Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour

Two-time Grammy Award–winning singer Jones delivers a crackling debut memoir recounting her roving early years. Coming of age in a struggling family of orphans and artists in Arizona, her worldview was shaped by the cultural upheaval of the 1960s as well as the trauma she inherited from her veteran father and narrowly escaped as a hitchhiking runaway. “Some of us are born to live lives on an exaggerated scale,” writes Jones. Divided into driving-themed sections, she begins with her childhood in “The Back Seat” and makes it to the “Driver’s Seat” when her career as a singer-songwriter took off in 1979. Her travels informed tracks like “Easy Money” and “Night Train,” with help from a world of edgy characters and lovers who became her muses. (“We were religions, we converted to each other,” she writes of her romance with Tom Waits.) Threading her account with song lyrics, Jones creates a narrative soundtrack of her influences, including Crosby, Stills & Nash, Marvin Gaye, and Laura Nyro. From a harrowing affair with heroin to bold career risks—for instance, not budging when SNL’s Lorne Michael said her set might be cut short—Jones depicts both the pitfalls and bravery of living with nothing to lose. Wise and gorgeous, this story is as poetic as the songs that made Jones famous. (Apr.)