Hejira 'Celebrating Joni Mitchell' @ Alnwick Playhouse - Nov. 7

Hattie Whitehead (vocals, guitar): Pete Oxley (guitar); Chris Eldred (keyboards); Dave Jones (bass); Rick Finlay (drums); Marc Cecil (percussion); Olly Weston (saxes, bass clarinet).

Joni Mitchell was my gateway into jazz. I was a big fan of all those west coast acts like The Eagles, CSNY, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and of course, Joni Mitchell. She had suddenly made a sideways lurch into jazz and started making albums with Michael Brecker, Wayne Shorter, Charles Mingus and Pate Metheny. One of those albums was the live Shadows and Light which featured Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Lyle Mays, Don Alias and Brecker. The album is great, as is the concert film and all (especially Jaco) were at the top of their game. From there I bought a couple of Metheny albums, one of which had a tune on it dedicated to Bill Evans. Who was this Evans guy? I bought an LP of his and liked it and then one by some bloke called Miles Davis which had Evans on it.

Once you start doing jazz family trees from Kind Of Blue you never end. Now I have more jazz albums than any sane man needs and a son called Miles. If Joni had decided to do an album of oompah music I’d now have a son called Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. Go figure!

The band tonight has been assembled by guitarist Pete Oxley from jazzers and those who have worked in orchestra pits in the West End. With only minor changes, ‘Hejira’ has been touring this show for a few years now; Pete ‘plays’ Pat, Hattie is ‘Joni', and Dave Jones is ‘Jaco’.

As the band come on I wonder what that ringing is and it’s Pete Oxley’s bell bottoms. It’s been a while since I saw loons like that. They open with Coyote and instantly Whitehead has Joni, near enough but not quite, enough to have some of herself in there, most notably in the lower register. She handles the dense, sinuous lyric line well and Oxley, as he will do often tonight, threads a crystalline guitar solo in between the vocals and over the insistent bass and congas. A slowed down Woodstock allows Whitehead to show her timing. It’s a languorous reading that drags the time and intimates that it is now over 50 years since that age of Aquarius.

Hattie exits stage left and the band run through (It’s Just) Talk a Metheny/Mays piece. It’s one of those flowing, rolling, travelling pieces that Metheny was always so good at, with a Latin lilt and a bebop piano; Oxley’s solo captures the big skies and open spaces perfectly. Hattie returns for Song for Sharon from the Hissing of Summer Lawns album, a song about choices taken and possibilities pursued or lost. It’s all space and echoes, the band slowly building up with a ghostly bass clarinet coming in from the left as the bass feints and pushes more forcefully, dancing around the spare percussion as a soprano sax floats over all. The first half ends with Be Cool; a tenor floats in then it slides into a soulful R‘n’B groove with a bopping bassline. It clicks along like Steely Dan doing a show tune.

Help Me is a morning song about love’s dangers with another of those extended vocal lines. The sax sings along, harmonising with the vocals and I realise that I’d pay good money to hear this woman sing the phone book. (Ask your dad). She’s that good and it is her not Joni we are hearing.

The medley of Amelia/Pat’s Solo/Hejira is played as it is on the Shadows album. The band is stripped down, the rhythm section having left the stage.  Amelia is wistful, yearning, full of ‘Dreams and false alarms’ with Oxley’s delicate guitar keening and weeping and a warm wash of bass clarinet adds colour. Pete/Pat’s Solo full of glistening shards and runs is ‘after’ Pat but Oxley makes it his own before the others rejoin for Hejira. The bass is lovely, probing, warm and inviting, full of Pastorian pops, before the soprano cuts through, floating in and growing into a sharp edged solo. The band run through A Surging Ways, one of Oxley’s compositions which opens with a dramatic, lyrical, Spanish tinged bass solo. A swirling dance groove rises out of it before the drums explode and the whole band drives it forward. It’s a street funk, with suggestions of the Crusaders but sounds better than that implies.   

Hattie tells us it’s Joni’s birthday today (82), but, disappointingly, there’s no cake. Black Crow closes the show with a lovely band sound driving it on. Weston leads with a soaring tenor solo, full of energy and Oxley stitches together a series of repeated solo over bombs dropped by the drummer; the three leads of sax, vocals and guitar are a tight, multi-headed front line.

For the encores Hattie sings one of her songs (she has an ongoing solo career) and then it’s A Case of You to end the evening. The line ‘I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet’ shows the sadness, and some frustration in the lyric; Oxley’s guitar is delicate and elegant; Whitehead’s voice soars and falls, from ethereal to husky. It’s a subdued and melancholy end to the performance but the audience is loud and appreciative, nonetheless.

It’s been a nostalgic evening for me, taking me a long way back, but lovely and the music positively glowed at times.

Additional Comments The original Shadows And Light concert film is available on YouTube in whole and in parts.

It’s also worth mentioning the product that Pete was selling on the evening as it was the first time I’d encountered an LSL – Look, Scan, Listen. It’s a book containing song lyrics, comments by band members and a QR code (I assume) that gives you access to the music as a whole, or as individual pieces. This LSL is for the Hejira band’s Live At The Cockpit album and costs £10 more than the CD. It’s a new type of product that combines streaming with a physical product to hold whilst listening. It could be the next big thing or it could go the way of DAT. More about it on Pete Oxley's website. Dave Sayer