The Evening of My Best Day

"I was listening. I was waiting. I was praying to be restored. And that's what happened. I feel powerful, now. Intact. Ready to heal the world."

It's the succinct summation of a six-year absence from the art of songwriting by an artist who has almost single-handedly redefined the expressive potential of words and music. Telling a tale, setting a mood, fashioning metaphoric connections that resound and reveal - Rickie Lee Jones has made it all seem so easy.

But it's not. Not by a long shot and the story the personal, professional and political odyssey that resulted in the dozen new originals of The Evening Of My Best Day, her stunning new V2 Music release takes on the epic proportions of an authentic creative rebirth. More than simply a return to form, The Evening Of My Best Day is a formidable leap forward by an artist who, it turns out, has only begun to hit her stride.

Quite a contention, considering a career marked by audacious musical leaps beginning in 1979 with her era-defining debut Rickie Lee Jones for which she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. She was hailed by one critic as a "highly touted new pop-jazz-singer-songwriter" and another as "one of the best--if not the best--artist of her generation". She went on to write a number of award winning songs including the well known and loved "Chuck E.'s in Love," and "Making Whoopee," (for which she won a Grammy in 1990).

After her debut she continued on to such landmark recordings as Pirates (1981), The Magazine (1984), Flying Cowboys (1989), and Ghostyhead (1997), her last foray into original songwriting. In point of fact, however, Rickie Lee's recording and performing output has continued unabated in recent years with It's Like This, 2000's inspired collection of cover songs and her in-concert document Live At Red Rocks, the following year. But it's the composing that's been conspicuous in its absence, an absence that, from the evidence of The Evening Of My Best Day, has made both the heart and the mind grow fonder.