Tennessee-born singer-songwriter Diana Jones revealed a genius for inhabiting, with uncanny authenticity, personas of the dispossessed, as early as her stunning 2006 song “Pony.” Guest artists Steve Earle and Richard Thompson help underscore that she’s the perfect artistic spokesperson for Southern border refugees. Consider the Trump administration’s cruel separation of hundreds of children from their parents, a dilemma the Biden presidency will struggle to resolve.
Song allows us to feel their experience, perhaps to move us to act: My brothers name is Leo, mine is Gabriel/ 46 and 47 but the numbers do not tell/what we wish and what we long for what we love and what we miss/our papa's crazy stories and our mama’s gentle kiss/this is where are.
Through the album, Jones switches points of view. She also conjures vivid metaphors, as in “The Sea is My Mother.” Yet, always her limpid, luminous voice sounds like an angel on a desolate shoulder, witness to a forsaken heart. America, the land famously welcoming “your huddled masses,” this is where we are.
