Amelia revisited

Guy Jackson with Laura James

Laura James • vocals

Guy Jackson • arrangement, keyboards, production

“Amelia revisited” features the beautiful voice of Laura James who I’ve worked with before on projects. So I played her a very early rough of my guitar-less version of Amelia only to be told that her parents were so into the Hejira album around the time of her birth that they gave her a middle name of Amelia!!! That clinched it. She had to be the vocalist on my new revisited version.

In my fresh interpretation of the music, there are no guitars. Arrangements are all keyboard-based using pianos, tuned percussion, instruments of the orchestra and more…

Arranger and producer Guy Jackson said:

“Hejira is my favourite album of all time. I came across it as a student and found it totally mesmerising. Decades later the album still has that compelling quality – is it Joni’s perfect vocal delivery, her relentless guitar work, the lack of a traditional song structure or the musicians she worked with in the 1976 studio?

“The idea for reworking came about a few years ago when I created ‘Hejira’ as a test track for a new singer. That project went no further, but by then I was hooked.

“After exploring the song structures, I decided not to create guitar-based arrangements for fear of the project turning into a series of karaoke tracks. Making the tracks keyboard-based gave a fresh twist to the music, after which the vocalists did the rest! And here you can witness the captivating vocals of Laura James.”