Road Girls and the songs they sing

This is my friend Tif Lamson. She is a beauty, a 35-year-old musician who hails from Baton Rouge. Drummer, singer, she was Joan d’Arc in our Joan d’Arc parade here a few years back. Noble beauty. When I met her she told me how much my music meant to her… And then… that she had only heard one record of mine. It had gotten her through a very rough patch. After Katrina, Tif lived in her car for a while, and Ghostyhead was the only CD she owned. How it came to be in her car I don’t know. “Who you are is who you were… and who you were matters…” This photograph was taken last November on my birthday. Tif came and sang a few songs with some musicians. James and I even danced a dance. It was quite moving.

I came home from my little June tour last Saturday. It was an eventful week or two, first playing a private event, just me and a family, and seeing what a lifetime of my work has wrought. In real time, for real folks who were so kind to remember who I am, who I was, what it meant to listen to Rickie Lee Jones in college. And to remember me to myself. And, however awkward it was here or there, forty-plus years later, I could still feel the fire, the warm warm sun of that inexplicable wave, success of the highest magnitude, and respect, and good work. It’s there in the songs. Those days were the time of musicians, halcyon days for the singer-songwriter.

This job, I says, it is an ever-unfolding geothermal event. Geysers and sandstone and toppling and smoothing. Some people have built their planets using my fossilized desert sands… so I have to be there to keep the stars clear and the colors bright. This relationship, getting old together, it is about loving each other, not just one of us loving one of us. It’s different now. I learned that this trip. I felt like Babe Ruth.

Our fierceness is just as cumbersome in our old age as it was in our youth. We fight to keep the picture relevant. That means loving old rock stars like we are all 25, except with a little slower surf out there in the crowd.

Then there were two nights in Woodstock…and they were GOOD. The audience is right there and I was reacting to them like a firefly on the Fourth of July. You know, before the fireworks. The Iron Horse—folks were dancing! They really fixed that club up, been going there now at least ten years and…though the stage is a bit small, the audience makes up for it. Nice owner. Good cook. And the jazz festival date in Rochester. It was a half-full theater from the old days. And I love it, I loved being there. I reminded myself of that great comedian or the bandleader who simply moves the show where he wants it, when he wants it. I knew what I was doing, and for one of the first times in my life, the audience surrendered to me and I did not have to cut my wrist or cry or take off my clothes, or you know, any of those tricks girls do.

And why did I enjoy myself so extraordinarily? I had a band… and we were one. Mike Dillon and I, plus Ben Rosenblum on piano and accordion, and Petra Haden singing, playing violin. I’ve worked with each of them before and maybe even as a combo a few times, but this time we were really a band. It was just fucking great. Petra did what few have ever done before with me, she stepped up and sang… as inspiration took her. What she wanted, how she wanted, and it was so good. It’s what I long for, when the song has its own life and the musicians invest their own language in it. Ben singing with me on “Ugly Man,” those super close harmonies.

New York City was a BLAST. We were On. Afterwards I saw a few photographs of us on stage. What I see... it felt like all these years of practice had finally yielded… a situation where I can set down the reins and let the horse go. Go little horse! Our little band, so kind and accomplished. Fans reminded me of me.

And then my sweetheart and I spent a few days in the city, like we never do, and life took a turn toward an air-conditioned, two-car garage kind of month. Lotsa room for daydreaming.

Me and Mike Dillon, Petra Haden and Ben Rosenblum at Sony Hall, June 30, 2025, Credit: Ehud Lazin

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This Friday I catch a plane to North Carolina to Brevard, somewhere near Asheville. I will be performing on a bill with Patty Griffin on July 12. She is a great singer and a songwriter in her own right. Probably know her already right? I will be going on first for all of these shows. Usually I have a ten-minute leeway… going on ten minutes later…whilst we get late-comers in their seats. But we can’t do that here. It throws the whole schedule off. Patty ends up going on later… you can see the potential problem. I’ll be onstage 7:30pm. Patty and I are each playing 60 minutes, then our crew is turning the stage around in 15 minutes. This concert will be just a little bit longer than a one- artists, two-hour show.

I value this two-woman co-headlining bill, and hope folks come out to get to know both singers. Of course, you never know with the ever-changing social and political climate if you’re going to have a job next month, but we are betting life will still go on, all year long. Well, we’ll see what happens. Our agent and promotors believe in this bill, and booking a tour right now is kind of an act of faith in America. We think it’s very compatible and comfortable evening of jazzy bluesy stories. Good music. Beautiful dames.

🎟️ tickets are on sale here

Finally…I came back home from my tour and the birds had abandoned the feeders.

Oh, ye mercenary-winged dinos of little beak!!

With careful, tedious coaxing, hoards of foods and old-fashion jealousy (I fed their food to the squirrels) the birds finally returned. Today I saw two cardinal, a few wren, many sparrow, Mr. Finch (and Scout too ), and a sweet plump dove who kind of bathed in the feeder. I think she really likes it there.

PS. So… be sure to notice the small things. Literally. There are many worlds going on, at your feet, above you… Enjoy it All!! There are stories everywhere you look and they guide you into your part in a larger wondrous story. Yeah, I believe that.