Rick Jones & Valerie Neale
More than just music
Husband & Wife. Mutual Muses. Equal Opportunity Convention Busters. Rick Jones and Valerie Neale proved time and time again that some marriages are just plain music in the making.
The common link is music. Valerie studied piano as a child and Rick started singing when he was six. She continued to play for fun, but went onto other things. By age eighteen, Rick had moved from his native Canada and was singing publicly in cafes and bars in England and in plays as a young actor. They met in London when she was doing research work in Art History, and he was a children’s TV presenter for the BBC and part of a popular British country rock band “Mealticket”. Rick also was the puppeteer in a children’s program called ”Fingerbobs” which became a cult classic in England. You check out an episode by visiting our Links page. He wrote musicals too, and they moved to California in 1981, when one of his musicals “Captain Crash versus the Zorg Women, Chapters 5 and 6” found a theater in Hollywood.
Rick has always been a songwriter. He released several solo albums in the 70s, and wrote most of the songs for the “Mealticket” albums (visit Rick's Wikipedia entries). It took Valerie a little longer to grow into the singer-songwriter role, but several years ago, Rick bought her a left-handed guitar for her birthday, and she was hooked. They have been singing and playing together ever since, in coffee bars, house concerts and special events.
For this couple, life is from the heart – and from the hip. The lyrics are more than observations; they make you feel like you were there; that it should have happened to you. (And with any luck, it could.)
