RICKIE LEE JONES at the Old Town School of Folk Music
September 19, 1999

By Randi Ostro

In the very Zen sense, Rickie Lee Jones was the essence of herself: quirky, baby voiced when singing and contemplative and stream of conscious when she spoke during her performance at the Old Town School of Folk Music on September 19, 1999.

The intimate setting encouraged an audience-performer dialog throughout the show, turning the performance into a conversation between friends and with occasional songs of whim. It was like inviting Rickie Lee over for tea and oh-by-the-way-there's-a guitar-sitting-over-there conversation

For Jones fans, the evening was a true treat, as she fielded questions from the audience. The question, "who is Chuckie?" received one of the few dismissive answers of "he's some guy." More evocative was the simply asked, "What's the story about Altas' Marker?," which inspired her to discuss the songwriting process and the struggles with meddlesome management who thought the song might not appeal to someone living in Illinois (a point Jones found especially ironic given that she is from Illinois!). Another song about a man named Sol who she knew from an L.A. jazz club and bumped into working at an adult bookstore as part of the welfare-to-work system drifted into a non-ending which she admitted still needed to be written. Or not, she concluded, pausing as she apparently pondered how the ongoing saga of Sol seemed to deserve nothing but indefinite futures and no ending.

She told the story of writing the lyrics to the song "Company" while working for a shipping company as a typist. With hints of the no-nonsense expectations of the job with possible connections to the Family, it's a wonder the beautifully soft song emerged in anything other than cement boots!

To closed eyes, at times she transformed herself into cabaret singer, with a smooth and breathy voice swirling around the microphone she stood behind. But to see her in the denim shirt and slip skirt with newly purchased Nike's, any fantasies of the tuxedo era quickly vanished.

She sang, spoke and joked for more than two hours, with a set at the piano and three songs she sang while accompanied by local pianist John Proulx as well.She stopped singing one song once she became bored with it and another she played the parts she could remember and stopped to look at scribbled notes when necessary. And then there was the scene from West Side Story during which she acted out several parts simultaneously and sang and danced a little.

This was the second performance of a two-night gig at the Old Town School of Folk Music which seats only about 300 people. I can't say what the previous night's concert was like, but my guess is that it was nothing at all like Sunday's show. The weekend certainly seemed to be a getaway for her during which her free spirit was set even more free.