At 68, singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones is more confident in her music than ever before, and she’s just as committed to performing it around the country as she was when she started her career.
Jones, who released her 15th studio album “Pieces of Treasure” in April, is on a tour that takes her through Northampton, Rockport, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Newport and North Truro this week.
“Pieces of Treasure” is her take on ten songs from the Great American Songbook. In collaboration with Russ Titelman, the producer behind her 1979 eponymous debut album, Jones thought it was time to do a fully jazz record.
“I don't like doing one kind of thing. It seems suspicious to me, like we're selling a product instead of the gamut of music we can create,” Jones said. “And Russ said 'this is the time to do a jazz record. It's what you were born to do.' So we went into the studio and I think he just picked the perfect people. And the atmosphere was like a cushiony cushion of love and respect.”
Working with Titelman again, Jones said, was like they’d never spent any time apart. Jones candidly added that working together later in life allowed room for a kind of professionalism, which was sometimes absent in earlier years.
“When you're older, all that other energy dissipates. The sexual energy, all the weird energies that are always there in male-female relationships,” she said. “Once you get past the age of sexuality or the possibility of mating, then you can have these greater friendships. So it was just wonderful to do that.”
Nonetheless, amid that sexually charged environment of years past, Jones emerged a creative force.
“Chuck E.’s in Love,” Jones’ 1979 hit single that preceded her win for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards a year later, was a “cultural event,” Jones said. That lightning in a bottle moment was something she could have carried to mainstream success for years to come — but she decided to build her own path instead. Jones chose to stay true to her art throughout her career, instead of trying to replicate the song’s success.
“There's no way to ever reproduce that,” she said. “Like a comet that hits. Many people went, ‘Your career should be here.’ Well, maybe it should, but I'm not using music to get there. Because you can make great music and it becomes successful, but once you aim over the music and at success, then you have a lot of s****y music that's repetitive and becomes less and less from the heart.”
Jones wrote about her journey to stardom and the struggles she went through before she made it big in her 2021 autobiography “Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour.” Talking about the difficulties she experienced, including being homeless and being in an abusive relationship, she said getting to remake herself felt like a cosmic fate.
“I was still sleeping on people's couches, but every time I stepped on stage, it felt like the whole planet moved a few feet closer to where I was meant to be,” she said. “I did that. I dug myself out of the absolute abyss. I feel like you can only have such a miraculous thing happen once."
Today, Jones is more confident than ever in her voice and performing on stage. She hopes to keep reinventing herself as long as she can.
“I’m the kind of artist who just thrives on making new things,” she said. “This is a beautiful record and it's a testament to what a bunch of old people can do.”’
According to Jones, older people also have something to say.
“I hope young people see my own generation and feel okay about all the things we lose and all the things we gain as we get older,” she said. “Like this new record just is really quite beautiful, to make it at this age, it is an extraordinary thing.
As for her tour through Massachusetts, Jones said she has a “special fondness” for the area.
"Massachusetts people, they're the kind of people who talk to you when you're on stage and they're very careful, discerning listeners,” she said. “If they like you, they keep coming out. It is funny, I don't think about it that much, but Boston was the first place I played. That first show was that $3 ticket because they put it on sale before the record was out. So the first people to see me play got in for three bucks. And I was very, very scared. But I think it was a great show.”
