Chapter 32

Rickie Lee Jones

I first worked with Rickie Lee Jones at the Teatro in the late ’90s, when she was living in Ojai, California. She wanted to make a record like the English band Portishead, using drum loops and strange sounds. There was only Rickie and me in the studio. I’d play her some of the loops I had in my personal collection, and she always liked the more unusual ones, such as the “Kalimba” loop that had a bass line built into it. Rickie had bits of lyrics she’d sing over the loops. She was breaking new ground, and I really thought we were onto a new sound for her. Her voice ranted like Miles Davis’s trumpet on “Bitches Brew.” Many of her songs felt like they were pulled out of movies, and her haunting, little-girl voice layered over these tracks seemed to be futuristic jazz. In fact, there seemed to me no other description for this work other than “futuristic.”

Rickie left the Teatro with a sketch of several tracks that I thought would lead to a brilliant record. She ended up working with Rick Boston and made an album called Ghostyhead. I thought it was good but not as groundbreaking as what we had done together.

In 2003 Rickie called and asked if I’d mix three songs on her new record, The Evening of My Best Day. The record was produced by David Kalish, Steve Berlin, and Rickie. I was working out of the Paramour Estate at that time. I was handed the song files, and there were over a hundred tracks on some of the songs — three different drum kits for different sections, forty tracks of guitars, twenty vocals, and none of it was organized or edited. It was left in my hands to pick out all the best parts. Nothing was labeled, so I had to listen to everything in order to make sense of it. Once I was done mixing each track, Rickie would show up and listen, and right away she loved it. She was known for being hard on her producers and engineers, but I found her to be an absolute angel.

The last track was a song called “Sailor Song.” David Kalish was at the studio when she came in to listen. I got about two words into the verse when she asked me to stop.

“That’s not the right vocal take,” she said. “David, where is the new vocal? You should have known that wasn’t the right vocal — where is it?”

Up until then, I had only seen the sweet side of Rickie, but she wants things right and right away. She grilled David and didn’t let up, and although he was a big dude with tattoos, she had him in tears. He finally found the right vocal, and I put it in the mix and Rickie was content.

Rickie packed up her life and moved to New Orleans. In the fall of 2014, I was there producing a record for Anders Osborne. I mentioned to Anders that Rickie had moved to New Orleans. He was a big fan of Rickie’s and asked if I thought she might sing on one of his tracks. I called Rickie up to see how she was doing and invited her over to the studio. She was looking for a place to make her next album, and this was a new studio she hadn’t seen yet. On the day she came over, I only intended to show her the studio, not ask her to sing. She liked the vibe of the place and I played her one of Anders’s tracks. She liked it and I think it won her over and gave me license to ask her if she would sing on one of his songs. She said that she would, and we already had a song picked out for her. I handed her a mic and played the track, and she nailed it on the first take. During the playback she and Anders cried, both affected by her emotional vocals. Anders couldn’t thank her enough.

When I walked Rickie out, she asked me if I could help with her record, and I said I’d love to. I didn’t hear from her for a couple of months, then she texted asking me to produce a couple of tracks. She had gone into the studio with another producer but they weren’t getting along, and she needed at least three more tracks to finish her record.

Rickie Lee Jones at Esplanade Studio, New Orleans.

When I first flew to New Orleans on this particular job for Anders Osbourne, I wanted to work at a new studio called Esplanade Studios, located in a big, old church on Esplanade Avenue. They’d just installed a new Neve console and I ended up being the first to use it. I set up the piano and mic, then set up a vocal mic, too. I ran some tests to be sure everything was working. Rickie called from outside the studio looking for the way to get in, so I went out to fetch her. She walked into the large church room with a big grand piano sitting in the middle and said, “Wow, this place is cool.”

Without blinking an eye, she sat down at the piano and said, “I want to record a song I just wrote. Can we record it right now?”

The control room was upstairs, like at Abbey Road, with a glass window overlooking the studio. I ran up there as fast as I could and pushed the record button. One pass through and that was it — we had the first song down. She had an old guitar with her that was strung with four strings in a banjo tuning, and she wanted to record the next song with that guitar.

Not wanting to burn out in the studio, Rickie only wanted to work short days and have her evenings off. Not having to work, I went for walks in the French Quarter. The Kingsway house that I’d lived in back in the early ’90s had been bought by Nicolas Cage and then lost to the IRS for tax evasion. A real-estate company got hold of it and turned it into a house for events, so no one lived there. As I was walking through the French Quarter one night, I noticed a party in the building. I walked by and they had security on all the doors, only allowing people with a pass to get in. I got something to eat and then walked by again. The party was over and they were loading all the catering out, the door left wide open, so I walked right in. I hadn’t been in the house for over sixteen years, and it was strange to be inside again. They had remodeled the whole kitchen and had new appliances — all polished aluminum, stark and cold. The main front rooms were the same, but brand-new tasteless chandeliers hung from the ceiling and the mirrors over the fireplace were modern and looked out of place. The original pool table was still there with the purple cloth top.

I walked up the center staircase to the second floor where there used to be four bedroom suites. My old room was gone. They had opened up the whole front of the upstairs and made it into a lounge that led onto the balcony. The Mexican Room was still intact with the green tin ceiling that Joel Ford had put in; across the hall, the New Orleans Room was all there but with a new big bathroom with a modern tub.

I walked up to the third floor and found changes there, too; they had put in a new bathroom with white subway tile, although the roof deck was the same, as was the main bedroom. It amazed me how someone with money but poor taste could take beautiful architecture and destroy it. Some things belong to certain periods, and mixing them shouldn’t happen, and if it does, the modern elements should be incorporated with taste.

I walked out to the side yard, and although the Roman bath was still there, the garage that housed all the motorcycles was gone. All the beautiful banana and palm trees had been replaced with cement and stones, the oasis that had once existed there utterly destroyed. While walking around, I ran into the woman who was looking after the house and in charge of renting it out. I explained to her who I was, and she said she’d heard all the stories from when I lived there.

Back at the studio with Rickie the next day, we were finishing off the last track, called “Charlotte’s Web,” when she mentioned her daughter, Charlotte, was flying in. I’d met little Charlotte and her dad, Pascal, up in Ojai when she was about four. Her dad was always trying to please her. If she said, “Daddy, I want a bird, I want a bird right now!” Pascal, in his thick French accent, would say, “Yes, Charlotte, I’ll get you a bird right now.”

Rickie had played me a song a teenaged Charlotte had written and performed and it was breathtaking — she sounded just like a young Rickie. I thought it incredible how it all gets passed down. We finished by putting tuba on the last track, and Rickie was happy with everything and thanked me for making it a fun recording experience.

Once I arrived home, I got a call from Charlotte asking if I would help her record her own songs. I love a family affair when it comes full circle.

While sitting in Heathrow Airport waiting for my Virgin Atlantic flight to L.A., I picked up a copy of Mojo magazine. I came across an article about Rickie Lee Jones, and it said the songs we’d recorded were some of her finest. The song “Jimmy Choos” was also getting radio play nationwide, and I was honored to have helped an artist like Rickie.