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STEREOPHONICS FRONT MAN KELLY JONES SPEAKS (A LITTLE) ABOUT THEIR
NEW ALBUM, JUST ENOUGH EDUCATION TO PERFORM
- by Brianne Jordan
Sitting in the living room of his hotel suite, Kelly Jones stares
out the window at the leafless trees below. The Stereophonics frontman
seems wary of strangers: cynicism, as of late, seems to be his strong
point. Slouched in an armchair with his feet on the coffee table, Kelly
smells of disdain throughout the interview. In Toronto to talk up his
band’s third album, Just Enough Education to Perform, Jones is
guarded and tense, the by-products of exhaustion. Bassist Richard Jones
is nursing the flu elsewhere in the building and drummer Stuart Cable
is at home in Wales with his expectant wife, so Kelly Jones is the sole
‘Phonic in the line of fire. And he knows it.
Infamous for endless touring, the ‘Phonics are in
town for an acoustic-based show, due at least in part to Cable’s
impending fatherhood. His absence has been partially filled with the
addition of a touring keyboardist, and second guitarist Scott James,
ex of the now disbanded Montrose Avenue. Education itself is a conscious
step away from the stadium anthems that Jones, Richard Jones (no relation)
and Cable are infamous for in the UK. Instead of straightforward rock
& roll, Just Enough Education to Perform is a softer, folkier album.
Kelly Jones for one is genuinely excited about the evolution of the
band.
“I think it’s a natural progression, really,
from being a three piece... Every time you make a new record you want
to be more musical about things, and we toured [like] that for five
years. When we came home we really couldn’t see how we could keep
getting excited about being a three-piece band, really. We wanted to
go to the studio and record the songs the way I had them in my head.
If it meant adding gospel singers or harmonicas or slide guitar, so
be it.”
When asked about the immediate influences on Education,
Jones cites Stevie Wonder, The Black Crowes and Neil Young, among others.
But the real question is, why change? After winning numerous awards
and producing multi-platinum albums, playing to 50,000 fans at their
own festival in Swansea’s Morfa Stadium, it would seem like commercial
suicide to release folk music to rock enthusiasts. Part of this was
the band’s simple change in the recording process.
“We wanted to make an album where you could actually
hear the session going on. It’s not fed into a computer and edited
to death... On this record, six of the eleven vocals are guide vocals;
they’re quite scruffy and loose... When we used to go into the
studio we used to get afraid when the red light to record goes on. You
[would] just try to play as well as you can, and you forget to actually
play as much as you feel.
”The uncertainty about their impending success seems
to be the most obvious worry. The week before, the Stereophonics played
New York’s Irving Plaza to seven hundred seated fans.
“The record company was very worried about doing
this gig,” Jones says. “When tickets went on sale, they thought
we should play a 150-capacity pub. They just didn’t think we could
sell out the Irving Plaza doing an acoustic show. They all came to the
show and it was sold out.”
Despite everything, Jones remains optimistic about
the new record. “It’s much more a step forward than the first
record... Everyone gets their fifteen minutes, everyone gets their peak.
I don’t think we’ve had our peak yet.”
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Chemical Brothers 
