Sometimes, music evokes a moment in a life. Most people recollect the song that was playing the first time they kissed someone, the first time they made love, or the soundtrack to other life-moments. Sometimes, though, a performer evokes a mood. I cannot listen to the Allman Brothers Band, for example, without thinking of road trips. Their long jams, played very loud, are the perfect accompaniment for those long stretches of driving with the window down, turning them somehow from mundane to something not just fun, but perhaps sublime.
Joni Mitchell brings to mind, for me, high spring. I have no idea why. I hear any of her songs, and for some reason I find myself in the May of life. As we are now in the midst of the harshest of winter's attempts to make us forget the possibility of spring, I have found myself thinking more and more of those May days when the sun is bright and warm and sticks around later and later; those May nights when the breeze takes the edge off the heat without leaving a chill.
In 1976, she released Hejira, finishing a turn to jazz fusion. The most important performing addition on the album was the tragically wonderful Jaco Pastorius, bassist for Weather Report. Mitchell included not just Pastorius but also jazz guitarist Pat Metheny in a tour that showcased not just their talents as musicians, but their ability to subsume their own incredible abilities toward the end of making music for others. She had already worked with Tom Scott; now, with Pastorius and Metheny, she showed she was not messing around.
For me, there isn't a cut on this album that misses the mark. It is hardly "hip and cool", as the writer of the overview at allmusic.com claims. Even at her upbeat best, or her more contemplative down-tempo, thoughtful recordings, Mitchell isn't "cool" in any conventional sense, because she is so deeply, personally engaged with the songs. Here she is, performing the song "Amelia", with Metheny, Pastorius, Metheny's long-time keyboard collaborator Lyle Mays.
