She has faith in latest album

In the early summer of 2005, Rickie Lee Jones walked into a painter's studio in an industrial section of Culver City, Calif., that had been converted into a makeshift recording studio. Jones's best friend, author and photographer Lee Cantelon, had invited her to recite a passage for a spoken-word recording of his book, "The Words," which organizes the words of Jesus Christ into a simple text. After selecting a chapter, Jones stepped to the microphone, read a few sentences, and stopped.

"I didn't like the sound of my voice," Jones says. " 'This isn't going to work for me,' " she told Cantelon and the album's coproducer, Peter Atanasoff. Jones wanted to sing her part. She could use the book as a reference, improvising her own lyrics based on Jesus' words. And she would do it right then and there. Cantelon suggested that she spend some time with the instrumental track, which had already been recorded, to get a feel for the melody and chord changes. Jones listened to 20 seconds of it, and said she was ready.

Book in hand, raw guitars coming through her headphones, Jones started to sing. "For a thousand years I lay upon Lake Victoria, I was winged and many-colored and nobody knew my name," she began. Three and a half minutes later, the "Words" project had been turned upside down and Rickie Lee Jones had the opening track -- recorded on a laptop computer and left untouched -- for "The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard," an album she had no idea she was going to make.

"We were stunned," says Cantelon.

"It was thrilling," says Jones, on the phone from her horse farm in Agoura Hills, 20 miles west of Los Angeles. "For a long time everything's been like molasses, getting slower and slower and slower." Jones's last album of original songs was 2003's politically charged "The Evening of My Best Day," and that arrived six years after ambient, trip-hoppy "Ghostyhead." "I've been using everything I have but not finding a true point of inspiration. I think it happened by being a part of something with other people."

Jones, Cantelon, and Atanasoff recorded six more songs together in Culver City, and then due to scheduling conflicts the project was put on hold for half a year. Jones turned to Rob Schnapf, a producer known for his work with Beck and Elliott Smith, to finish the album, and seven more tracks -- including the dark, buoyant first single, "Falling Up," and "I Was There," an eight- minute -plus stream-of-consciousness improv set in Jerusalem and Hollywood -- were laid to tape in professional studios, using the same musicians and the same source material. New West, Jones's fourth label in the past 10 years, will release the album on Feb. 6. She performs at Sanders Theatre Feb. 17.

Like her friend Cantelon -- whose original purpose in publishing "The Words" was to present Jesus' ideas outside the context of the church -- Jones became taken with the prospect of "leveling the playing field a bit."

"Christ's message has been hijacked by politics and a kind of person that, in my humble opinion, uses Christianity as a club, as a conformity issue," says Jones. "They don't seem nearly as interested in forgiveness or enlightenment as they are in voting, and that drives a lot of smart, good-thinking people away. I'd like to encourage people on their own to see what the rabbi had to say."

As a girl, Jones, 52, attended Sunday services with her family at a Catholic church but wasn't baptized and has never been to confession. Her 18-year-old daughter, Charlotte, Jones says, recoiled from churches "like Regan in 'The Exorcist.' " While Jones disdains what she sees as the politicization of religion by America's right wing , she describes her relationship with Jesus as "romantic."

The new music is nothing of the sort. Jones -- who's best known for her early, streetwise pop tunes like "Chuck E.'s in Love" and "The Last Chance Texaco" and several idiosyncratic standards collections -- is putting out her first rock record. Languid and tough, it evokes the Velvet Underground and Neil Young. New West is a prestigious roots-leaning label, home to Dwight Yoakam, Drive-By Truckers, and John Hiatt, but according to the label's president, Cameron Strang, who signed Jones last summer, she's typical of his roster in one fundamental way.

"Rickie's a real artist," says Strang. He says that it's impossible to anticipate if the album's spiritual themes will make "The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard" a difficult sell. "Our main objective is to get as many people to give it a chance as possible."

That's been a challenge for Jones. She became a star in 1979 when she burst on the scene with her self-titled debut (Jones won the Grammy for best new artist that year), but a restless creative spirit and mercurial genre-hopping has relegated Jones to cult-hero status. By her own estimation, Jones's fan base has dwindled to a core audience of roughly 75,000.

"When I started doing the jazz and cover tunes after the singer-songwriter thing, it was confusing for people," Jones says. "I blurred my image, and there's a price to pay. And without a powerful machine to market me, my image has become more and more obscure."

It's been 10 years since Jones was on a major label, and during that time a new generation of gifted female singer-songwriters -- Beth Orton, Cat Power, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor -- has emerged. An album inspired by the words of Jesus Christ doesn't seem like the most obvious route back to commercial relevance. David Ginsburg, program director at WBOS, one of two local stations New West is targeting, says that "it's just not a mass appeal record." But Jones says the positive response so far has been "inexplicable." During a recent concert at the Wilshire Theatre in Los Angeles, the audience was on its feet shouting during the new songs -- something Cantelon believes is a visceral reaction to the truthfulness of Jones's performance.

"They're statements from the heart," he says of the songs, "and people sense that."

Jones is circumspect, and full of hope.

"I'm always at the brink of a big adventure when the records come out and always disappointed when the adventure doesn't take place with the public at large," Jones says. "But I shine here. In this setting I'm quick and smart and young. Other people may have stolen my mojo, but I'm here to take it back. That's my prayer."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/music/blog.