enduring some semblance of writer’s block (The Other Side Of Desire represents her first album of new material in nearly a decade), but once she embraced life in ‘The Big Easy’ the songs started flowing thick and fast.

“At first I just wanted to write, and I liked everything I felt here in New Orleans and it felt like a good tree to pick from in every way,” Jones explains. “I was being invigorated by the people and their customs and all the music I heard, from the Lafayette to the city and the more country stuff to the more French stuff, or the swamp pop — the Fats Domino thing. They even twisted the whole Dixieland thing, and there will be tattooed kids marching down the street with brass and banjo and some other goofy instrument; they’ve turned it into a kind of post-apocalyptic Dixieland, and it’s grotesque and circus-like and organic and beautiful.

“It’s an old musical spirit [in New Orleans]. But really the difference [between New Orleans and LA] is profound — Westerners are basically transient people, they’re the children of people who kept travelling west from the Mississippi River, and the people here have lived her for generation after generation; whether they’re black or white this is their home. There’s a sense of self here that you get here which doesn’t exist in Los Angeles — back there everybody’s in their car. When I go out walking today with my dog after we finish speaking, every single person I see is going to say ‘hello’ to me, or they’re going to nod at me or in some way acknowledge me: in Los Angeles that would never happen between strangers in the street. All of that is going to seep into the work in a profound way I think, and it makes me feel friendly towards their music in more ways than I expected.”

While New Orleans definitely inspired a surge in writing, it’s playing them live on ensuing tours that really sparks Jones’ creative control instincts.  

"There’s a sense of self here [in New Orleans] that you get here which doesn’t exist in Los Angeles."

“Once I begin to write I begin to write — whether it’s going to be a good crop remains to be seen,” she tells. “But I just kept writing until I had enough songs that I wanted to sing on tour, because I have to keep singing these songs [from The Other Side Of Desire] on tour so I try to develop songs that I’m going to like playing. I think it came pretty easy, although I haven’t played any of them live yet. I played Christmas In New Orleans sometimes when friends would come over, but apart from that I haven’t played any of the new songs live yet.” 

Does Jones have a preference when it comes to creating or sharing her music?

“They’re so different, that’s like saying do you like cooking or do you like eating,” she laughs. “I like both — I like them both.”

What about on the creative front, does she have to work harder on the music or the words of a particular song?

“You know it just totally depends what the song is that I’m working on,” Jones muses. “Sometimes if I don’t have a verse then I don’t have the words or verse or music, but if I get the music then I’ll get the words and vice versa. But it just depends on the song — if one part is hard, then it’s going to be hard with both lyric and music because I think they both come together.

“I don’t think it was a struggle [this time writing the lyrics]. From here it seems quite easy because I’m done with it now — it took a long time to come to it, but once I start writing I keep my ear to the ground all of the time. That’s all I’m doing from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, listening for more songs. That’s an amazing grace, but it took a while to open those doors — I don’t know why but it did.”

Jones’ songs always seem so personal, even a track like Blinded By The Hunt where the narrative is clearly a fictional construct. Does she feel that she invests a lot of herself into all of her songs?

“I think everything is made of me, but the thing I do is express something through something else that I create,” she reflects. “So I didn’t introduce you to the person that I am when I sang that song, but I think that’s a guy singing it — I kinda know where he lives, I think he lives up in Malibu and he likes to surf a lot. That’s who I was when I sang that song, and it’s easily made of me but that particular song feels like it’s more made of people that I’ve seen around. Because there’s probably nobody who doesn’t say, ‘I get lost just walking out the door’ — Blinded By The Hunt is really about when all you do is keep seeking a thing and seeking it until you can’t see it anymore.”

She seems to have a real empathy with these fictional characters that inhabit some of her songs.

"I think that’s a guy singing it — I kinda know where he lives, I think he lives up in Malibu and he likes to surf a lot."

“Yeah, I guess I do,” Jones smiles. “It’s kinda like The Hobbit or something — I just keep making up new imaginary things. But they’re also made from life — they’re imaginary and they’re not. It’s kinda cool.”

Despite being in the thick of the music industry since the ‘70s Jones conducted a Pledge campaign to raise funds for The Other Side Of Desire, and really enjoyed how the new model has allowed her to connect directly with her fans all over the world.

“I actually have enjoyed it a lot,” she admits. “Since I first started [my music career] I’ve always been a pretty private and secluded person, but that was really leading me into a too secluded life and I didn’t want to be that way. So in a way it was a great gift and it’s great that this new way of doing business actually acknowledges the people who buy the product. There used to be a buffer between the fans and the artist — and that was the record company — but now I deal directly with the fans, and I sell them my shoes and my coats and they buy them and I make a record.  When we first started doing it I didn’t know if we would raise the money — I knew I had a small group of devoted fans, but you need a little more than a small group because it’s a lot of money to raise, and they rallied it was really cool.”

Jones is also enjoying the freedom of not having to be beholden to record labels, acknowledging that the old system was something of a double-edged sword.

“My relationship with Warner Brothers was that they were like family to me, but then we had a fight and I left them,” she recalls. “I would say that in my particular case, I’ve mostly had license to do what I want in the studio, but after I make whatever I make I don’t seem to have any control and there’s no point of satisfaction — nobody was ever saying, ‘Good job, we love that record’. It always seemed like there was no point where we succeeded, so everything I made felt unsatisfactory once it left my arms and I just got to a point where I felt that I didn’t want to do it anymore. 

“So not having anybody else who’s standing in judgment of my work economically or otherwise — no other company stands to make a fortune or lose a fortune because of me, and by fortune I mean either a small one or a large one — is a really great relief. I don’t want anybody’s advance — I want to just make money or not make money, but I don’t want to be in debt. That’s a really horrible feeling as well, to be loaned money — and that’s what a record company advance is, they loan you money and then they have to get that money back. And if they do get the money back you’ll never know it, because you have to audit them to find out what they’ve made and you have to have a lot of money to audit them! It’s not good, and it just breeds perpetual mistrust.”

And, finally, we should get to experience the songs from The Other Side Of Desire ourselves in the flesh if we just exhibit a little bit of patience.

“Most definitely, I’ll probably be there in January and February for your summer,” Jones reveals. “I think it’s going to be a fun year for the record, I really hope so.”

WHAT: The Other Side Of Desire (Thirty Tigers/Cooking Vinyl)