The Hejira Poll

...it was just a false alarm

Amelia's probably my favourite Joni lyric, full stop.

very difficult to divide into greater and lesser songs

yeah this is why i felt blue was more suited to a poll (plus blue is the one i'm caning this week).

instinctively i'm torn between "song for sharon" and "refuge for the roads" but imma have to listen to this one again.

*"refuge of the roads"

i think this has been pointed out somewhere else on ilx but i love the way the last verse of "refuge of the roads" brings the curtain down on the album by zooming in rather than out

"And you couldn't see the cities on this marble bowling ball, or a forest or a highway or me here least of all..." So great at puncturing her own bullshit!

Coyote. It'd have to be one of the songs Jaco Pastorius plays on, I find myself more interested in the music than the lyrics on this album. Not that there's anything wrong with the vocal side of it, but she came up with a sound I've never really heard before or since here.

She must have been really enamoured with Jaco, if you listen to Don Juan's Reckless Daughter the bass is often the second most prominent instrument, sometimes there are two seperate bass tracks.

I was reading recently that before playing with Jaco, she had been frustrated with the bass players on her records, saying they always needed to know what the root of each chord was. Because of her alternate tunings and composition style, Joni's songs don't really have "chords" in the traditional sense. Jaco was able to come in and play bass parts by ear without locking down the off-kilter harmony.

'Black Crow', possibly my favourite Joni vocal ever.

Second half is stronger than the first, to my ears.

Voted for "A Song For Sharon," but it could easily have been "Refuge of the Roads," whose last minute is arranging genius: the central hook changing keys, Jaco bass all over the place, strings shimmering over the gray highway...

amelia over coyote, barely

Hard. My fav Joni, frm a period where I listened to her every day.

Coyote. No regrets.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I want to come back and do a studied defence of each track's worth. Esp. tracks that I fear will be underrated like "Furry Sings The Blues" and "Blue Motel Room".

ah shit, I didn't know abt this poll but I've started listening to this a few days ago, enough time for it to fully sink in. I love Blue so much that I was afraid listening to any other Joni would break the spell, so its the first album of hers I've heard since I fell in love with Blue abt 6 yrs ago

"Furry Sings The Blues" in particular I thought was a weaker track for a long time, and I thought she didn't really pull of the story. But I love it now, the way she captures the ambivalence and almost ridiculousness of her attempts to pay tribute to an impoverished black blues musician.

And I love the spookiness of this bit:

"There’s a double bill murder at the new daisy. The old girl’s silent across the street. She’s silent - waiting for the wrecker’s beat. Silent - staring ar her stolen name..."

my BOOM BOOM pachyDERRRRM.

We discussed this album quite extensively on: TS: Joni Mitchell - 'Hissing of Summer Lawns' vs 'Hejira'

Anyway, I think I'll go for Refuge of the Roads

"black crow"

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

forgot to vote - for some reason couldn't face listening to hejira this week in weather this cold - weird, had never thought of it as a summer album before but it pretty much is

another result (as with blue) where there are no losers (blue motel room may be a pretty standard torch song but i guess we're all joni-heads here)

i missed this one. no love for blue motel room? i remember not liking it too much in the beginning but these days it could well be my fave. BIG BIG LOVE.

I know that you've got all those pretty girls coming on
Hanging on your boom-boom-pachyderm
Will you tell those girls that you've got German Measles
Honey, tell them you've got germs

You and me, we're like America and Russia
We're always keeping score
We're always balancing the power
And that can get to be a cold cold war
We're gonna have to hold ourselves a peace talk
In some natural cafe
You lay down your sneakin' round the town, honey
And I'll lay down the highways...

tbh i never liked that one -,metaphore always seemed forced and on that song Joni sounded like what she'd become

argh i meant "neutral cafe" obv.

what does the last part of your comment mean baaderonixx?

"Joni sounded like what she'd become"
I think you mean "Joni sounded like what she would later become" i.e. her recent albums?

I can see that in retrospect but I love 'Blue Motel Room' on the album as it is.

For months, when I was 15, this album was all that I consistently listened to.

yeah sorry I wasn't very clear - I hear in that song echoes of what annoys me in her recent stuff, lame witticisms and a general pedantry

Missed this poll (would have voted title track) but I'll never understand the hatred for "Blue Motel Room." For the 'German measles' line alone, this is a classic. Why do people dislike this one so much?

Also, been listening to this album a lot lately and I think it may be an all time fave. The ten year distance from it did me good. I love it more than ever now. I think what it is is that I finally 'get' Jaco (and the others here pretty much aping his style) now.

It's got to be Song for Sharon...or Furry...or Coyote...damn this is hard! A great album!

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/joni-mitchell-hejira-round-47-toms-selection/

title track

^^^^ yes

Furry was the one that first stood out to me and still does.

Album is a perfect ten imo, not a single weak track. I even love Blue Motel Room, if only for this:

I know that you've got all those pretty girls coming on
Hanging on your boom-boom-pachyderm
Will you tell those girls that you've got German Measles
Honey, tell them you've got germs

i'd go with the title track too, tho it moves away from the intro chords too quickly! i'd happy listen to a 12-minute song based on that intro.

this is engulfing me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY7MBzjfIvI

there's no comprehending
just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes and the lips you can get
and still feel so alone
and still feel related
like stations in some relay

otm

I've always thought that metaphor was amazing.

it really is

i think i finally "get" this record after years of just appreciating it from afar (and being spellbound by the language ofc). "strange boy" knocked me out yesterday for the first time, almost like it snuck out from whatever corner it was hiding behind

I once did a bit of a road trip with someone who was relatively Joni agnostic and it was that 'we got high on travel' line that he would lampoon, mercilessly. I sort of agree, really, while still loving the track.

idk she totally saves it with we got drunk on alcohol

it's v funny to me

also contains the immortal line "he sees the cars as sets of waves, sequences of mass and space, he sees the damage in my face"

Magnificent line - makes me think of DeLillo.

I can't really admit to any flaws in this album, though they might exist.

Really, no album in the world has meant so much to me for so long.

there's no comprehending
just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes and the lips you can get
and still feel so alone
and still feel related
like stations in some relay

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Wednesday, August 1, 2018 4:03 PM (one year ago)

what the hell

k3vin do you not know this album / are you just discovering it now?

it's basically all like that, some of the most beautiful metaphors ever

Love this image from "Furry Sings The Blues":

There's a double bill murder at the New Daisy
The old girl's silent across the street
She's silent, waiting for the wrecker's beat
Silent, staring at her stolen name
Diamond boys and satin dolls
Bourbon laughter, ghosts, history falls
To parking lots and shopping malls

(ironically I think the Old Daisy is now open whereas the New Daisy is closed, but I find the above image of the one building silently staring at the other so arresting)

I think it's been said on the Hejira vs Hissing thread but I love how willing she's to engage on those albums with urban modernity (ie. references to shopping malls, airports, hotels and conference rooms) instead of sticking to more conventional rural/retro/mythological signifiers (eg like Dylan and Neil were mostly peddling at the time). Cant't think of anyone else who's painted such a vivid image of the bleakness of 70's America.

Joni feels like the preeminent chronicler of that early to mid seventies comedown from late sixties optimism. And a big part of that is due to Joni’s ambivalence about her own place. So many of her songs during this period (really from “For Free”, but I think the sophistication steps up progressively through “Carey”, “For The Roses”, “People’s Paeties”, “The Boho Dance” to stuff like “Song For Sharon”) are about not feeling like she fits into a social role that makes sense to her or to others, and/or where she recognises she cannot adopt a position not coloured by contradiction or hypocrisy.

Like how “Furry Sings The Blues” is very much “Big Yellow Taxi” from an older and more sophisticated perspective, where the narrator can see how she has benefited from the same social forces that have precipitated the decline of a culture that she holds dear.

She’s obviously always been tremendously self-regarding, but it’s difficult to begrudge that when all that regard allowed her to perceive herself from so many angles.

(All of which ultimately culminates in “Come In From The Cold”, which is like a history of the above process)

Pawn shops glitter like gold tooth caps
in the gray decay.
They chew the last few dollars off
old Beale Street's carcass.
Carrion and mercy.
Blue and silver sparkling drums,
cheap guitars, eye shades and guns
aimed at the hot blood of being no one,
down and out in Memphis, Tennessee.

k3vin do you not know this album / are you just discovering it now?

it's basically all like that, some of the most beautiful metaphors ever

― Tim F, Thursday, August 22, 2019 2:20 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I am just getting into joni this week and am completely overwhelmed

I met a friend of spirit
He drank and womanized
And I sat before his sanity
I was holding back from crying
He saw my complications
And he mirrored me back simplified
And we laughed how our perfection
Would always be denied
"Heart and humor and humility"
He said "Will lighten up your heavy load"
I left him for the refuge of the roads

Please note how the song musically and lyrically hits that end twist

oh wow k3v

I discovered this album when I was 14 and it immediately became my absolute favourite record, a title it retained for many years and much of the time still retains.

I wish I were more of a lyrics person. I love Joni, but it's rare I'll pay close attention to her lyrics specifically over the music unless I'm reading along with the music, which is rare.

Increasingly I'm finding Don Juan is the album I'm getting the most out of these days, even if I know that Hejira and Hissing are objectively better albums.

would anyone who knows about these things be able to do a select playlist of post-Mingus Joni?

I bought the 10 disc albums set a few months back simply for this album (because it is relatively inexpensive and I expect I'll want to listen to the others at some point). I wanted this album because I fell in love with Amelia.

So far I haven't got much beyond this one because it's so great.

I just have "People's Pieties" stuck in my head as a title now

dog latin, there's a compilation called The Beginning of Survival (curated by Joni herself) that's focused only on her 1985-1998 Geffen output; it might be a good place to start if you're curious about her later work.

Here's a Spotify link:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3atgHS5YDNlhTGFJqwGtvC

I own that comp, and it somehow manages to omit "My Secret Place," I assume for contractual reasons.

Didn’t know about that compilation. Gonna check it out. I’ve tried a few times but never managed to get into her post Mingus stuff (I own Night Ride Home and Taming the Tiger). I could never adapt to her new voice and phrasings nor to the dated production, which all sounded totally boomer-ish to me.

I don't mind her vocals on later albums but I agree about the production. I do enjoy Night Ride Home and Turbulent Indigo to some extent but never got properly into the others, and the sound of these records was mostly to blame.

"Dated" -- gah, I've been triggered.

Damn I am HET UP about how Song for Sharon got treated in this poll. To me it's the centerpiece of the album, a totally compelling story beautifully told. Does it just have too many amazing moments for you? It's astounding that she found an ending that doesn't feel like an anticlimax.

all of these songs are towering tho thats the thing

Well, yeah.

really need amelia (dub)

A perfect album except for "Blue Motel Room", which I hate for the reasons that posters above say they love it. I'd substitute the title track from Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, which is copyright 1976 (the same era that the other Hejira songs were written).

BOOM
BOOM
PA-CHEE-DERRRM

I just think she sounds silly in "raunchy" lyrically mode (Raised on Robbery, Dancing Clown), and I'm not partial to torch songs or standards (or her emulations of them).

I want to hear more about what k3vin thinks of this album

how is "amelia" the durutti column before the durutti column was the durutti column?

i've wrestled with this for a while, but i think i'm ready for today to be the day that i declare this joni's best record. it's like a fucking symphony.

i don't know durutti column at all but love "Amelia." What album is most that sound?

it's missing a potentially deal-breaking key element in the sense that joni doesn't sing on it, but the the vini reilly album from 1989 shares a lot of similar dna, i should think.

it's a good call especially the DC stuff not ruined by Vini's "singing"

How did Refuge of the Roads only get one vote? What a song.

There are at least 3-4 contenders, but damn.

My favourite bit of that already excellent song are the two little breaks of what are credited as "horns", though what I think I hear is flugelhorn and flute, a new instrumental flavour which we haven't heard anywhere previously on the album (unless you count the "Benny Goodman" break on the title track).
I associate this new addition to the sound palate with the switch to cosmic perspective in the lyrics in the final verse; they both reflect a change in point of view away from self-involvement.
In fact, every single instrumental contributor brings something special to their role, whether foreground or background, and of course that speaks to her arrangement and production skills. I wonder if "Furry Sings the Blues" might have my favourite Neil Young harmonica part (maybe second to "Ambulance Blues").

Furry has Neil harmonica?!

I have clearly not spent enough time with '70s Joni.

Do it. Hejira is like being wrapped in a warm blanket on the chilliest of days.

so i listened to this for the first time this evening but not all the way through, had tp pause after 'song for sharon'. following along to most of the lyrics online. i was familiar with 'coyote' which is just about as perfect a song as there is. other favorites so far are 'furry sings the blues' and 'hejira'. and 'amelia'. still sinking in.

I'm reading a Dylan book that discusses the Rolling Thunder Revue and it interviews Chris O'Dell, the tour manager and the other "woman down the hall" from Coyote who was also having a fling with Sam Sheppard on the tour. Chris and Joni became friends as a result. Sam, not so much, I think.

'blue motel room' is great. i was worried it would be like 'trouble child' but not at all.

Trouble Child is one of my favorite Joni songs. Re-reading the lyrics now, I can't tell whether it's about an institutionalized person or about depression.

Trouble Child is great, as is Trouble Man on that Kyle Eastwood album.

i'm finally appreciating the glitter of this album. like it's some complex moody gemstone piece that just needed some time and space to fully emerge. at the same time, the beauty of it feels so effortless and natural now - whoever described it upthread as being wrapped up in a warm blanket is otm. we listened to it at a very quiet volume while watching train videos in a cool room this hot afternoon. favorites this time are "amelia" and "hejira". i don't know what to say about "amelia" other than it feels like the song equivalent of a national park, it's so staggeringly beautiful. "hejira" is so sweet and devastating, and the low minor chord section in it strikes up a feeling in me that's hard to describe. it kind of felt like work to listen to this the first two times, now it's slipping on pleasurably like comfortable boots. though i need to spend more time with the back half.

xp pkbr did, just a few months ago :)

i don't have a specific example of this, but i love how cold and hard joni's voice occasionally sounds when she (or her protagonist) is rebuking a lover... or herself. it's a subtle coldness, the kind of tone one inherits when they've been through it all relationship-wise. the fact that she's able to counterbalance that with so much tenderness around her disenchantment is something.

i don't know what to say about "amelia" other than it feels like the song equivalent of a national park

i don't have a specific example of this, but i love how cold and hard joni's voice occasionally sounds when she (or her protagonist) is rebuking a lover... or herself. it's a subtle coldness, the kind of tone one inherits when they've been through it all relationship-wise. the fact that she's able to counterbalance that with so much tenderness around her disenchantment is something.

― five six seven, eight nine ten, begin (map), Monday, June 16, 2025 8:10 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I haven't filed this record away yet since I bought it months ago.

These are great comments, map, especially this one. I said something similar on some Joni thread a couple years ago when I bought Blue about how I love the way Joni sings about her lovers with this wide-eyed piercing intelligence. She might be in the throws of a crush, she might not be able to help it, but she definitely knows it and knows her lover and all their foibles.

“He gave me back my smile / but he kept my camera to sell”

lovely post, map

Here ya go, map:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N7gPcCgkZU

too good for words

Yeah, that's amazing.

at the same time, the beauty of it feels so effortless and natural now - whoever described it upthread as being wrapped up in a warm blanket is otm.

it's with her touring band, right? I think that's key to hearing her work in this time -- that these are ensemble records. "blue" isn't that imo, it's a studio creation, and these records also have great engineers and technique, but we're mainly hearing a group playing stuff together -- it's a very comfortable, communicative feeling.

yeah she was working with a few of the same people who'd played with her on court and spark & hissing of summer lawns and then toured with her, including john guerin who's the subject of a few of the songs. the incredible bass on a few of the tracks was the last thing to be recorded, as she was introduced to jaco pastorius after the album was mostly recorded & (understandably) loved his playing so much that she let him overdub whatever he wanted on a few tracks.