Show Notes
Episode 3 of The Road To Joni picks up a thread from our conversation with Don Was… and leads us to esperanza spalding. In 2021 esperanza collaborated with her mentor Wayne Shorter on Iphigenia, an opera with a revisionary take on Euripides' Greek tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis. It was Ipheigenia that led esperanza to Joni’s living room, though her path on the road to Joni started years prior with a track from the 1976 album Hejira. esperanza tells host Carmel Holt how, at a recent Janet Jackson concert, she was reminded that Joni Mitchell has “literally influenced everyone.”
Joni’s influence on powerhouse string players and Joni Jam members Chauntee and Monique of SistaStrings began with “the lady that sings on the Janet Jackson song. (‘Got Til It’s Gone’).” A move from their hometown of Milwaukee to Nashville immersed the sisters in the Americana scene… which led them to a place in Brandi Carlisle’s touring band… which led to that fateful Newport 2022 performance when Joni took the stage. SistaStrings credit Joni for being an example for women to “stand on your own, be who you are, make weird music and be loud about it."
More from The Road To Joni
We’ve reached the end of The Road - the one that leads our host Carmel back home and to the finale of our special 10 episode series. It is also Joni Mitchell’s 81st birthday. From Newport Folk Festival 2022 to the Hollywood Bowl on October 19, 2024, we’ve watched the remarkable comeback of our SHERO, and in the past ten weeks, we’ve heard from a group of artists who shared their roads to Joni with so much love and reverence that it was rare to end a conversation without tears.
The penultimate episode of the Road To Joni series packs in more conversations than any episode so far. As host Carmel Holt heads east toward home and the finale of the series on Joni’s 81st birthday, the throughline of “Both Sides Now” continues on with four artists whose creative path would have been very different if not for Joni Mitchell. Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath was introduced to Joni’s music at the age of 12 by her dad. They listened in the car on cassette until she knew the songs by heart. Amelia cites Joni’s freedom with her voice and her ability to talk openly about the challenges of living inside the music industry as core inspiration for her own creative journey. She tells Carmel that she thinks that the celebration of Joni should go on forever.
This week’s episode comes to you in the afterglow of two sold out Joni Mitchell performances at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, where molecules were rearranged, hearts were broken wide open and 17,000 fans basked in her brilliance. Though she has a bit of FOMO over missing out on being part of the Joni Jam, this week’s first guest, Shawn Colvin, has plenty of Joni stories. After initially discovering Clouds as a teenager at church camp, Shawn found herself many years later recording her 2nd album at Joni’s house with Joni’s then-husband Larry Klein, and Episode 7 guests Béla Fleck and Bruce Hornsby. Shawn says that she learned everything she could from Clouds, including a percussive approach to guitar, and it set her on a path to a solo approach to performing and writing songs which would not have happened without Joni Mitchell. She tells host/producer Carmel Holt about her “big brother” relationship with Bruce Hornsby and how he helped her overcome the heartbreak of a terrible New York Times live show review by sharing a folder of his own scathing media clips, one of which called him a “gherkin” (UK speak for pickle). MUNA guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and writer Naomi McPherson grew up in a family of jazz musicians. Like several of our guests, their gateway to Joni Mitchell was Blue and then the fretless bass of Jaco Pastorius on Hejira locked them in. From there, they went hardcore into 70s and onward Joni while listening to cassette tapes of Turbulent Indigo, Night Ride Home and Miles of Aisles in their 1998 Honda Accord. Naomi says that they are still learning from Joni’s music and that because of her, they play exclusively in open tunings. They talk about how Joni’s music spans genres and how much sonic exploration there is to mine in her catalog - from folk to the jazz era to 80s pop influences. Naomi thanks Joni for her fearlessness and considers her to be the greatest songwriter of all time.
The two guest interviews featured in Episode 7 with Bruce Hornsby and Béla Fleck were recorded back-to-back by host/producer Carmel Holt. As it turns out, the threads that connect the two artists to each other and to Joni, make the conversations a perfect pair. Joni's then-husband, Larry Klein, played bass on and co-produced several of her albums in the '80s and '90s. He would also bring the two guests in this episode closer to each other and to their shared SHERO, Joni.
For Episode 6, we continue a thread from last week as host Carmel Holt talks with three “boundary dweller” artists about their Roads To Joni. Each of our guests this week are visionaries who push beyond their comfort zone. They are producers, singers, songwriters and instrumentalists. Like Joni, they are multi-Grammy nominees and winners who do things on their own terms.