I'm porous with travel fever/But you know I'm so glad to be on my own/Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger/Can set up trembling in my bones.
Hejira, released in 1976 through Asylum Records, is Joni Mitchell's eighth studio album. Mitchell wrote the majority of the songs on a car trip from Maine to Los Angeles. Like her other albums that she released after 1974's Court And Spark in the '70s, it got mixed reviews on release but in the years since it has become recognized as one of Mitchell's highlights.
In the concert documentary The Last Waltz, Mitchell sings opening track "Coyote" with The Band.
Tracklist
Side One- "Coyote" (5:01)
- "Amelia" (6:01)
- "Furry Sings the Blues" (5:07)
- "A Strange Boy" (4:15)
- "Hejira" (6:42)
Side Two
- "Song for Sharon" (8:40)
- "Black Crow" (4:22)
- "Blue Motel Room" (5:04)
- "Refuge of the Roads" (6:42)
Refuge of the Tropes:
- Artsy Beret: Joni wears one on the cover.
- Call-Back: "Furry Sings The Blues" references "Big Yellow Taxi":History falls to parking lots and shopping malls
- Driven to Suicide: From "Song for Sharon":A woman I know just drowned herself
The well was deep and muddy
She was just shaking off futility
Or punishing somebody. - Elderly Blue-Haired Lady: Referenced in "A Strange Boy":While the boarders were snoring
Under crisp white sheets of curfew
We were newly lovers then
We were fire in the stiff, blue-haired house rules - Epic Rocking: "Song for Sharon" runs 8-9 minutes.
- Face on the Cover: Mitchell faces the camera on an icy backdrop, a picture of a road projected on her coat.
- Manchild: "A Strange Boy":What a strange boy
He still lives with his family
Even the war and the navy
Could not bring him to maturity. - One-Man Song: "Coyote", "Furry Sings the Blues", "A Strange Boy".
- One-Woman Song: "Amelia", "Song for Sharon"
- Singer Namedrop: "Blue Motel Room"I hope you'll be thinking of me
Because I'll be thinking of you
While I'm traveling home alone
Tell those girls that you've got Joni
She's coming back home. - Special Guest:
- Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius plays bass on four tracks.
- Neil Young provides the harmonica on "Furry Sings the Blues".
- Those Wily Coyotes: Joni's lover on "Coyote" is nicknamed "coyote" because of his trickster/fool tendencies.
- Wanderlust Song: Much of the album - whose title comes from the Arabic word for "journey" - is given over to songs about travel. That said, feelings of homesickness arise on songs like "Black Crow" and "Blue Motel Room".
- The X of Y: "Refuge of the Roads"
