'Jomama Jones: Radiate'

Jomama radiating, with assistance from Daniel Alexander Jones

Listen up, America: Jomama Jones is back! The lissome doyenne of Seventies R&B who swapped the pop charts and Soul Train for shepherding goats in the Swiss Alps has returned stateside to tour a new concert show, Jomama Jones: Radiate, which lands in Austin this week.

Listen up, Austin: Daniel Alexander Jones is back! The lithe writer-performer of Clayangels and Black Barbie in the Hotel de Dream during Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre's glory days has returned to Austin this summer, in part to workshop a new musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Land of Oz. That he's here as Jomama hits town can hardly be considered coincidence, since her first appearance was in Jones' 1995 solo work Blood:Shock:Boogie.

But make no mistake: Jones may don the dress for Radiate, but it's Jomama who wears it and runs the show. That's been the case since the soul diva resurfaced in Jones' life in 2009. Rather than a character he created and could control, she returned as an independent presence with, Jones insists, her own agenda. Come showtime, she enters his body, and "when she moves in, my bones get rearranged. Things shift." He's like an oracle of ancient times, letting some divine being speak through him.

Jones is aware how that sounds, but he's had four years of Jomama experiences to substantiate that notion – like when Radiate was about to open at Soho Rep in New York. The last run-through was basically "Daniel walking around in a dress," Jones says, because Jomama wasn't present. Then, at 7:25 on opening night, "I was in the mirror, putting on my makeup, and all of a sudden she was looking back at me. It wasn't me anymore; it was her. And Helga Davis and Sonja Perryman, who were then singing with me, said, 'Hey, Jo' – just like that. They saw the shift. I don't care if I sound crazy saying this, but in my mind, I said, 'Where were you?' [laughs] And as clear as a bell, she said, 'I don't do rehearsal.' That was the answer, followed by, 'I've got it. I've got it.' And sure enough, I just receded into myself, and the show was electric.

"It's like Captain Marvel and 'Shazam' or 'O mighty Isis!' or whatever. And I will never anticipate what she's going to do. While we have a rock-solid structure to the show, it's not written in a traditional way, because she won't take the lines that I write for her. I know that she's gonna do whatever she's gonna do. It's meant leaning into a certain kind of surrender that has pushed me as a performer, as an artist, to a very new place. As a controlling, intellectual, type-A person, I have to trust the unknown."

So be prepared, Austin. This is no drag show. This is no cheeky send-up of show-biz divas in concert, à la Liza With a Z. This is Jomama talking, and singing, and opening up to you, and getting you to open up to the people around you. That agenda Jones mentioned? It's about "opening up a space where we can be more vulnerable and present with each other." Most people lean on alcohol to get them to where they can easily express their emotional life or desires, but everything Jomama does is geared toward getting us to that place without taking anything. It's not that she's "a granny or a teetotaler," says Jones. She doesn't care if you drink or not. It's just not Jomama's way.

Jones, however, doesn't mind describing his alter ego in intoxicating terms: "She's a martini with a twist of lemon, because she's tall, she's live, she's clear, and she has a little bit of pinch and a little bit of sun."

Jomama Jones: Radiate runs July 5-13, Thursday-Saturday, 8pm; additional show Friday, July 12, 10:30pm, at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. For more information, visit www.salvagevanguard.org.