Over the years she’s been befriended by her hero Willie Nelson and sung on albums by the Foo Fighters, Q-Tip and comedian Andy Samberg’s project, Incredibad. “I say, ‘Are other people that fucked up?'” She avoids fancy-restaurants, preferringto cook herself - her goal is to replicate the fried chicken she loves from the Memphis joint Gus’s.
Two martinis in, Jones - who’s fond of words like “dude” and “bro,” and doling out fist-bumps - is incredibly pleasant to be around. “But I figured, ‘Hey, I’ll be the thread. “Jacquire and I were afraid that the songs were too all over the place,” she says. The disc also features songvvriting collaborations with Ryan Adams (on the gorgeous, smoldering torch song “Light as a Feather”), Okkervil River’s Will Sheff (“Stuck”) and Jones’ old friend Jesse Harris (“Even Though”). On “Back to Manhattan,” which Jones describes as “a highly emotional song for me,” she sings, “I have a prince who is waiting and a kingdom downtown/I’ll go back to Manhattan as if nothing ever happened.” King brought studio stars, including drummers Joey Waronker and James Gadson and guitarists Smokey Hormel and Marc Ribot, to sessions in Los Angeles and in Jones’ apartment. The tracks Jones and King recorded - open, sparse sound collages - “have a different sonic landscape than anything I’ve done in the past,” Jones says.
Says Jones, “That’s when everything fell into place.” “But the band I was touring with for seven years” - which included Alexander - “we’d come to this crossroads.” Primarily because of her adoration of Tom Waits’ 1999 classic, Mule Variations, she connected with engineer-producer Jacquire King, who also worked with Modest Mouse and Kings of Leon. “Once I had a batch of songs that I was proud of, I thought, ‘I like these, I should demo them up,'” she says. She also began writing songs - but had no idea how to go about finding a band to record them. After years of living in homes in Brooklyn, Jones bought a massive loft in Manhattan’s East Village. The breakup rocked every part of her world. The two had dated and performed together since the beginning of Jones’ career, in 2000, creating her first three albums - 2002’s Come Away With Me, 2004s F eels Like Home and 2007’s Not Too Late, which have sold a staggering 36 million copies worldwide.
Two years ago, she broke up with her longtime boyfriend, bassist Lee Alexander. Ralph came into Jones’ life at a time when a lot was changing.
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