The New Yorker Radio Hour - Rickie Lee Jones’s Life on the Road

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Rickie Lee Jones emerged into the pop world fully formed; her début album was nominated for five Grammys, in 1980, and she won for Best New Artist. One of the songs on that record was “The Last Chance Texaco,” and Jones has made that the title of her recent memoir. The song evokes a service station on a long stretch of highway, and Jones’s book reflects on her almost obsessive need to travel and uproot herself at almost any cost. “All I wanted to do was leave” from a very young age, she says. “When I talk about it from here, it seems like it was so horribly dangerous.” She adds, “Suddenly I’ll [say], ‘I think I’ll go to Big Sur,’ and I’m in a car, going. But the chaos and trouble that brings to a life!” The producer Scott Carrier, who hosts the podcast “Home of the Brave,” interviewed Jones near her home in New Orleans. This story originally aired April 9, 2021. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Right from the start, Ricky Lee Jones was a unique talent. Her debut album was nominated for five Grammys in 1980, and she won Best New Artist that year. Jones brought together a singer-songwriter's attention to lyrics and storytelling with a jazz artist's creative freedom with her voice. One of her very best songs on that debut album was called Last Chance Texaco, and Ricky Lee Jones made that the title of her recent memoir. Producer Scott Carrier went to talk with her in New Orleans. Okay, so it's Sunday morning, March 21st, and I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana.

It's walking down, Rampart, going over to Jamie Del Apah's house, to talk to Ricky Lee Jones, Ricky and Jamie are friends. And Jamie wrote to me and asked me if I would like to do a story about Ricky's new memoir, Last Chance Texaco, which to me was kind of like a miracle because I've always sort of really loved Ricky Lee Jones' music and followed her career. I mean, I started listening to her albums and college.

age, and I still listen to them now that I'm 64, and I've always kind of felt like she's my guardian angel, because her music makes me feel like everything's going to be okay. And, you know, she's right, usually. But so they sent me her book, and I read it, and I read it, and I really had no idea. I mean, her book is about her life as a growing up leading up to when she makes it big. So it's not really about being a rock star superstar. It's about she had a really kind of a rough childhood and she ended up running away repeatedly through high school. And the stories in the book are in a way really sad.

You know, a lot of bad things happened to her when she was traveling around. She got thrown in jail quite a few times. She was a teenager. And I just had no idea from listening to her music what a rough life she had growing up. But now that I've read the book, I can see how those rough experiences,

those tough times are where her songs come from. She describes it as like ripping out a piece of herself in writing her songs. So when I was reading the book, first thing I recognized that she writes with a sense of rhythm that comes from her music, but it also comes just from American literature.

Rhythm, I think, in American literature is the most important thing, and she does it really well. She writes in a natural voice, saying more with less. I thought when I was reading the book, sounds an awful lot like Huck Finn talking. It's the same clear, honest voice of someone

traveling around the country, traveling around America, trying to figure out what she's seeing, what she's looking at, which is cruelty, stupidity, and violence mixed in with comedy. Even though there's sad stories, it's very fun to read them. They're sad, but she writes about it in a way you can tell she just really enjoyed it, traveling around. So I came here and got to talk to her, and met her, interviewed her the first time. That went really pretty well. And then I talked to her again yesterday and was asking her to tell me some of the stories that are in the book.

But in telling them, she just... I think I wore her out because the stories in the book are so sad, and I was having her tell me some of the stories, and she got to a certain point where she just couldn't do it anymore. And we had to stop. So at that point, I thought, man, I've really blown it. But she's going to give me another hour now today. Before I leave town, when I arrive at Jamie's house, Ricky is there waiting for me. She says, get out your tape recorder. I've got something I want to tell you.

So there are sometimes all kinds of creatures who come in the guise of journalists. And sometimes they're succubus. And they come to Ichi. And you leave, I leave in a short time, feeling more worn out than any tour or any album making or anything, in two hours, a bad journalist can suck me from my life force. I wanted to say, you are the opposite of that. I leave your presence feeling so...

I would never set you up that way anyway, but I wanted to because I knew you'd... But listen to me now. I leave your presence so strong and no part of me penetrated or touched. And everything I say to you is, I feel good about what I said. Thank you for saying that. It really makes me... It lifts a load.

What I would like to talk about is, did you enjoy traveling around? Let's just talk about traveling. All I wanted to do is leave. And, you know, when I talk about it from here, it seems like it was so horribly dangerous. But I guess it wasn't because something called me out to these adventures, yes. And even though I met terribly dangerous people and I brushed against their coats, they just passed on by because that writer was writing these stories.

So, explain to tell me that. Yes. The sense that I have that I'm not the only guy. writing my life, that others are writing it too. And I am escorted through horrible things right out the other side. So it feels like the words I'm reading are put down by life itself, not just me. So did you feel that when you started out? If you're 14 and you take off from home in a Camaro, stolen Camaro with your boyfriend, and you drive to the beach, California. Is that when it started?

I'm sure I was at the beginning of a great adventure. I wanted to grow up. I wanted to be a grown-up, so I wanted to get out there and live grown-up things. I didn't want to sit in a classroom anymore and have people say, take your hat off. And I want to talk about arithmetic. I'm done with that, you know. there's that time when you took off, you're walking down electric avenue and going home for dinner and instead you just stick out your thumb and decide to hitchhike the big sir.

So I read somewhere that there's some maybe people who've been molested or something. I can't remember what it was, but that this impulse control is a problem for a kind of people. And it made me start really going, did something happen to me? I have it was impossible for me to control suddenly I'll go

I think I'll go to Big Surr and I'm in a car going and the chaos and trouble that brings to a life but I can't find any evidence of anything like that happening to me I just seem to be a creature

that that does well acting impulsively let's go to the the desert and she was there. Other people need to plan it. And that's good too. But for me, I find gold if I go right now. And in my case, I think I'm just so deeply optimistic that I have a way of making all these events good. I just love living and can't, I mean, I have actually suffered from

depression, but for the most part, I just can't turn life into a bad story. We will fly way up high where the cold wind blows, or in the sun laughing, laughing, having fun with all the situation. Keep us separated You know the world won't fall And the year will free the beautiful bird That's caught inside Can't you hear a heart

It's a while The way it's going to So when I was little I never had shoes on And the days were so hot And so incredibly long that I think I lived years in a day. That was how I wrote that song.

Years may go by. Because when I think of that year, 61, when I'm six, it takes forever for the day to go by. So you could start out in the morning in the backyard making mud pies and eating mint and watching the garbage. And then men go by. And then you go in and listen to the radio. and then take a walk down by the well and find an animal, a live animal.

Any animal was a thrill to me if it was a frog. I didn't have any prejudice against the kind of animals that were magical to me. How about the story where you're riding the bike down the street and a car stops right in front of you? Well, I was riding my brother's bicycle, and his seat was too high for me to sit on. and so I had to just pedal standing up. And so I couldn't get off the bike.

And I was down at the end of the street, riding around in circles when a car drove up really fast. And where I was riding, so on the straight line here is where civilization ended. And the farmers still had this big farm there. So our houses ran along the edge of the farm. Here's where the garbage men were, and here's where that irrigation thing was, where I put the frog,

and here's my school. So I was riding around there, and a car came up and had to stop at the field. And a car was right in back of it, pulled up too. I'm riding around in a circle watching. And the man in the first car got out, a red-haired man, and the second car, mean, angry man got out and started hitting. the man from the other car. To me, they were grown men.

Later, my mother told me that the redhead was 17 years old, but to me, they were all grown-ups. And they were crying and swearing, and they must have indicated something in the backseat of the first car, I don't know. So I walked over and looked in, and there was a little girl there,

a little tiny girl, about two, she was laying in the back seat but like I wrote I don't know what I saw because she had been raped by the 17 year old and the man hitting the 17 year old was her father who'd the kid used to babysitter

and then one day he did I don't know if he'd been molesting her all the time all along but he took her from the home and the father got wise to it and went and tried to find them, chased him to that place where I was riding my bike around in a circle. So they were all over the place, and pedophiles were lining up to claim the innocent. You better believe it.

And they share a lot of them in Phoenix or were, you know. Your family moved a lot, almost constantly. Sometimes you went to three different. schools in one year, one year you went to four different schools in one year. We're always on moving from one. You know, my imagination started to make me go, were they running from somebody? Like, so I can't really understand why two grown-ups would move their family so often. But they did it. Maybe they felt free when they were moving on the road, felt freedom. Isn't, is that what, I think you hit it on the head.

I don't know why I never thought that, but, you know, her growing up in the orphanage being a prisoner as a child and him growing up without his mother, which just destroyed him and that cruel father. So I bet you that's exactly what it was. And they didn't want to be itinerant, right? They didn't want to be people without, you know, they didn't want to be bums.

When I was 18, Mark Vaughn took a Polaroid of me and wrote Ricky Lee, the itinerant stranger. And for many years I saved that. I wonder what that word means. And then I looked it up and it meant the one who has no home or always moves around, I think, right? You've been all over the country and lived in Europe. So many different places.

Why did you decide to come and move to New Orleans? I have lived in a lot of places, Paris, Tacoma, California. I came here because I needed to leave there. I needed to leave L.A. I was thinking of leaving the country again, but that just is so hard, you know, when you don't speak the language, and there's just, It's so isolating, and I knew what I needed was to not be isolated anymore. And I took a chance on this place, and it was a bit of a struggle.

I'm a solitary and kind of reclusive, I've been for some time, and the human beings I know, as well as the city itself says, none of that, and pulls you out everywhere you go. they want you to come out and live and I went and stayed with Barry and Mary when I first got here Barry I had been my neighbor when I lived here before and he'd married this woman named Mary and I was staying up in their basement

and so I went out with them to a parade and I was thinking or costumes or whatever they're doing and I was just thinking this is stupid Why are all these people walking around? Like, what the? And she said, stop being such a loser. And I was like, what did you say to me? And it was very rude.

But her gruff and rough words were her way of saying, come out and play. This is a big question. Do you feel it all? This is your home. Do you still feel like running away? Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

It's in my nature. And I watch for signs. And, you know, I'm trying to teach myself to tough it out if it gets tough. But my nature is, if it gets too tough, you don't have to stay. You don't have to die. You don't have to die. You don't have to die in. side. There's a whole wide world out there. Just go somewhere new and start again. It's a flaw

in my character because when push comes to shove, I got my foot out the door. But it's also a way to survive. Being watchful for the sign that the good things will be taken away. So you ask me, I am watching. I'm watchful. I'll always be watchful. Well, I can't say that maybe one day I'll go, but not yet. Watchful for time to leave? Yes. Watchful for the time to leave.

Yes. Yes. You're glad to trust the memory of star because you found a back. Texaco. Ricky Lee Jones's new memoir, Last Chance Texaco, is out now. Scott Carrier reported for the New Yorker Radio Hour, and you can hear more of his work on his podcast, Home of the Brave. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thank you for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production

of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Ave Carrillo, Brita Green, Cala Leah, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, Gauphin and Putubuele. And we had additional help this week from Andrew Dotton. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.