Oct 10: Rickie Lee Jones, "Balm In Gilead"

"Rickie Lee Jones has been a restless artist since her debut album in 1979. This fall, she releases her twelfth album, Balm In Gilead (Oct 20), a collection of originals that continues in the same spiritual vein as her last record, Sermon on Exposition Boulevard." New Yorker

"Balm in Gilead is an extraordinary collection of emotionally powerful, texturally rich and endearing songs, many of which have been 'incubating' with Jones over the last several decades.

This record is unique because most of it was written over the last 20 years," she says. "All the other records, I've written in a year or two or three after finishing the previous one. This one has threads from many, many years. Some were just written recently, most were finished recently but started a long time ago. 'Wild girl,' for example, which ended up being about my daughter, was started before Flying Cowboys, and it was waiting all these years to finish. For me, the album feels close to a debut, because the only time you ever have to spend all these years writing a song is your first record, right?

Balm in Gilead's songs flow easily through its roots and soul fabric; it reflects the lifetime work of a woman, whose very name is a genre. She's joined on the record by Ben Harper, Jon Brion, Vic Chesnutt, Bill Frisell, Victoria Williams and Alison Krauss among other highly talented friends." antimusic.com

"The song Rehab is possibly inspired by American playwright Lanford Wilson’s own Balm In Gilead, a 1965 production that centres on a New York café that plays host to thieves, heroin addicts, and male and female prostitutes. And, of course, given the biblical nature of her last work, The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard, the relevance of the album title to the Book of Jeremiah is clear." wearsthetrousers.com