Nora Jones, with Regina Spektor
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 200 Marina Park Way, downtown
Tickets: $54, plus service charges
Online: ticketmaster.com
alternate versions and outtakes.
The results offer fascinating permutations of the album. It also features 14 previously unheard recordings that illustrate Jones’ ability to put a fresh, distinctive stamp on such weathered jazz standards as “When Sunny Gets Blue” and “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”
Of course, she had several distinct advantages as a young new artist making her first album. There were no commercial expectations for her to live up to, no pressure to make hit singles, no push to become a star here or abroad.
“I didn’t feel I had to prove anything,” Jones agreed. “But I had to get it right. I felt a little pulled in different (musical) directions by people in my life — some friends, some (record company) executives, producers, whatever . ...
“I was just trying to stay steady and follow my own sense of self and keep it throughout. The last thing I wanted to do, after getting a record deal, was to make an album I didn’t want to make. I wanted it to be an album I liked, even if it wasn’t (commercially) successful.”
An understated gem that has aged very well, “Come Away With Me” is dominated by hushed ballads. They proved to be an ideal showcase for Jones’ supple piano playing and earthy yet elegant singing. Like very few artists in their early 20s, she caressed each note she sang and savored the silences between them.
Drawing from jazz, blues, country and soul, the music on “Come Away With Me” was spare and unrushed. A marvel of nuance and simplicity, Jones performed with an inviting combination of wise-beyond-heryears maturity and wide-eyed youthfulness.
‘I just play simple’
Buoyed by its lilting title track and such melancholic songs as “Don’t Know Why,” “Come Away With Me” could not have sounded more different from virtually any other chart-topping album released in 2002.
Or, as Jones put it in an early 2002 San Diego Union-Tribune interview to preview her debut San Diego performance: “I like stuff that’s understated, and I’ve always been drawn to ballads. I can’t scat-sing ... and I can’t sing like Mariah Carey. But I don’t want to. It’s not what I enjoy listening to, so I went in the other direction.
“I don’t have a lot of chops on the piano. I don’t have any chops! I just play simple, and I like it that way. I don’t want to do something I don’t like. It’s just me singing the song. The ‘product’ is me. And when the product is you, you’ve got to be really careful. Because this is my life.”
Given the benefit of hindsight, what does Jones attribute her early success to 20 years after “Come Away With Me” took off?
“One thing I’ve noticed, looking back now at the box set, is that the album has a really hopeful sense of innocence to it,” she replied. “I never realized that at the time, because I was so young. I just thought at the time, ‘These are songs, and maybe people will think they are melancholy, but I like them.’ ”
The speed with which her career took off can be illustrated by Jones’ early San Diego concert history.
In March 2002, she performed with two accompanists at the 600-capacity nightclub ’Canes in Mission Beach. She was the opening act for John Mayer.
“I remember that very well!” Jones said. “I stood outside talking with John, looking at the ocean. That whole tour was so wild and fun. It was the first time I opened for someone like that and played venues that big.”
She returned in July 2002 to headline a sold-out show at the 1,450-capacity Humphreys Concerts by the Bay. Then came a sold-out July 2003 show at the 5,000-capacity SDSU Open Air Theatre. By October 2004, Jones was headlining at Chula Vista’s nearly 20,000-capacity Coors Ampitheatre.
“It was a whirlwind, and it was definitely turbo-speed,” she recalled. “But we adjusted as best we could, and I made changes here and there to sort of keep up with all of it . ... Sometimes it’s hard to hear the audience in big outdoor venues, so I had to get used to the sonics of being in huge venues and wearing ear monitors.”
Jones marveled aloud at how profoundly her life changed 20 years ago.
“I was so young and had no idea what was coming,” she said.
What if a prognosticator had told her what was coming and that global stardom awaited her? Would she have believed them? Jones laughed.
“Probably not!”