Hejira: Capturing the spirit of Joni Mitchell live on stage
Much more than just a tribute act, seven-piece band Hejira, a collective of highly-experienced jazz musicians, interpret the music of legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell in their own unique way.
Named after Joni’s 1976 album, Hejira comprises singer/guitarist Hattie Whitehead, saxophonist Ollie Weston, keyboard player Chris Eldred, guitarist Pete Oxley, bass player Dave Jones, drummer Rick Finlay and percussionist Marc Cecil.
Pete Oxley is also the bandleader. “I’ve known the album Hejira for decades, and loved it,” says the seasoned musician, who also runs The Spin Jazz Club in Oxford.
“And 25 years ago, I started this club The Spin; we always put on a special gig at Christmas, and Christmas 2022 I thought ‘Oh, I’d love to do the music of Joni Mitchell’ and I put this group together, a seven-piece band, to play the music of that period.
“I just called it ‘Around Joni Mitchell’ - it wasn’t planned to be a band or anything - and assembled this band of seven great players that I knew and advertised it, and it sold out in 24 hours.
“So I thought ‘Well maybe we should do another one?’. I thought I’d better wait and see how we get on, musically, because some of us hadn’t played together.”
Pete recalls that everybody in the band had prepared really well prior to the first rehearsal - “so it just sounded immediately really good”.
He continues: “So between the rehearsal and the gig, I said ‘Right, shall we do another one?’ and everybody was up for it, so we got our diaries out and found another date, which was 1 March, if I remember rightly, 2023.
“I advertised that on the Spin website the next day and by 11am it had sold out again, so I thought ‘This has got legs, this project’.”
The project did indeed start to take off and the band have already done around 50 gigs so far this year. They are scheduled to come to Cambridge next week.
On what made Pete decide to name the outfit after that particular album, he says: “For me, that’s when she hit the maturity of her writing.
“Those great songs like Hejira itself, the title track, Amelia, Black Crow, Blue Motel Room, Coyote… these songs are for me kind of the big songs of Joni, and I fell in love with that album.
“I think I probably heard it when I was 21; I’d heard [Joni’s 1971 album] Blue a few years before and loved that, but that was from her folky period, and it stood out from all the other kind of singer-songwriter people of the era.
“And I still think it’s head and shoulders above any of the others, in terms of songwriting, in lyrics, melody and harmony.
“But then when she got to Hejira, my understanding is that as her songwriting developed, she realised that the musicians she was hanging around with, from that kind of milieu, weren’t really keeping up, in a way, harmonically, and somebody said to her ‘Well Joni, you need to use jazz musicians to interpret your stuff’.”
Pete notes that Joni subsequently did one tour with an “incredible” band - the “crème de la crème of jazz musicians of the day” - which included guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Jaco Pastorius, keyboard player Lyle Mays, saxophonist Michael Brecker, and drummer Don Alias.
This led to the recording of a live album, released in 1980, titled Shadows and Light. “When I first heard that album, I thought it sounded incredible,” remembers Pete, “and I didn’t even know who the musicians were.
“I hadn’t got to that stage of my listening to know that these were great guys, and people I’ve become massive fans of latterly.
“I fell in love with that album, and so with that first gig we did, that was the idea, to replicate… not in a tribute band way but to replicate the spirit of Shadows and Light.”
As well as playing tracks from the Hejira record, the band will also be performing songs from Joni’s Court and Spark album (1974) and other tunes from her mid to late 70s period, right up to Shadows and Light - as well as A Case of You from the aforementioned Blue - when they play the Cambridge Junction (J2) on Monday, 22 July.
Pete reveals that the band’s agent is also trying to get them a slot at the Cambridge Folk Festival.
Tickets, priced £25, are available at junction.co.uk. For more on Hejira, go to peteoxley.com/projects/hejira.