The Curious George Questionnaire: #4

Got regrets? Rickie Lee Jones has just the place for you to stuff 'em

It was her 1984 album The Magazine that was my gateway drug into the music of Rickie Lee Jones.

Of course I’d heard “Chuck E.’s in Love” in high school, when it hit the airwaves, but later on a University of Iowa fellow student said, “Listen to this”—and then put on “Juke Box Fury.”

I was blown away.

Later I bought Pirates and Flying Cowboys and was hooked. I had to see her in concert. A journal entry states:

Friday, June 29 [1990], I played hooky from work (called in sick) and went to see the Rickie Lee Jones/Lyle Lovett show at the Northrup Auditorium on the [University of Minnesota] campus. I wasn’t much in the mood for the show, and when I got together with T., all I did was bitch about everything. We had awful microwaved Mexican food at Chi-Chi’s in Dinkytown...

I enjoyed every moment of the show. It was like days of old, a “blessing” of sorts to new adventures, because that’s certainly the way things haven’t been lately.

I think the highlight for me was when Rickie did an old Jefferson Airplane song, “Comin’ Back to Me”—and I thought, “She’s a ministering angel!”

Well, I realize being someone’s “ministering angel” is a helluva weight to place on anyone, but that’s what occurred to me at the time and I’m standing by it.

And to discover Rickie Lee Jones is now on Substack?

PURE GOLD.

So, first thought, best thought—nothing ventured, nothing gained: “Hey Rickie! Would you like to respond to our Curious George Questionnaire?”—slipped into her DMs. It didn’t take long: “Would I? would I?!! Yes I am interested!”

Her response reminded me of this quote by Cynthia Rose, former editor of the New Musical Express, which echoes the kind of curiosity-driven art that Rickie Lee Jones continues to give us:

“…although skills and confidence are vital, neither will profit you if you lack curiosity. It’s really curiosity that leads to the unexpected, to the telling detail or the heart of a story. Today, when I look around at the world of tweets and texts, that’s the one thing I find absent. The [New Musical Express] turned my own curiosity into a reflex—and that made life enormously richer.”

Thanks, Rickie, for playing along and for your thoughtful, lovely responses.

Best, Mike

Sheila: “If you like Lucinda Williams, you’ll like Rickie Lee Jones,” he said to me. He was, of course, a boyfriend. A bass and accordion player from Louisiana, versed in musical styles from punk to zydeco. He made me a mix CD and I was instantly smitten. The boy was not so bad either.

But Rickie Lee Jones was working on this whole other higher plane level. Every song felt real and fully formed and somehow inevitable. She had none of the savage ache of Joni, but there was a yearning and tender fortitude in its place that matched the vibration of my twenty-something self who was only just realizing there were many ways to be in the world, many selves still to meet.

I was in graduate school when the boy and the CD came into my life. Only one of them got me through a lot of long, lonely nights. Only one still does.

I am more grateful than I can say.

X-She

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Rickie Lee Jones Answers The Curious George Questionnaire!

[RLJ declined to answer question 1. “To me, curiosity is…”]

2. Describe a road not taken. Any regrets?    

Regret. It’s a way of keeping old dreams, almosts, tenderness alive. Regret grows over it like a strangling vine but the thing inside, it’s still in there…pull away the regret carefully and there you are, young again, whole or happy or whatever you were. There are decisions I made. Were they the best for me? Who can say what bandits lie alongside the road less traveled. Carry your regret with you in the most beautiful jeweled case you can conceive. Touch it when you are weary and see the light shine through your fingertips. I do not regret Regret. 

3. Tell us how you fill your curiosity well…

Do you mean the well of my curiosity? I’ll skip this George

4. Wonder or awe? Why?

I am always in awe. I see a bird fly by and I swoon. I watch the sky—a new show every night and every morning—and listen for humming and heavenly choir.   

5. How would you spend your last day on earth?  

You mean how will I? Probably wishing I didn’t know it was my last night…Though I’d try to hear my favorite songs and read favorite passages…for how could I read or hear those I love? Their heartache is so superb, their pain and joy, to be near them is eternal.  

6. “My life philosophy is_______.”

I believe this: You must learn this simple lesson in performance. Performers often fear the stage, thinking they will be judged, people have come to find flaws and soon as they do…It’s over. But this is the ego, wanting attention. The truth is the audience has traveled a great distance, paid money to invest in their lives, to be in the chair, listening to you tonight. You have only one job: to love them back. 

Let their love spill upon you and love them back. Be wise enough to know this life is not about winning love, for it is everywhere around you. Life is about the glory of loving every moment as an empty vessel. Take a bow. Let them love you some more. Smile back and open your heart. Sing and cast your wild note, over water and cloud…

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About Rickie and Fish Sticks

Rickie Lee Jones is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter with a career that spans five decades and over 15 studio albums. Her wide-ranging musical styles include rock, R&B, pop, soul, and jazz.

Her Substack Fish Sticks is “a journal of my far away heart” where she confides, “Substack will be my priest sometimes. I shall confess in poems the things I don’t like to tell anyone else. Bless me, Substack, and be on your way. I will celebrate and collaborate, with photographs, for that is the picture I see, I am in awe every day of the fact that I see things no one else will ever see.”

We got your back, Rickie.

Last Chance Texaco by Rickie Lee Jones is available from Grove Press or a bookstore near you.

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