Diana Jones Discusses Her UK Tour, Album and Musical Influences
Diana Jones is a much respected singer-songwriter based in New York, she has just started her UK tour, in support of her critically acclaimed album ‘Song to a Refugee’.
Our Americana correspondent David Jarman caught up with Diana this week, to talk about her album release, her upcoming tour and her life in music.
David J
Welcome to the UK, Diana. I’m delighted to be interviewing you on behalf of Belles and Gals. You must be very pleased to be one of the first US artists to visit the UK on tour, after such a difficult time for everyone?
Diana J
Yes, it’s great to be here, all the travel and entry requirements went well, I’m delighted to be here, I’m so looking forward to seeing people at my shows. I was due to be here in spring 2020, then we looked at August, now I’m finally here it’s like a dream come true.
David J
You have 14 dates in the UK , I think, including the Union Chapel in London next week?
Diana J
Yes, my first date is on Thursday 30th at Hebden Bridge, then Glasgow on 1st October, which is sold out, I’m looking forward to playing at the Union Chapel on 5th October. After my UK dates I’m then touring in the Netherlands and Belgium.
I did an online show last year through Green Note, London, it was the first I did, it was amazing, but it’s still not the same as the energy of being in the same room. I also did an album launch in New York via zoom, in March, to promote it’s release in the US and Canada, which was great, we had about 300 people, it felt like a reunion, we could talk and share messages, I was very emotional afterwards, people were very generous of spirit.
David J
You’re resident now I know in New York, but you spent a while earlier in Nashville
Diana J
Yes, I’m originally from New York, it felt like the best place to be in the pandemic, New York people are very accepting, and always want to find the best way forward. Although mask wearing isn’t mandatory, many people do, you never know whether you could be carrying the virus, so wearing a mask could save someones life, it’s the sensible thing to do.
David J
It’s great that your tour dates give you the opportunity to promote your latest album ‘Song to a Refugee’, you must be very pleased to have had such a positive response to it.
Diana J
Yes, with a record like this it’s different from my earlier material, my songs telling stories of past coal mining disasters, or what’s going on in my life, it felt urgent and current, with everything that’s going on in the world at present. So recently we’ve seen the plight of the refugees from Afghanistan, thank goodness they’ve been welcomed in many countries including the US and Britain. Unfortunately the refugee situation isn’t going to clear up any time soon, but the fact that the record has been reviewed well and got lots of airplay has meant that people having been getting to hear their stories.
David J
Yes it’s such a timely album, and you really bring the stories to life, in Britain there is a political divide, between those who simply see refugees and migrants as a problem, in a very generalised way, and those who see that every refugee has their own individual story to tell. Your album succeeds very well in telling their stories.
Diana J
Yes, in the States the previous administration took such punitive action towards people who were just seeking safety at the border, dehumanising them and making them the enemy, while the reality is that we all seek safety for our families and our children, food and shelter, the basic needs, which people are risking their lives for .
David J
The images we saw on TV of families being split up at the border, with children being taken away, were truly shocking.
Diana J
Yes, it was so punitive, trying to discourage people from seeking asylum, which is their right to do. The trauma caused to families must be so hard to overcome, if ever.
David J
One of the songs on your album refers to two boys, with numbers 46 and 47 pinned to them?
Diana J
Yes, that song was inspired by a photograph of a little boy with a piece of paper with number 47, pinned to his shirt, all alone, we all have in our minds the dreadful history of imagery of children reduced to numbers. And even if they were keeping track of them, this flimsy piece of paper could be lost so easily, and no-one would know who he is, it was beyond awful. There were rules that guards couldn’t hug them or touch them, I saw one photograph, it was a small school bus, and all the seats were baby car seats, and you think where are they taking these kids.
I saw a story of a kid, only 14, who’d been detained for two years, though he had an aunt to stay with, who was legal. He said that the thing that had kept him sane was to write songs in his head, he’s 16 now, and I’ve offered to teach him guitar. He said the other thing that helped him was looking after the younger kids, one of the songs on my album is titled ‘El Chapparal’, about a holding camp on the Mexican side of the border, where they put the unaccompanied minors, the kid in that song is one who looks out for the younger kids, as he’s a little older.
David J
That’s the only encouraging thing I guess, that humanity can triumph in that way against the odds.
Diana J
It puts me in mind of my song ‘Henry Russell’s Last Words’, based on a real letter, pretty much verbatim, written in 1927, to his wife when he knew he wasn’t going to survive the aftermath of a mining disaster. He told his wife how much he loved her, and his hopes for his kids, and how much it comforted him to think of them. I’ve often wondered how would I be in that situation, what would I want to say?
David J
It’s so touching, knowing that this is a true story.
Diana J
Yes, and he came to Virginia from Stirling in Scotland, then his wife joined him, they were looking for a safe place to live and raise their families.
David J
Indeed, every country in the world has a tradition of migration, and to decry that now, at a time of such need, seems so wrong.
Diana J
And especially at a time when climate change is leading to new waves of migration.
David J
Indeed, climate change and migration are two of the biggest issues facing humanity, and the climate emergency disproportionately affects people in the poorest countries.
Diana J
We should all start from the basis that we have the same needs, historically we have done this, we need to go back to this approach. One of my songs, ‘The Life I left Behind’, was written for a friend who’s a refugee from Syria, inspired by her reaction to a photo, she was in tears, all you can see is rubble, but she recognised it as her high school in Aleppo.
She was 14 when she left, at that age you have a life that you’ve left behind you, Aleppo was beautiful and very cosmopolitan and European, she told me. You see people with all their possessions in a suitcase, but not long ago they had homes and families and something forced them out. It made me think, what would it take me to leave my home, some of the people coming across the border to the US have been incredibly brave to make that journey, many losing their lives doing so.
David J
Yes, it makes you think at what point would you decide that you had no other choice.
Diana J
You think of World War Two, and people staying as long as they could because they felt they wouldn’t be treated badly, and then suddenly it’s too late.
David J
Now you’re in Britain you’ll be hearing that people have been coming to claim asylum by small boats, just inflatable dinghies, across the English Channel from France, an incredibly dangerous journey, which demonstrates their desperation.
Diana J
That’s the crux of it—you only do this when you have no choice—people have been making the same journey from Egypt to Lesbos, risking their lives, I was told chilling stories by a friend who’s a Minister in the Netherlands and visits Lesbos with his wife to provide assistance to refugees in camps, like people selling life jackets filled with heavy plastic pellets which will sink not float, just to make a few hundred Euros.
The song ‘The Sea is My Mother’ is based on a story he told me, about a woman whose family give her money to embark on a dangerous journey, in the hope of bringing the rest of the family in the future, but they travel in rickety boats, and many lose their lives.
You may not know him here, in the States there was a kids TV show, ‘Mister Rogers Neighborhood’, his message was when tragedy happens look for the helpers, I think that’s what we need to do—whether its helping refugees, or dealing with Covid, at the front line, where people risk their lives to help others.
David J
You have some collaborations on your album I hear?
Diana J
Yes, I have some incredible artists join me on the album, Steve Earle, Richard Thompson and Peggy Seeger on ‘We Believe You’, this was written just after I’d finished the album, Representative Ocasio-Cortez visited the border, and gave such powerful evidence to Congress, saying that she believed the stories of the women she talked to, and it’s such an important human need to be believed.
I heard different voices in the verses, and this was how I came to ask them to sing on the track. Peggy sings in the voice of a mother, she sings so beautifully. And the Chapin Sisters—Harry Chapin’s nieces—join me on ‘Ask a Woman’.
David J
And you’ve toured with each of them too?
Diana J
Yes, Richard was very kind to me early in my career, when I was new to large stages, I remember him asking me one night if I was getting enough to eat, like he was my Dad, very sweet.
David J
And who would you say has inspired you as a songwriter? You have a very strong writing voice, both story songs and very personal songs.
Diana J
Thank you, Nanci Griffith was a tragic loss earlier this year, she worked with me on my 2009 album ‘Better Times Will Come’, she really inspired me with her story telling, her stage presence, and how she would always champion younger writers, she was so generous. I remember her dragging me across a room, saying “I need you to meet my friend Emmylou”, thinking oh my God, I’m going to meet Emmylou Harris.
And of course some of the mainstays, Woody Guthrie, I keep going back to his songs, and Johnny Cash, he was so authentic, and he and June together were wonderful too. And Steve Earle and Richard Thompson, and Peggy Seeger. The first time I opened for her she taught me the chords to a song, so I could play with her, it was a Spanish song, she brought me back on for the encore , took my hand to take a bow. It taught me a lot about how to be on stage
David J
And I believe you met Guy Clark?
Diana J
Yes, I lived in Austin for seven years, before I moved to Nashville, it was a great experience, he was a lovely guy, we hung out together, talked about songwriting, I opened for him at the Cactus Cafe, there were so great many artists there.
David J
And you had an album around then, ‘My Remembrance of You’, which was dedicated to your grandfather, who was an early influence on you after you’d traced your birth family in Tennessee?
Diana J
Yes, that was the first record which was played a lot, written after he had passed way, it was great that I got to find my musical roots, he was a lovely person, my best friend, we were very alike, I think it would have been the same, if we’d been together from an earlier age. My adoptive family was my family, growing up, but the people I was related to were also part of me, it’s different for everyone but I really did have a lot in common with them, especially my grandfather.
David J
And he’s been an important influence on you as a musician.
Diana J
Yes, we had a similar voice, I was classically trained as a youngster, they were trying to iron out my voice, I had a break, like a yodel, they could never get it smooth, and when I met my grandfather he had the same thing, and it fits the genre, that was kinda cool for me.
David J
You have roots then in bluegrass and old time music.
Diana J
Yes, it’s really interesting to me how these genres all meet, where country met the blues, and old time music, with the English and Irish ballads, everything is influenced by everything else.
David J
And I believe you have an interest in Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist and recorder of traditional blues and folk songs ?
Diana J
Absolutely, when I was travelling in the Smoky Mountains I bought a CD of songs he’d collected, and my grandfather knew all these songs, that was how we found our connection, lots of the people Lomax recorded weren’t going to get up on a stage, it wasn’t about that, it was that music was a necessary part of their lives. That got me thinking about the stories that I should tell in my songs.
David J
There is an English connection you might not be aware of, the famous English folk singer Shirley Collins accompanied him on one of his field trips in 1959, when she was in her early 20’s, she was his lover, she wrote a memorable autography about that trip, and her early years, and did a speaking tour when it was published, ‘America Over the Water’ it was titled.
Diana J
Yes, I remember hearing about her. He made so many recordings.
David J
It’s been great to talk to you Diana, all the best for your forthcoming tour, I look forward to catching your set at the Union Chapel on 5th October.
Diana J
Thank you, I played there back in 2009, I’m really looking forward to it, I always enjoy playing here in the UK, I’ve always had such a warm reception, the audiences are so engaged.
Diana Jones Upcoming Tour Dates:
Tuesday 5th October 2021 London Union Chapel
Wednesday 6th October 2021 Liverpool Music Room
Thursday 7th October 2021 Nottingham Running Horse
Friday 8th October 2021 Biddulph St Lawrence’s Church
Saturday 9th October 2021 Basingstoke The Forge
Sunday 10th October 2021 Bristol Hen & Chicken
Tuesday 12th October 2021 Brighton Prince Albert
Wednesday 13th October 2021 Birmingham Kitchen Garden Cafe
Thursday 14th October 2021 Milton Keynes The Stables
