CAPSULE REVIEW : Rickie Lee Jones’ Tour of Varied Landscapes

Rickie Lee Jones scanned the crowd near the Club Lingerie stage after her first number in the first of two shows there Thursday, hoping to see some non-familiar (i.e., non-”industry”) faces in the footlights. “I was hoping very much that some real people got in ‘cause I was trying to figure out who bought the tickets,” she said earnestly, beaming that Cheshire Cat grin as the whoops and hollers told her the folks wuz real.

It’s not easy for a star of Jones’ magnitude to put on a “Saloon Tour” (so deemed in honor of her recent “Flying Cowboys” album)--one that hits only nine cities and includes almost exclusively club dates, the exception being this Monday’s Wiltern show--and get the relatively few dance cards available into the hands of the cowpokes rather than the cattle barons, as it were. Amazingly, it seems to have worked.

Not that this was a downscale crowd. Jones’ most devoted fans may be those lost souls who live out their bohemianism vicariously through her jivey, jazzy, soulful music. Forget the Western similes that have been cropping up in Jones’ metaphoric saddle for a moment: The theme song for this evening, and for many fans’ identification, would surely be the slow, buoyant, urban funkiness of “Ghetto of My Mind,” a good representation of just how Jones takes listeners to a looser landscape they may never know. Even as a settled-down mom, she still makes a great, cosmic conduit to The Street.

Jones seemed quite cheerful on this stop, trotting out oldies like “Chuck E.’s in Love” without provocation in the midst of a set that included most of the “Cowboys” material. At performance’s end, she sang “Autumn Leaves” with just piano and upright bass, assuring those who might not have known that, at heart and in spirit, she really is a phenomenal jazz singer.

All of Jones’ shows, including appearances Sunday at the Ventura Theatre and Monday at the Wiltern, are sold out.

A complete review runs in Saturday’s Calendar section.