Last week Marti Jones was back in Washington, DC – the city where she and I had our greatest moments together during her career in pop music. (Actually, she was always on a stage with a band and her husband, while I was in the audience with my wife, but whatever – we’ll always have DC, Marti.) This time she wasn’t in town for a concert; she was preparing for the display of several of her paintings as “ambiance” (her word) on the set of a new play, After the Garden: Edith Beale Live at Reno Sweeney. The play re-creates a series of cabaret-style performances given in 1978 by the eccentric Beale – whom you might remember as “Little Edie,” the younger half of the peculiar mother-daughter duo portrayed in the 1975 documentary and 2006 Broadway musical Grey Gardens. Jones, serendipitously, had chosen the Beales as subject matter for her painting a couple years ago, and as a result she’s now receiving some of her biggest exposure to date as a visual artist.

It’s been a long time – nearly 20 years — since Jones had a major-label record deal, and nearly as long since she and Don Dixon ceased being regulars on the touring circuit. Over the last couple weeks Popdose has cast a spotlight on her music career, including a review of her recorded output last week and a recollection of her tours with Dixon the week before. Jones recently agreed to rehash her career during a phone interview, while sitting around her home outside Canton, Ohio. Perhaps because far too few music writers have sought her out recently – or perhaps because she (like Dixon, who’s also been quite generous to Popdose in recent months) is simply a terrific human being — our conversation resembled a reunion between old friends more than a run-of-the-mill interview.

Popdose: Are you in your studio today?
Marti Jones: No, but later I’m heading off to a recording studio. Dixon roped me into putting a generic female voice on a recording of our friend Jim Wann’s new play – it’s called The Great Unknown. [Wann is a longtime colleague of Dixon’s – the two performed with Bland Simpson as the Coastal Cohorts in their musical King Mackerel and the Blues Are Running.] I have to sing a song about climbing Mount Everest in my high-button shoes! His songs are always fun to sing, and this one’s great – Dixon keeps singing it to me as he dances around the room. And I’m getting paid – this time – which is nice.

Painting takes much more of your time than music these days. How did you go from pop star to painter?
My whole life, I wanted to be a painter. My grandmother was a painter, and my parents would always encourage me to take after her. I majored in art at Kent State, but meantime I had also started singing in clubs, and I did that for a livelihood through college. Then, you know, the music thing happened, and I had to put off the painting. I was actually very frustrated by it, and I would think all the time about picking it back up. But when I’d come home from a tour I would only be in one place for a couple days, and it was hard to grab onto anything and stick with it. (more…)