Lead singer of the Stereophonics, still filling stadiums after 20-plus years, Kelly Jones is stepping out on his own for a solo tour this month. He chats to Carl Marsh.
You’ve said that this solo tour of yours is about overcoming things, and moving on from obstacles and building strength from that. Would you care to elaborate?
Well, a bunch of the songs that I tend to play in the solo shows are particular songs that got me through different things in my life over the past 22 years. There are about 150 songs that I’ve written, and when you play Stereophonics shows, you play 27 or 28 songs – a lot of which are the big radio songs that people are familiar with – but songwriting is my outlet to get me through whatever is going on in my life, and some of those songs on the records never really get an airing really.
It’s not just like an acoustic set: I’ve got a girl playing the drums and another girl on the violin who plays a bit of piano. There is also Gavin Fitzjohn from Cardiff who has played with Paolo Nutini and Manic Street Preachers, he is playing a bit of trumpet, and guitar, and some bass, so it’s quite a dynamic show really. It’s really kind of raucous at some moments and very pretty and beautiful at other moments. It’s just a different kind of experience, stepping outside my Stereophonics zone.
What has prepared you best for life in Stereophonics?
I guess I’ve put a lot of hours in, but it’s the songs, I suppose, that are the main thing for me. All I ever wanted to achieve was to leave behind an excellent catalogue of music, as all the other stuff kinda comes and goes – the magazines, all the people knowing who you are – that stuff is alright when you’re starting out, but for me it’s always been about making the music.
I get a buzz out of doing the recordings, and I love playing live. I like to challenge myself to do different things with every album, to make it different than the last. Sometimes people come with you, sometimes they don’t: occasionally, new kids discover the band, and you’ll get 15-year-old kids in the front row along with people that have been following the band for 20-odd years. It’s usually 50/50 male/female too.
When did you realise the creative possibilities that music could offer to you?
I was in a band from about 12 or 13, just playing covers, and Stuart [Cable] was with me in the band. He was about four years older than me. Then when I got to art college, I started writing mini-screenplays as I was in film school and that span over into lyric writing. I guess from about 17 or 18, I started seeing that storytelling could work within the music, and that’s when I found my own niche. It was about what I wanted to say.
Like a storyline then, is that the secret to putting on a good show?
I think with a show, people pay their money, and they want to go for a good night out – they want a release, they want to forget their own life for two hours – so we try to take them on a journey with good music, which is the big songs that they’re all familiar with. We don’t ever shy away from playing all that, we are proud of our catalogue.
There is a percentage of our set where we pick some of our favourites as well, and thankfully we’ve had some big songs on every record, so we’re not always harking back to the 90s – we’ve maintained a good collection of songs up until the present day. That is the key to it, which is to give the audience a good night out.
Kelly Jones, Don’t Let the Devil Take Another Day – A Solo Tour, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Sat 8 June. Tickets: from £42 (sold out – check box office for returns). Info: 029 2087 8444 / stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk