Last Chance Texaco

This troubadour life is only for the fiercest hearts, only for those vessels that can be broken to smithereens and still keep beating out the rhythm for a new song

Last Chance Texaco is the first ever no-holds-barred account of the life of two-time Grammy Award–winner Rickie Lee Jones in her own words. It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music.

With candor and lyricism, the “Duchess of Coolsville” (TIME) takes us on a singular journey through her nomadic childhood, her years as a teenage runaway, her legendary love affair with Tom Waits and ultimately her longevity as the hardest-working woman in rock and roll. Rickie Lee’s stories are rich with the infamous characters of her early songs—“Weasel and the White Boys Cool,” “Danny’s All-Star Joint” and “Easy Money”—but long before she became notorious in show business, there was a vaudevillian cast of hitchhikers, bank robbers, jail breakers and drug mules, plus a pimp with a heart of gold and tales of her fabled ancestors.

This electrifying and intimate memoir by one of the most remarkable, trailblazing and tenacious women in music shares never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, a singer-songwriter whose music defied categorization and inspired American pop culture for decades.