JW-Jones - Everything Now

He’s an engaging little fella, JW-Jones.  The fresh-faced Canadian is a talented songwriter, with a zinging guitar style that reflects his study of blues greats.  And these traits are well to the fore on his latest album Everything Now.
‘Keeping Me Up’, for example, is a neat little tune with the protagonist relating the tale of a sleepless night listening to his partner’s enigmatic sleep-talking.  It comes dressed in some crunchy guitar over smacking drums and bopping bass, with some satisfyingly squelchy guitar

JW-Jones goes happily double denim

Pic by Mark Maryanovich

breaks as a bonus.  The following ‘Papa’s In The Pen’ is also good stuff, but in a contrasting vein, as Jones draws on his own troubled childhood – as he did with ‘Who I Am’ on his 2017 High Temperature outing - to describe parents who are “Not your average father figure, not your average heroine”, set to broody backing that opens in cinematic, Morrisons-ish fashion before settling into off-kilter riffing and rumbling bass.  Jones delivers the vocal with the conviction you’d expect, and his squealing lead guitar is equally characterful.
His way with a personal story is also evident on ‘When You Left’, a convincing pen picture of the feel of a suddenly empty house, inspired by the death of Jones’ mother.  The words and music combine to conjure up the atmosphere, with mournful commentary from the Texas Horns adding to the vibe, while Jones adds some pin-sharp, pinging guitar.  The chorus could be more impactful though, and in fact as intriguing and well played as several of these songs are, they’re often lacking a bit in the hook department.
Nevertheless, the guest appearance by Jimmie Vaughan on the tootling, toe-tapping blues of ‘Take Your Time’ is worth the admission.  It’s lightweight but pleasant, with Vaughan delivering a brittle, jangling solo before he and Jones get down to trading some licks in an entertaining, keep-you-guessing fashion.  ‘To Tell You The Truth (I Lied)’ is a slow blues that feels like it’s arrived from yesteryear via some time tunnel, but works well with its minimal approach on the opening verse, all chiming guitar and trills of piano and organ courtesy of producer and multi-instrumentalist Gordie Johnson.  It comes with another interesting lyric, a warped, sparse solo from Jones, and some sweeping, romantic strings to increase the sense of drama towards the end.
Elsewhere though, the generally sunny vibe sometimes leans a bit too far towards airy blue-eyed soul, as on ‘My Luck’, its virtual sequel ‘It’s Not Raining In LA’ (which gains most of its interest from some clever allusions to ‘California Dreaming’), and the rather too-sweet-to-be-wholesome ‘I Choose You’.
The closing ‘Good To Be True’ rather sums things up.  There’s a snappy, perky vibe once again, and lots of buzzing, fuzzing guitar tones to pique the interest, and some muscle is flexed along the way to underpin an all too brief exchange of tasty guitar between Jones and Gordie Johnson.  But when you get down to it, the song lacks the grabber of a hook that it really needs.
Everything Now is a likeable album, with good musicianship to appreciate all round, not least the nimble fretwork of JW-Jones, who also underlines his storytelling credentials on the best songs here.  But on a few tunes there’s just a bit too much of a lightly funky, happy-go-lucky kinda thing going on - which admittedly suits Jones' light, breezy voice - when a few more sharp angles wouldn’t go amiss.  Maybe next time JW-Jones will pull out all the stops he’s capable of.
 
Everything Now is out now on Solid Blues Records, distributed by Stony Plain.

JW-Jones - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 3 December 2017

JW-Jones knows his onions, as they probably never say in his hometown of Ottawa.  Spruce looking in his shirt and tie, in a manner Muddy and the Wolf would have approved of, he and his band display an intuition for the blues, in numerous hues and shades, that guarantees a good night out.

They kick off with the energetic Lonnie Mack instrumental ‘Wham’, its influence on SRV clear, before getting into a brace of originals from his latest album High Temperature.  On the title track he shows off his ability to coax delightfully wonky notes from his gold top Les

JW-Jones - covers plenty of blues bases

Paul, before taking ‘Price You Pay’, and kicking its ass in a live setting by applying some very Stones-like grit to the riff.

Having introduced his own style, he and his compadres then apply themselves to some serious workouts around covers of a couple of Kings, namely BB and Albert. On the former he capitalises on some well jazzy bass and drums from Laura Greenberg and Will Laurin respectively, displaying effortlessly good tone with both finger picking and a pick, and conjuring up a fiery, swinging solo.  On the latter – ‘You’re Gonna Need Me’, I reckon – he then reinforces his command of the masters with a fluid and at times sotto voce (ie quiet, folks) solo in the midst of a chunky sound aided by a great bass groove from Greenberg.

‘Watch Your Step’ is a slice of rock’n’roll over a syncopated rhythm and heavy, rumbling bass, with Laurin and Greenberg, respectively, well in synch.  But as the set wears on Jones’ command of the genre becomes steadily more apparent, whether it be the imaginative solo he revs up to big proportions on a Charlie Musselwhite and Ben Harper, the slinkiness of ‘Some Mistakes’, or the heaviness he brings to Buddy Guy’s ‘Tell Me What’s Inside Of You’.  Jones covered the latter on his 2014 Belmont Boulevard, and the heaviness is entirely appropriate given the extent to which Buddy drew on the riff from Freddie King’s ‘Going Down’, but he gives it his own spin here with some more interesting guitar wrangling over bubbly, funky bass from Greenberg.

As the set progresses they loosen it up more, with ‘Magic West Side Boogie’ developing from a spangly intro into some seriously chug-along boogie and a touch of Dick Dale, while Laura Greenberg’s bass skills become steadily more evident.  Little wonder that the lady is on the end of a Maple Blues Award nomination.  Jones, meanwhile, takes the opportunity to segue into a ‘Voodoo Chile’ orientated solo and some more Jimi style avenues, conjuring up some shimmering sounds and good use of harmonics, before returning explosively to the tune at hound.

‘French Toast’ is an instrumental that allows them to have some fun, swapping instrumental

Laura Greenberg and JW-Jones - who plays what around here?

parts around, with Jones on drums and Greenberg striking a suitably rock chick pose on guitar in between paying homage to great rock riffs and even TV themes we have loved, to the evident delight of some of the punters.  Some behind the heads guitar playing from both Jones and Greenberg

They encore with the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ ‘Rock With Me Tonight’, on which Jones again offers up some tasteful playing to round off proceedings, following on from an impressive bass solo from Greenberg.

JW-Jones is a real student of the blues, and it’s apparent in the variety and wit of his guitar work.  He and his band put on a seriously good show.  Personally I think that if he played some more of his own songs towards the end instead of doing a bit of a blues-rock jukebox, then it would be even better.  But that’s just my preference – there were plenty in this crowd who lapped up Jones' performance regardless.

Support comes in the form of local two piece outfit Dixie Fried, with guitarist/vocalist Craig Lamie and drummer John Murphy going on a tour of North Mississippi hill country blues.  Lamie produces some satisfying guitar passages, picking bass notes with his thumb while playing over drumming from Murphy that’s often minimal.

There’s a touch of the White Stripes ‘getting away with it’ philosophy as they get into a Junior Kimbrough-referenced song with a Celtic lyrical twist, called ‘That Old Black And White’, which has nice rippling guitar over a simple kick drum beat.  Occasionally things feel a little bit stiff, reminiscent of the adage “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”  But on the whole Dixie Fried show a commendable readiness to explore their very own slipping and sliding Mississippi vocation, with some real drive and grit on their set closer – and enough cowbell to make a hit of ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’.

Read the exclusive Blues Enthused interview with JW-Jones here.
And read the review of his latest album High Temperature here.

   

Who I Am - Blues Enthused gets the lowdown on JW-Jones

It’s Friday, and it’s 6pm – at least it is where I am, in Britain.  But JW-Jones is in Ottawa, five hours behind me, when I make the pre-arranged call to catch up with him ahead of his upcoming British tour, which kicks off on 23 November at Worthing Pavilion.  He’s not long back home after six weeks of touring in Canada and the States, but luckily he’s got his time zones straight, and is ready to chat about his latest album, about the recording process, about songwriting, guitar playing, and – well, actually, he seems happy to chat away amiably about anything.

Your new album High Temperature (reviewed here) was produced by Colin Linden, a Canadian like you who’s won Juno Awards, but who is based in Nashville.  What did he particularly bring to the recording of the album?

Well, the whole thing with Colin was getting a real organic approach to it, and an organic sound.  So one thing that was interesting about his process was that he just wanted to go in the room, and just start playing the tunes and kind of see how they developed from there.  So there were no rehearsals or anything like that, we just had a general outline for each tune, and just went in and started playing, and the way it happened is the way it happened. One of the great things about working with him is that he had the right team in there, and aside from that he also pushed me in different directions with the vocals, and trying out different melodies that I wasn’t familiar with, and I thought all that was really, really great.

JW-Jones - "Reach for the sky!"

You recorded the album in Nashville, and sometimes when I hear about people writing and recording in Nashville, the end result – sometimes – can be a bit middle of the road, a bit generic.  But you’ve certainly managed to avoid that - the songs on the album are quite varied in style.  Is that something you were deliberately aiming for?

You know, when I was writing the record the whole goal for me was just to have a really great collection of songs, and not think too much about how many shuffles were on the record, or if every song sounded like, you know, 1955 Chess Records blues.  And just to concentrate on writing songs the way they came out, and that’s why it has a few different flavours in there.  But I think what ties it all together is that it’s all roots music, and, you know, my voice and my guitar playing, so I feel like that’s what, kind of, is the glue to the whole project, plus the band is the same on almost every track too.  So, yeah, I’d say the goal was just to have a great collection of songs, and because they came out sounding a little different than typical blues records, then I think that’s a good thing.

Were you writing with different co-writers on the album?

All of the songs that I contributed to this record were co-written with Dick Cooper of the Cooper Brothers, here in Ottawa.  They had a great touring career in the Seventies, and Dick Cooper is really an incredibly great songwriter.  So I had a lot of these ideas, and some lines and some choruses down, and we got together and he brought the magic to the table, I guess you could say!

The album actually reminds me a little bit of Robben Ford’s album from a couple of years ago, Into The Sun, with that variety in the songwriting.  In fact just before I phoned I dug out a magazine interview with him, where he talked about wanting people to step up to the challenge of songwriting as a craft, and go beyond writing in simple categories like blues or country.  What’s your approach to it?

Well, I haven’t heard his particular record, but now that you mention it I should definitely go and find it.  But I think it’s true that, you know, it’s how you say it, and it’s also – to me it’s a bunch of different things.  There’s the subject matter, because there are only so many ways you can say “my baby left me”, you know?  So you have to find a different way around, you have to find a way that’s – you know, why would she leave you?  Or what happened to her, how can you be blamed for that? You know, take a different approach instead of just pointing the finger.  One of the songs on the record, ‘Same Mistakes’, what I thought was really cool and different about that song is that I was saying “She makes the same mistakes, over and over, and I know ‘cause I’m one of them” – I’m one of the mistakes.

Yeah, it’s a great line . . .

I truly felt that, and that song is a true story, that’s absolutely from the heart.  But what I do is I collect different ideas from lyrics, and subject matter, and song lines and things like that on one side.  And then on the other side I’m always collecting different chord changes, and melodic ideas, and riffs and things like that.  And then I sit down every so often and try to marry them up, and say, you know, what guitar vibe is going to work best with this subject

JW gets his twang 

matter, and what chord changes are going to work best?  And then I put them together, rather than waking up one day and just writing an entire song all from scratch.

This is a bit of a playful question really.  There are country tinges to some of the songs, like ‘Away Too Long’ and ‘Leave Me Out’.  I was reminded of a song by Shemekia Copeland on which she sings “Country music’s just the blues with a twang.”  What’s your take on that?

[Laughs]  Absolutely!  I mean, I’ve heard Jimmie Vaughan say that too, you know.  He said country, blues, rock’n’roll – it’s all the same thing.  It really, really is the same thing.  It’s just, how hard are you hitting the drums, how aggressive are you being with the vocal and the guitar – I mean, you listen to some Western Swing and then some Bebop, and it’s virtually the same thing.  But yeah, the twang thing is interesting too, because that wasn’t really on purpose.  And that’s kind of the direction that a lot of people are talking about with this record, they’re saying “Oh, this album’s got some country twang to it.”  That could well be that I’m into country, and even some of the new country stuff, and it just came out that way.  But you mentioned ‘Away Too Long’, and that to me is a blues shuffle, and it just so happens that it’s got a certain bit of twang to the harmonies with the vocals, and I think that makes it feel a little bit differently.

The song ‘Who I Am’ is a very meaningful story of growing up in challenging circumstances.  Was that autobiographical to some degree?

It’s one hundred per cent autobiographical.  On the last record, Belmont Boulevard, we had Tom Hambridge producing it, and what Tom did for me on that record was he said, “I want you to dig deeper on the songwriting.  I want you to talk about where you come from.”  And no other producer had ever said that to me in those words.  So that in itself challenged me, and I ended up telling him a bit about my story growing up, and he said “Man, we have to write about this.  So we’re going to do that together in the studio.”  And then when I got down there we did it, and man, some of those lines in ‘Cocaine Boy’ made me feel very uncomfortable at first, because they were so real, and so raw.  And I thought, I don’t want people to know how my parents were when I was growing up, and things like that, because I thought it might affect my career negatively.  So I’d been trying to put that aside for so long, that when he influenced me to do that song it made me feel liberated, and it changed everything.  And when that song came out, and people were responding to it, I thought, “Man, this is great.”  So on this record, you mentioned the song ‘Who I Am’, it’s a bit of a continuation of the same trend of saying, “Where did I really come from?”  You know, people get some pretty crazy ideas when they see me in a suit and tie, playing a Fender guitar, they think I came from money or something like that, when it couldn’t be farther from the truth.  So writing a song like that is liberating, and it was special, and I feel good about it now.  And I’m happy about where I am, and I can tell my story.

On the other hand ‘Where Do You Think I Was’ is a really ironic and funny tale of how glamorous people think the life of a touring musician must be.  Was that inspired by a particular individual’s notions of what you get up to, or is it a perception you come across more widely from non-musicians?

Well actually, to be honest, that’s more directed at my ex-girlfriend! [laughs]  There were a few instances where she was kind of accusing me, saying “Why didn’t you call me before you went to sleep?”  Or, “What happened between this hour and this hour?  You disappeared.”  And I used to say, “Where do you think I was?”  And then I came up with all these ridiculous ideas about where do you think I actually was, and then made that song just kind of a tongue in cheek story about all the possibilities.  And we made a music video for that in Las Vegas as well, which was pretty fun, so you should check that out on YouTube.

The guitar work on the album is varied too – you dash off solos in a range of styles, while always retaining your own sound.  And I was just reading some of your bio earlier on, and you’ve worked with some big names in the past – Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist Hubert Sumlin, for example, on your album Midnight Memphis Sun.  Who are

JW-Jones and some random guy - oh, wait . . .

your influences when it comes to guitar?

Well, you mentioned Hubert, he’s definitely one of the big influences.  But I’d say my list is probably like many you’ve heard, you know - BB King, T-Bone Walker, Albert Collins, Freddie King, Albert King.  A big one for me are some of the younger generation compared to those guys, like Jimmie Vaughan, and Anson Funderburgh, Little Charlie Baty, Junior Watson, Rick Holmstrom.  I mean all of these guys bring different sounds.  I mean, you think about the difference between Little Charlie and  Anson Funderburgh, or the difference between Junior Watson and someone like Rick Holmstrom, they all sound completely different, and have totally different styles, and I drew from all of them, in different ways, and for different reasons.  But I love them all so much, and I just wouldn’t be the player that I am today without having studied all of those guys.

It’s interesting you talking about the variations in style between quite a few people, because the blues is often described as quite a simple framework – that might be part of its charm I suppose.  But it’s also quite narrow, in a sense.  What do you do to try and explore ways of keeping your playing fresh?

Well, whenever I think about blues guitar – I teach blues guitar at home, when I’m not out on tour – one of the things I always come back to is: learn the rules – meaning, study the masters - and then break them.  Meaning, if you want to start adding effects, and playing faster, and listening to guys like Joe Bonamassa, that’s great, but you’ve got to learn where all this came from to begin with.  Because if you do that, that itself is a lifelong process.  You will never get through all of Lightning Hopkins, Eddie Taylor, and then all the Kings and all those guys – you’ll just never get through it.  So if you keep listening, and you keep picking up on the little tiny subtleties then you’ll realise how your playing can immediately sound different from what’s already out there.  And that’s something that’s really important to me, is that people recognise what I’m doing is coming from a deeper source, and it’s not just learning scales and running through them like so many blues rock players do these days.

You worked with quite a few session musicians on this album.  Did they bring

"Hang on - are we recording this?"

anything in particular to the approach?  You talked about the way that you approached it with Colin Linden was “Let’s just play the songs”.  So had you even met these guys before you went in the studio?

No, we met that day. [Laughs]  That’s the kind of crazy thing about Nashville, and going down there, is that they’re hired guns, right?  They’re there to play, and as soon as they arrive the producer generally hands out some framework for each song, and it’s written in what they call the ‘Nashville number system’ – so that’s where you get the terms ‘one – four – five’ and stuff like that.  So everyone’s got their forms, and then Colin will pick up an acoustic guitar, and just strum through it and say, “So we’re going for this,” and you can try this and you can try that.  But for the most part we just went in and sat down, and started playing.  And you know, one of the funny things about doing it that way is, on the opening track ‘Price You Pay’, what you’re hearing there, the very first thing you hear on the album, is – we all just start playing, and I didn’t even have my guitar picked up yet.  So Colin plays that first little riff with his guitar, and then all of a sudden the piano comes in and does a little tinkle thing, then all of a sudden there’s a shaker, and then you hear the bass does a riff, and then I play a riff on the lead guitar, and then Colin just keeps playing the rhythm – and I didn’t even know we were recording yet!  I literally thought, “Okay, this is the run through,” and then as they kept going and didn’t stop, I looked around and I realised, “I’m the only one here that doesn’t know we’re recording – I guess I’d better start paying attention!”  [Laughs]  And that became the final take - it was incredible.

So, really organic, and they’re presumably hearing this from their own perspective.  Does that trigger the development of the song, or is it really just a couple of takes and bang?

Well, there was no time to develop the songs.  I don’t mean that we didn’t have time to do it, I just mean that we didn’t need the time.  Because like you say, each player comes with their own approach, and then when they start playing then they’re bringing what they instinctually feel is the best thing to do.  So, they’re in that room for a reason, and they’re in that room because someone trusts them and because they’re great.  And there’s nothing that any of those guys did where I thought, “Er, I don’t know about that, we’d better re-do that”, or change the approach completely.  Just everything they did was just the right thing to do at the time.  It was a beautiful thing – I loved working in that way.  I did have my touring band on three of the songs as well, so that brought a different energy to ‘Wham’, ‘High Temperature’, and ‘Midnight Blues’ – that was my touring band, with Laura Greenberg on bass, and they sounded great because we play those songs every night.

As you say, you tour as a trio.  How much of a challenge is it to adapt the songs for a trio format?

Well that’s a really great question, because they’re never going to sound as large as they do on the record.  So whatever they lack in terms of instrumentation, in terms of having a Hammond organ, and a piano and a rhythm guitar, and all that good stuff, we just have to make up for in enthusiasm and energy!  So what happens a lot of the time is the songs end

JW-Jones and band get cheesy

up being a few beats per minute faster, because we need to fill in a bit more space, you know.  But we also take comfort in the differences, so I think it’s a cool thing, and people love them live from what we can gather, so that’s a good thing – and it sure saves to not have to have a five or six piece band on tour.

You’ve got 18 dates coming up in Britain, and I think you’ve only got one day off.  Is that a tough schedule, or is the travel less of a challenge than touring in Canada and the States?

Well, I try to book things that way anywhere I go, because my theory is that there will always be off nights, so if you approach the booking like you don’t want any off nights then it’s still going to happen anyway.  So you just take the holes where you get them, and that’s the end of it.  But with this UK tour - you know it’s so expensive being on tour, and I’m personally investing an absolute ton of money to do this tour, with publicity, and renting venues, and the vehicle, and you know, all the accommodation and stuff – that I’m really taking a bigger risk on this tour than I ever have in my entire career, in any market.  So my goal is just to get over there, work hard, play every single night, sell as many tickets well in advance as possible, and get the word out as much as possible.  And it turns out that that day off you mentioned has been filled now, at the Cock Inn in Leek, on December the 4^th, and that’ll be on the updated tour poster soon.  And yeah, we just look forward to working hard and trying to develop a name there, because if this tour goes well we can keep coming back, and if this tour does not go well then it’s going to make it pretty much impossible to try to keep coming back there.

Last question.  What does the JW stand for – or is it a closely guarded secret?

[Laughs]  It’s fairly closely guarded – no, I’m just kidding!  My full name is Josh Wynne-Jones – a nice Welsh name there for you.  But everyone calls me JW, and that’s just been the way it’s gone for the last couple of decades or so.

So now you know, folks, why his album covers say JW-Jones – he’s a hyphenated Welsh Canadian.  So you could say JW’s coming home with his forthcoming tour.  It’s not the first venture he’s made to these shores, and hopefully it won’t be the last.  Get out there and see him rip it up with his brand of blues, complete with rootsy, adventurous guitar playing.

You can find full details of JW-Jones' UK tour here.

JW-Jones - High Temperature

Got an album you stick on at times, that isn’t so downright irresistible that it has you singing your head off or doing bad dancing around the living room, but it’s still really good?  I don’t mean just okay.  I mean dependably, enjoyably good.  I think High Temperature, the new album from Canadian blues guitarist and singer JW-Jones, may well fall into that category.

JW Jones - knows his way around a guitar

For a start, it features a good range of well-crafted, varied songs.  Produced by Grammy Award winner Colin Linden, also musical director of the TV series Nashville, it’s perhaps natural that its core it has a trio of country-tinged songs. ‘Away Too Long’ leads the way with its bright vibe and twangy guitar licks, followed by ‘Same Mistakes’, with its neat lyrics and nice organ work, and then the more reflective song of resignation ‘Leave Me Out’.  The latter features appealing piano from Kevin McKendree and a dash of lap steel, while Jones nails the storytelling country-style vocal.  He may not have an outstanding voice, but what he’s got he uses well, with personality and the ability to sell a song.

There are more hints of country elsewhere, but it’s not all Nashville-style.  Far from it.  Opener ‘The Price You Pay’ meanders and splutters into life in a distinctly Stonesy fashion, and maintains that mood with bursts of honky tonk piano and a decidedly Keef-like solo. Closer ‘Wham’ is a different proposition, an instrumental that recalls Stevie Ray Vaughan’s ‘Travis Walk’ – a bit of a throwaway ending, in truth, fun though it is.

In between, the title track is a lightweight but enjoyable swinging shuffle, nicely driven along by drummer Bryan Owings, and featuring a great, old-fashioned rock’n’roll solo from Jones, with some jokey asides.  In contrast ‘Who I Am’ is a cool and introspective tale of a tough childhood and the positive influences that resulted in some solid adult values.  Autobiographical or not, it’s well put together lyrically, with reflective yet expansive guitar work played over swells of organ.  ‘Midnight Blues’, meanwhile, is an upbeat piece of bluesy rock’n’roll’n’pop with a catchy riff, and wouldn’t sound out of place on Samantha Fish’s Sixties R’n’B homage Chills & Fever.

Down the stretch there’s more variety in the form of ‘Already Know’, with its Motown-ish soul-pop verses, and Jones trying out a falsetto vocal to good effect.  Better still, ‘Where Do You Think I Was’ is an ironic road song over a Lizzy-style stop-time riff, winking at perceptions of the glamour of touring.

As you should have gathered by now, Jones peppers this material with entertaining guitar work, convincingly firing off licks in a range of different styles – makes me wish I’d caught him live a year or so back, when I last had the chance.  A couple of the thirteen songs may not add much to the equation, but overall High Temperature – naff title by the way – is a good album.  A genuinely, enjoyably good album.

High Temperature is released on Solid Blues Records on 20 October 2017.

JW Jones starts an 18-date UK tour on 23 November 2017 - details here.

You can read Blues Enthused's exclusive November 2017 interview with JW-Jones here.