The Songs of Joni Mitchell: Jesca Hoop, Kate Stables and Lail Arad reveal their favourite tracks ahead of tribute tour
“Joni Mitchell has been a constant companion throughout my life,” Kate Stables of This Is The Kit explains. Companionship is perhaps the most abiding quality of the folk icon’s work. Even the surrealist comedian Bob Mortimer, who himself is a companion to the masses, once said there always comes a time when you just want to sit under a bridge and listen to Joni Mitchell records.
Perhaps they are so comforting because they don’t try to be. They are a memory lane pitted with potholes and traffic lights designed that way for no other reason than for Mitchell to declare what she wishes. Alas, those declarations turn out so beautiful that you’re almost gladdened for life’s bumps and hurdles because that’s what makes the joy in between so sweet and sanguine.
The world needs that now. Well, to be frank, the world has always needed that, but needing it now specifically provides a neater segue into the tribute tour that Jesca Hoop, Kate Stables and Lail Arad are about to embark on. These three musical forces, in their own right, have curated a concert traversing Mitchell’s tracks, selected simply out of a mutual love for her work.
With that in mind, ahead of the tour, which is due to commence in Glasgow this October, we asked the trio to perform the tricky task of picking one favourite song from her gilded back catalogue. There’s no space for ‘Both Sides Now’ or ‘A Case of You’ among the entries, which further proves the awesome depth to what Mitchell has offered the world. In a sense, it seems she’s also partly responsible for the trio of excellence desiring to pay a gorgeous roving tribute to her.
Lail Arad, Jesca Hoop, and Kate Stables pick their favourite Joni Mitchell songs:
‘Chelsea Morning’ for Lail Arad
“Choosing which songs to perform on the tour is already hard, but asking me to choose one favourite Joni Mitchell song is impossible! There are so many, and I love them for very different reasons. So I’ll choose the last one I sang—not in front of an audience—but to my three-year-old: ‘Chelsea Morning’.”
“This was one of the first Joni songs I fell in love with, knew all the words too, thought I understood. I was probably ten years old, so its joyful music and sentiment was more exciting to me than her bluer songs, which I grew to love as I grew up. Oh, those backing vocals! I remember being struck by the line ‘we’ll talk in present tenses’ and how cleverly it captures the mood.”
“I didn’t know back then that she was writing about Leonard Cohen at the Chelsea Hotel, or that ‘the sun poured in like butterscotch’ and ‘bowl of oranges’ was a nod to ‘the sun pours down like honey’ and ‘tea and oranges’ from Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’. Of course, that made me love it even more when I found out! My three-year-old doesn’t know any of this either, of course, but he loves the lyrics about: traffic, Christmas, rainbow, pigeons, milk, toast, oranges, owls… I didn’t actually think of singing this on the tour, maybe I should.”
‘For the Roses’ for Jesca Hoop
“Getting to know Joni’s writing from the start of her published works, I find myself in a vastly different mode by the time we reach ‘For the Roses’. It took me some time and many listens to understand what I was listening to. I could feel the difference, but I didn’t know how much of her life and relationships she was divulging.”
“In explicit terms, she has given us a road map through her lived experience and here in ‘For the Roses’, in her stone cabin in British Columbia where she is hermatising, I realise what a trek she has been on. It was castles and clouds, and by now it is rock ‘n’ roll glamour, a taste for worship, heartbreak and the loss of innocence. A loss of innocence to be sure… but not poetry. Not ‘the arbutus rustling’. Not ‘the moon swept down black water like an empty spotlight’.”
‘All I Want’ for Kate Stables
“One song that really means a lot to me is ‘All I Want’. It was one of the first Joni Mitchell songs I ever heard, and it struck me immediately as being unlike anything I’d ever heard before. The lyrics, her voice, the mix of the guitar part and the dulcimer part, but also the effect it had on my dad when the song was playing. It obviously tapped into some deep joy in him that then just came shining out.”
“It feels like it’s a song that a lot of people resonate with when they’re at an exciting crossroads in life and love. You can feel the potential and the promise in this song. I definitely had that feeling with this song as a teenager, and it feels like the same was true for my dad when he first heard the song back in the 1970s. And rather nicely, it is now the main song that my daughter sings and plays on the guitar.”
“It feels like there’s something very special about a song that speaks to and passes through multiple generations. I guess it’s fairly common that there are songs that the whole family loves and relates to, but in my family, ‘All I Want’ is very much one of those songs. It wakes up some kind of life force in people. A joy but also an acknowledgement of sometimes sadness and frustration. The essence of life, in a way. It’s a whopper.”
The trio will be joined by Richard Sears on piano. Tickets for all shows are on sale now, here.
