Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour
A tender and intimate memoir by one of the most remarkable, trailblazing, and tenacious women in music, the two-time Grammy Award-winning "premiere song-stylist and songwriter of her generation" (Hilton Als), Rickie Lee Jones.
This troubadour life is only for the fiercest hearts, only for those vessels that can be broken to smithereens and still keep beating out the rhythm for a new song.
Last Chance Texaco is the first-ever no-holds-barred account of the life of two-time Grammy Award-winner Rickie Lee Jones in her own words. It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music.
With candor and lyricism, the "Duchess of Coolsville" (Time) takes us on a singular journey through her nomadic childhood, to her years as a teenage runaway, through her legendary love affair with Tom Waits and ultimately her longevity as the hardest working woman in rock and roll. Rickie Lee's stories are rich with the infamous characters of her early songs - "Chuck-E's in Love," "Weasel and the White Boys Cool," "Danny's All-Star Joint," and "Easy Money"-- but long before her notoriety in show business, there was a vaudevillian cast of hitchhikers, bank robbers, jail breaks, drug mules, a pimp with a heart of gold and tales of her fabled ancestors.
In this tender and intimate memoir by one of the most remarkable, trailblazing, and tenacious women in music are never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, a singer-songwriter whose music defied categorization and inspired American pop culture for decades.
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RICKIE LEE JONES has released seventeen record albums and received two Grammy Awards. She lives in New Orleans.
Praise for Last Chance Texaco:
"A jaw-dropping youth, and an addictive, funny, eccentric and perceptive memoir." --Nick Hornby
"In this raw and roving life story, Jones depicts a child who recognized her humanity and worth even when others wouldn't, and a woman whose confidence helped her rise above heroin addiction, music-industry sexism and the traumas of her youth . . . In a book about the past, Jones has no problem moving on. It's a neat trick." --Jake Cline, Washington Post
"Candid, cosmic, so cool... An impassioned and cinematic trip through Jones's eventful life. Jones manages to carry her originality, intimacy, and volcanic expressiveness into book form." --Boston Globe
"Terrific... The prose is rich and rhythmic, filled with lines that are pithy ("Rickie Lee is a Frank Capra movie that had been overtaken by Stanley Kubrick") and poetic ("childhood traumas leave their dirty footprints on the fresh white snow of our happy-ever-afters.") . . . Jones is as fearless in prose as she is on stage." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"So remarkably beautifully written, showing [Rickie Lee's] signature as a songwriter, too." --Scott Simon, NPR
"One of the most compelling memoirs I've ever read... What really sucks you in, and lifts you up, is the dazzling magic of her prose." --Please Kill Me
"Well-crafted and intensely candid." --San Diego Union-Tribune
"A crackling debut memoir... Wise and gorgeous, this story is as poetic as the songs that made Jones famous." --Publishers Weekly (starred)
"In gorgeous prose interspersed with her lyrics, this is as distinctive as she is, a rich, bracing, and candid memoir dancing with the love of language." --Booklist (starred review)
"What makes this a most inspiring memoir is her absorbing storytelling, facility with language (no surprise there) and her fealty to integrity - commerce be damned." --Michael Simmons, MOJO
"This tender, fierce, intimate memoir is testament that Jones has lived a life as brave... and rich as her music--with love, heartbreak, addiction, and magic, sprinkled throughout." --O Magazine
"Men leave, fame fizzles, family breaks your heart...but Jones knows a good story and how to tell it." --Kirkus (starred review)
"Fans will enjoy this buoyant coming-of-age narrative by one of music's most idiosyncratic performers." --Library Journal
Praise for Rickie Lee Jones:
"Rickie Lee Jones has been pushing down musical boundaries for over four decades with her hauntingly beautiful voice and fearless experimentation." --NPR
"[Her] music has healing properties: the beauty of its melodies and the wisdom of its words soothe the soul and remind us what a peculiar treasure Jones is." --Boston Globe
"Intimate and real . . . she feels like an old, confiding friend--plaintive and genuinely heartbreaking." --Mother Jones
"One of the most intriguing, idiosyncratic vocalists of our time." --USA Today
"A singular talent." --Daily Mirror (UK)
"There has always been something defiant about Rickie Lee Jones . . . [with] a voice from a dream, elusive yet familiar, transcendent, a messenger from another place." --Independent (UK)
"A standout international performer." --The Australian
