Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones: ‘A lot of people can sing but very few can move you’

For those not in the know, it’s an entertainment fly-on-the-wall documentary that traces the fortunes of the football club under its new owners, the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. In a fitting Hollywood ending, Wrexham won promotion to the English football league in April. That will feature in the show’s second season.

“We were sharing a dressing room next to the Declan Swans,” Jones says, with a hearty laugh. “That was something else.” The comedy band from Wrexham have become stars in their own right thanks to the association with the show.

Although his main band, Stereophonics, join Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey as Wales’s biggest music exports and have long played football stadiums and big crowds — they headlined Slane, after all — playing such venues with new musicians is outside his comfort zone. The support slots at the Racecourse Ground with Kings of Leon went well, though. Jones has long mastered the art of getting audiences on side.

His folk and Americana-influenced band, Far From Saints, don’t sound much like Stereophonics, although Jones’ vocals are instantly discernible. The group is, essentially, a trio with Patty Lynn and Dwight Baker of the band the Wind and the Wave, from Austin, Texas. The band supported Stereophonics on tour in 2011 and made a lasting impression.

“I’d always like Patty’s voice,” he says, “and I really like their first record, From the Wreckage. We didn’t see each other for eight years, but when I went on a little holiday with my kids, and we were in a hire car with a couple of CDs, that’s one of the albums we kept playing.

“I remember the kids singing in the back and it brought me back to how good the songs are. When I was going to do my solo tour [in 2019] to warm up the crowd, I thought Patty and Dwight would be perfect.”

The support slot soon led to much more. “Watching them from the side of the stage,” he recalls, “I thought, there are a lot of people who can sing in the world, but very few who can move you — and Patty’s voice really does that to me. We did a couple of Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks covers for a laugh. They worked really well and I thought I’d love to do some writing — which I’d never done with anyone else — so we wrote a couple of songs and one thing led to another…”

Ever productive, Jones wrote with the duo over the course of 20 dates on the road. The trio’s self-titled debut album appears on Friday and he says the process of making it was unlike anything else he has done.

“What usually happens is I write the songs and bring them in and the boys [Stereophonics band mates Richard Jones, Adam Zindani and Jamie Morrison] jump on them and then we put the records out. That’s been my role in the band — the chief songwriter since the whole thing kicked off. But this time it was nice to be in a room where I’d write a couple of lines or Patty or Dwight would, so someone would send the others a guitar lick.

“The whole thing was very spontaneous and very easy in many ways. The frame of mind that Patty and I were in at the time — going through some stuff that was a quite connected — was very of the moment.”

And, he adds, the extracurricular work had another bonus. “It was the perfect distraction from the nerves of doing a solo show.” While Jones has long been a consummate frontman, the business of playing his own material in more intimate settings proved daunting. “It meant doing something else for a few hours during the day without having to think about that night.”

Jones is a youthful looking 48 and has been making music since his late teens. The first Stereophonics album was released in 1997 and the band were thrust into the limelight on the back of early songs such as Local Boy in the Photograph. There have been 12 albums — “pretty much one every two years” — and two solo albums, although the last of those, Don’t Let the Devil Take Another Day, was a collection of low-key reworkings of songs from his main band.

He admits to a restless quality, always wanting to be working, and says it’s probably down to a non-nonsense background that placed a considerable value on making the most of talent.

Stereophonics, he insists, will continue to be his main concern, and adds that, far from damaging the band, his work with Far From Saints will likely only enhance it. There’s another solo album too, set for release early next year.

It began life in a curious way. “A friend of mine was getting rid of an old piano, an upright thing, and he dropped it to my house for a bit. I’d write a bit on it at night when my kids were in bed. I’m not a great piano player at all — I can only play my own songs — but I ended up writing about six or seven songs on it,” he says.

He soon realised that they were songs better suited to his own work rather than Stereophonics. “I wanted to find a place that was very quiet, very secluded. A little bit how my village felt as a kid.”

Having lived in London for over 20 years, he knew he would have to up sticks.

“I found a place in the north of Norway. There was a bus terminus and then a mountain and there was nowhere else to go. It was like a studio on the edge of the world — every window you looked out of there was water. I just went there with my backpack and with my mate, Phil, who’s a [sound] engineer and my guitar tech and I went over there for eight days and I made a record in six-and-a-half.

“It is quite a beautiful piece of work,” he says. “It’s being mixed right now. It’s mainly me and a piano live and a couple of songs where I’ve got a 10-piece little orchestra and then there are some noises and textures that I added.”

He jokes that he is rarely not working and he speaks to Review via Zoom from his London studio. Unlike some musicians who feel cowed by mixing desks and dampened sound rooms, the studio is an environment where he seems to enjoy spending time.

But, he insists, he tries to combine the business of being a big-name musician with that of parenthood and chats animatedly about the pleasures of getting to do that very un-rock like pursuit, the school run. With four children, three girls and a boy, aged between 18 and three, it’s quite a job.

“I carve out the brain space when I can,” he says. “I get up at 6 o’clock to do what I have to do [from a creative point of view] before Marley [his youngest] arrives in and hits me over the head with an Incredible Hulk toy. Being a parent is a balancing act. I find it quite hard to be selfish, but there are times where you have to be, because otherwise you’d never get anything done. But anyone who knows me will know I probably spread myself too thin and the kids always come first.”

Far from Saints release their self-titled debut album on Friday, June 16