Love Brings Rickie Lee Jones Back Alive
Live at Red Rocks
January 19, 2002
by David Abrams

I always knew Rickie Lee Jones could sing the chrome off a trailer hitch (to paraphrase Willie Nelson) and I always knew she could get so deep into her music that she often had a hard time finding her way out with that unique voice of hers (at once petulant 8-year-old girl and sultry 28-year-old woman), but what I didn't know is the giddy rapport she could establish with a mob of cheering fans packed into the outdoor amphitheater at Red Rocks near Denver.

You’ll get plenty of love pouring from your speakers when you pop in Jones’ latest release—the less-than-imaginatively-titled Live at Red Rocks. It’s a 12-track disc that showcases the whiskey-and-honey voice of Jones in a way that will mostly appeal to the kind of fans you hear screaming their appreciation in the background here.

I’m one of those fans. No, I wasn’t there at Red Rocks on that summer night, but I’m right there in the privacy of my basement, yodeling and yelling right along with the chorus of approval when she croons her classics (“We Belong Together,” “Weasel and the White Boys Cool,” and her one and only popular hit, “Chuck E.’s in Love”). I’m there, so there. Just as I was completely there in my bedroom spinning dance circles and wearing thin my carpet back in 1979 when her self-titled record was released. And when I say “record,” man, I mean record. Slip that vinyl platter over the spindle, drop the diamond-tipped needle in the groove and then you’ll see the teenage me be-bopping to the finger-snapping Miller and, yeah, I might have been acting like some jerk-off fool as I go doyt-doyt, but no one—not my parents, not my teachers, not no one—could tell me I wasn’t Coolsville.

Sorry. Got carried away there. But that’s how it is when you’re a true-blooded RLJ fan—her voice and lyrics get in your veins and your brain until you imagine you’re there drinking coffee at Danny’s All-Star Joint or pulling up for half-a-tank of premium at the Last Chance Texaco. This is the world of Rickie Lee Jones: a place somewhere between the writings of Raymond Carver and the music of Billie Holiday. It’s bluesy, smoky and tastes like a welfare check.

But since 1979, it’s been my world and—I strongly suspect—the world of those thousand cheering voices echoing off the stone formations at Red Rocks. Rickie Lee Jones knows how much she’s loved by people like me and she’s truly humbled by the adoration. You can hear it in her voice during the between-songs dialogue included here. She’s sweet and she’s spacey and she’s sincere (“Take care of your babies because they are the best part of you”).

The tracks included here—most of them from her debut album and the later Flying Cowboys—are heartfelt versions of what she previously recorded in the studio; but, save for an ecstatic romp with Lyle Lovett on Love's Gonna Bring Us Back Alive and an encore of Van Morrison’s “Gloria,” they don't offer too many surprises.

Who cares? To be honest, it’s not so much the music I’ve come for, it's the emotion pouring off every etched-and-pressed electronic signal of this disc which makes it well worth the money. Live at Red Rocks contains in its all-too-brief length the joie de vivre you’ll find on all the great live albums. Highly recommended, not just for RLJ's devoted fan club, but for anyone who wants to know what it's like to hear a singer make slow, soulful love to her audience.