Because, you see, this may be the end of this story, but it's only the beginning of Jones' career--a baby step, not the giant leap most artists crave when first signing to a major label. She could have easily sold out and bought in; she could easily play to 5,000 or more every night on her current tour. Instead, Joe Brauner is booking her into smaller venues--ones that hold 1,500 people, at the very most.
"This is a girl who went from 100-seat rooms in New York with options to play 4,000- and 5,000-seat venues, and it was too much too soon," Brauner says. "Norah said, 'No, let me develop as an artist.' She didn't go for the quick buck, let's put it this way."
Clay Patrick McBride
When Come Away With Me started receiving positive press long before its February release, Norah Jones started to panic. "My first thought was, 'Oh, my God, they're overexposing me already.'"
Norah and her team, from left, go for the gold (record): Blue Note Records President Bruce Lundvall, producer Arif Mardin, EMI Recorded Music North America Chairman Dave Munns, Jones, EMI Recorded Music Chairman and CEO Alain Levy, managers Sam Feldman and
Steve Macklam and producer Craig Street.
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"It would be a shame to put everything into a first album and have audiences go, 'It's wonderful--next,' adds Steve Macklam. "She has so much more to offer."
But the machine will roll on for a while longer. She won't be back in the States until November, at which point she will play a handful of radio Christmas concerts, dishing out holiday thank-yous to stations that have played her--and the number grows every week. She will do Leno again, and she will join Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Lee Ann Womack and Natalie Cole on a Patsy Cline tribute, Remembering Pats, out later this year. At year's end, she will appear in the Hugh Grant-Sandra Bullock film Two Weeks Notice, performing "The Nearness of You"--the rare occasion when she said yes to the film industry.
Lundvall expects Jones to go back into the studio in March or April; certainly she is desperate for time off. It has been difficult to write on the road, because she needs to be back in New York, back among friends instead of fans who can kill, or at least injure the sensitive artist, with their overwhelming kindness. This is the beginning, after all. And hasn't she sold enough, given enough, done enough?
"The moments I get astonished are when SoundScan comes and the record just kept going up," Jones says. "Like, I don't even want to know that stuff, but my boyfriend, Lee, gets it every week from Zach, because he's really interested in it. Every week he tells me the numbers, and we just take a minute and are like, 'What the fuck is going on?' Like, why are they still buying it, what's going on? And every week I'm like, 'Oh, wow, so this is where we peak. Next week it's going to start dropping.' I'm always ready for it to start dropping. It's weird that it hasn't yet. I guess it has a lot to do with timing. I mean, I don't think it's all because of me. I certainly don't. It's like, gosh, something was aligned, the stars are aligned, and all that hippy-dippy stuff, but it's kind of true, you know? I just got lucky."
