rickie lee jones heals with balm in gilead

New album out in October

Thirty years on from her influential self-titled debut, Rickie Lee Jones will release her 12th studio album Balm In Gilead on October 6th. As previously reported, the album sees her reunited with producer David Kalish, the man behind her critically acclaimed 2003 comeback The Evening Of My Best Day, and contains a number of songs that Rickie has written over the past 25 years. One track in particular, ‘Bonfires In Hell’ is a beautifully simple, brokenhearted love song that she recently performed on an Argentine TV show on acoustic guitar with only upright bass for accompaniment. Currently reeling from a bad relationship breakup, you can tell that Rickie really means every word. 

The other two songs previewed so far include ‘Wildgirl’, a song she wrote for her daughter Charlotte’s 21st birthday, and social commentary folk-rap ‘Rehab’. Introducing ‘Wildgirl’ during her May 9th performance at Lilac Festival in Rochester, New York, Rickie told the crowd: “I started writing this song before [her 1989 album] Flying Cowboys – it was one of the first – and then I finished it a week before my daughter’s birthday. My mother passed away 2 years ago but she always liked singing this song about a wild girl in a red dress.” 

‘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. A working title for one of the other songs is ‘The Downtown Suite’. More info soon.

Alan Pedder

 

‘Bonfires In Hell’

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXpuguMnP8E]

‘Wildgirl’

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyQmLoWqOGo]

‘Rehab’

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHt5VdOaV0s]

Written by: Wears The Trousers magazine

Tags: alan pedder, rickie lee jones

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