PORTLAND – Two-time Grammy Award winner Rickie Lee Jones will perform Saturday, June 23, with her band at South Portland auditorium. A major influence on songwriters such as Patty Griffin, Natalie Merchant and newcomer Anais Mitchell, Jones and her band will celebrate her new CD, “The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard.”
Jones will also perform on PBS’ “Soundstage” broadcast on MPBN at midnight Sunday, June 17. She will feature songs from her new album – featuring 13 songs inspired by the real words and ideas of Jesus Christ – as well as some of her classics such as “Coolsville” and “Last Chance Texaco.”
Essentially what Jones and her collaborators have done on “The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard” is put Jesus Christ’s words into a modern-day context. For example, “Elvis Cadillac” not only mentions cruising around Heaven in the King’s most famous vehicle, but also the late, great Janis Joplin.
“Nobody Knows My Name,” the opening track, might best be described as “minimalist pure pop punk rock,” and the stream-of-consciousness rant titled “Falling Up” follows in a similar art-rock manner.
“If you just have faith and try to believe and don’t control it, it will unfold and reveal itself to you,” said Jones in a prepared release. “I love what I was able to do with it, putting myself in the skin of Christ and all the characters walking with him on the sand – in my mind, that’s what I was doing.””
“… It seems that the real story of Jesus is lived over and over again in each generation, but no one ever recognizes the Christ that walks among us,” the singer/songwriter added. “People today can’t even hear the name Jesus without tensing up because they don’t want to be associated with the TV evangelists and that lot. I just wanted to level the playing field a bit.”
The concert will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets, $39, are available at all Bull Moose Music locations and online at www.mktix.com. The high school is at 637 Highland Ave. For more information, call 978-462-9630.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
