Tom Jones Happy to be Back in Abu Dhabi

Tom Jones is back in his element. The 73-year-old Welsh legend is happy to be back on stage after completing his second season as a mentor on The Voice UK. He explains watching all these young things perform onstage during the show gave him the itch to get back on the road. “I enjoy doing television work but there is not a lot of singing involved and instead I am listening to other people sing,” he says. “I enjoy that but I love being on stage and doing live shows. I just wanted to get back up there because the reaction you get – there is nothing like it.”

Jones still savours his previous show in the capital in 2010; a sold-out gig at Adnec. He returns Thursday to Yas Island’s du Forum.

“That was a great night and it was one those shows that reminded me that this is why I do it: to entertain people and make them have a good time,” he says. “I am very happy to come back and do it again. Also, the good weather is a plus.”

Jones is promoting his latest album Spirit In The Room. The elegiac new collection, his 40th, is a loose sequel to 2010’s rootsy Praise & Blame, where Jones covers tracks from artists including Paul McCartney (I Want to Come Home), Bob Dylan (When The Deal Goes Down) and Paul Simon (Love and Blessings).

Where Praise & Blame covered traditional gospel, Jones explains the goal with the new record is to pay tribute to songwriters he respects.

“We got songs that other songwriters have written that were not overdone and that have not gone bad,” he says. “Artists like Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon and Tom Waits; these are artists whose work I always liked and this was a great opportunity to work with some of their songs.”

Jones looked for songs that echo his present circumstances. The results shatter the iconic image of the young, virile Jones of five decades ago.

In the acoustic opener, Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song, the first lines are: “Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey / I ache in the places where I used to play.”

It is what it is, Jones says. “I couldn’t sing that song 20 or 30 years ago because it wouldn’t be honest,” he says. “I am 73 years old now and my hair is grey and a lot of my friends are gone. It is definitely a time to reflect.”

Spirit in The Room is not a bunch of covers but evocative reinterpretations, a stellar example being his lush gospel take on The Low Anthem’s lo-fi gem Charlie Darwin.

Jones explains it’s a balance between channeling the song’s spirit and giving it your own spin.

“It’s about staying true to the distinctive tone of your voice,” he says. “You can be influenced by a song but you shouldn’t copy it. Like an actor, you really try to dig up some of those big emotions within you and bring them out and on to the song.”

Jones enjoys giving such advice to young contestants on The Voice UK.

He states that artists’ participation in talent shows is an opportunity to see the music world from a less ego-driven vantage point. “Most of us entertainers are preoccupied by our own careers. So to be given a chance to offer some of my knowledge to other people is a great opportunity, really.”

Tom Jones performs tomorrow night at the du Forum, Yas Island, at 7.30pm. Tickets cost from Dh300. For details, visit www.ticketmaster.com.ae

Saedd Saeed. Sep 17, 2013

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/tom-jones-happy-to-be-back-in-abu-dhabi#ixzz2f9b9agEc

Tom Jones live from WXPN's Non COMMvention at World Cafe Live

Watch Tom's preformance during WXPN's Non-COMMvention at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia on Thursday, May 16, 2013. He performed songs from his new album, Spirit In The Room.

Tom Jones live from WXPN's Non COMMvention at World Cafe Live from WXPN FM on Vimeo.

The World Cafe will be broadcasting this session again on Thursday, June 27th, 2013.

NPR’s World Cafe with host David Dye can be heard on 250 stations nationwide. Fans can find their local station and broadcast time at the following link:

www.npr.org/templates/stations/schedule/?prgId=39

Or worldwide, fans can connect to the WXPN Philadelphia stream at 2pm EST, here:

www.xpn.org/music-artist/xpn-stream

Late in the day of broadcast, NPR will feature the artist's episode as the "Current Show" on the World Cafe website and archive the session for streaming, here:

www.worldcafe.org

Spirit In The Room: A Conversation with Tom Jones - The Huffiungton Post

A Conversation with Tom Jones Mike Ragogna: Tom, welcome.

Tom Jones: Thanks, mate!

MR: You have a new album, Spirit In The Room, on which you take songs by artists such as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and you make them your own. How did you choose this batch?

TJ: Well, first of all, I wanted to do songs by some of my favorite songwriters. Ethan Johns, the man that's producing me, said, "Tell me what songwriters you really like," and we'd listen to stuff that they'd done, and hopefully find one that we could do. That's what we did. We listened to a lot of Leonard Cohen songs, a lot of Paul McCartney, Odetta, Paul Simon, Blind Willie Johnson, Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, Bill Hall Ward, Vera Hall and Low Anthem. It's basically songs by songwriters that I like.

MR: The approach you and your producer took on this was so personal and intimate, and it was recorded in a wooden room.

TJ: Yes, it was done in a place called Real World, which is owned by Peter Gabriel. It's a little place called Box in Wiltshire, and the only reason I had ever heard this name before is because my grandmother had been born there and then moved into Wales. Box is a very small place, but Peter Gabriel has built a studio there, the studio is why we called it Spirit In The Room. I felt something...I don't know whether it was because my grandmother is from there. The studio is a very old building and I began to wonder if my grandmother had ever been in there.

MR: I also have heard that from other artists who have worked there, that there is something special about the "feeling" in that space.

TJ: It's an old place. It's an old building in an old village. It's something more than just a recording studio.

MR: Let's talk about some of these songs, like the couple of Tom Jones originals.

TJ: Yeah. Well, Ethan and I were listening to all these songs, and we kind of used a part of one and a part of another and created some new songs as well. That was interesting.

MR: It takes a good relationship with somebody to comfortably be able to go into a room and start making music.

TJ: That's why I like working with Ethan--you start from scratch. We had to bring the tape machines into the room--that's how funky this room was to record in. It's like being in a rehearsal room somewhere, or somewhere you like to get together with a bunch of musicians that isn't a recording studio. Ethan picked this place on purpose so that we could try things out. Nothing was written in stone and the there were no songs pre-picked like I've done in the past. All this is from scratch. We talked about songs that we like and we tried them out different ways until they sound as real as we can possibly make them, and we go with that.

MR: Tom, let's talk about "Traveling Shoes." How did it come about?

TJ: Well, with "Traveling Shoes," he started off with the riff that is on there. It's like a Chuck Berry type of thing. Then I started singing some of the words to "Traveling Shoes," which I had heard before.

MR: "Tower Of Song" sounds like it came right from your soul.

TJ: To me, it could have been written about me: "My friends are gone and my hair is grey," which is true. "I ache in the places I used to play." [laughs] It's uncanny. There's another verse that gets a little braggy: "I was born like this, I had no choice. I was born with the gift of a golden voice." I thought, "My God, I could have written this," or I wish I had. That's the kind of song we were looking for, songs that felt real coming from me, that could be about me.

MR: You have just come off another collaboration with Ethan, Praise And Blame. That album had the same sort of personal approach. Having recorded together already, I guess you guys old pals just easily jumped into the process.

TJ: Yes. That's exactly what happened. We thought like, "Does lighting strike twice?" We went to the same room in Real World, and that was it. We knew that the feeling we got from the first record was something that we wanted to capture again--different songs, slightly different instrumentation, but the same stripped down, real feeling.

MR: Listening to "When The Deal Goes Down," it captures this organic, old-time carnival setting musically.

TJ: Exactly. When I heard the structure of the song, it was a lot like the songs that I heard in this club in Wales I used to go to. There were a lot of old-timers and old coal miners there that my father had worked with, and they had old songs that they knew from the turn of the century. It reminded me of that, and it sounded like some of those old songs that they would song. It sounded, to me, like a song from a different time, so we tried to record it like that. We tried to get it to sound like it came from the days of the music hall and gas lamps. It was the structure of the song that drove us that way.

MR: Tom, I have to say that personally, this is my favorite collection of songs you've ever recorded. It seems like it's less of the icon Tom Jones and more the man Tom Jones.

TJ: Right. That's what we tried to do. We tried to get a part of me that people hadn't heard on record before. Songs that I didn't get a chance to do when I was younger, and some of the songs fit more now than they would have when I was a young man, you know what I mean? So I think the time is right now for me to do more soul searching. Less performance and more as if I were singing them to myself.

MR: I'm sure at some point you sat and listened to this album from top to bottom. Is there anything that you learned about Tom Jones as you did that?

TJ: Yes, that it's me. It's what I sound like without big arrangements or without anything that you would do if you wanted to make a pop record. That's what I've done in the past with producers who want that. But Ethan said, "Look, why don't we just make a record that we like, that we love doing, that means something to us. Then, hopefully, that will translate to the public and they'll feel that." Luckily, so far, so good.

MR: Do you see yourself doing more albums like this in the future?

TJ: Yes. In fact, I'm going over to London and we're going to try some songs out for about a week, just to tread the water and see. It's a different studio, though. It's in Wiltshire, the same county, but it's another studio that Ethan has found and says is similar to Real World. Some of my favorite musicians are going to be there, and we're just going to try some things out and see where that leads us.

MR: I really wish you good luck with that because this approach fits you so well.

TJ: Well, thanks.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

TJ: First of all, to listen as much as possible to different things. Don't copy. Try not to listen to one person or to one style of music and copy it because then, you're going to sound like somebody else. Try to find yourself, what you really want to do, the way you really want to sing, and stick to that. Be true to yourself because there is only one of you and you've got to be true to yourself. If you're not, then you'll always fake it, and then you won't enjoy it. If you're true to yourself, you'll have a ball. It's a great business to be in if you are yourself,

MR: And what was the best advice that you ever received?

TJ: The first advice was when I was working in a paper mill as a young boy. This old man said to me, "I hear that you can sing." I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, why don't you give it a shot?" I said, "I am, I'm just trying to figure out how to get into it." This old fellow said, "Look, you go out there and give it the best shot you possibly can because you can always come back and do this. You'll kick yourself if you don't." He had been in the British Army and been all over the world and had a great life, and he said, "When you're old like me what you have left are memories. Make sure they're good ones." That's the advice that I took from this old chap, and I still believe that. I would say to any young performer who isn't sure, "Yes. Try it. Give it your best shot, and if you fail, you fail, but at least you tried."

MR: That's beautiful, Tom. I'm so glad that we got to talk again, all the best with the new project, your new studio sessions, and everything.

TJ: Oh, that's all right, mate. Nice talking to you. Thank you.

Tracks: 1. Tower Of Song 2. Bad As Me 3. Traveling Shoes 4. All Blues Hail Mary 5. Lone Pilgrim 6. Hit Or Miss 7. Dimming Of The Day 8. (I Want To) Come Home 9. Love And Blessings 10. Soul Of A Man 11. Just Dropped In 12. Charlie Darwin 13. When The Deal Goes Down

By Mike Ragogna

The Huffington Post

22nd April, 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ragogna/emspirit-in-the-roomem-a_b_3129575.html

Tom Jones shakes his soul with fresh 'Spirit' - LA Times Interview

The new album 'Spirit in the Room' finds pop music's quintessential sex symbol giving his powerful voice over to the tender side.

Tom Jones sits in a cozy booth along one wall of a favorite Beverly Hills restaurant. At 72, his curly hair and neatly manicured mustache and goatee are more salt than pepper after his decision to give up black hair dye a few years ago. But Jones appears dapper as usual, ultra-tan and fit in his smart black suit and dark, ribbed crew-neck shirt.

The era-spanning entertainer is here to talk about his new album, "Spirit in the Room," coming out Tuesday. His latest work continues a career rejuvenation that kicked off in earnest three years ago with "Praise & Blame," a collection produced by Kings of Leon producer Ethan Johns. That album revealed Jones as the powerhouse gospel and soul singer many long felt had been overshadowed by his sexy show-biz hunk public persona.

At the moment, however, he can't help taking in the young folk-pop-jazz singer on the restaurant's small stage as she offers up versions of songs from the early-'70s singer-songwriter bible created by James Taylor and Carole King. He nods approvingly, if not enthusiastically. When the singer delivers one of her own songs, he perks up. "Now that sounds more like it's coming from her — I really like that one."

Had the singer known she was being assessed not only by one of the most recognizable singers of the last half-century but also a vocal coach for "The Voice UK" reality competition series, she understandably might have been intimidated.

But Jones wasn't concerned this night with passing judgment on someone else's career, just reflecting on his own, which exploded in 1965 with the punchy, horn-driven pop-rock hit "It's Not Unusual." The song vaulted the South Wales native (born Thomas Jones Woodward) into the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

Forty-eight years later, in the opening track of "Spirit in the Room," the first words out of the mouth of one of pop music's quintessential sex symbols are, "Well my friends are gone and my hair is gray/ And I ache in the places I used to play/ And I'm crazy for love but I'm not comin' on."

The lyrics are from Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song," and like all the material on "Spirit in the Room," the message is one Jones feels in every pore.

"When I heard it, I thought, 'This song could be written for me.' My friends are gone, and my hair is gray, which is a fact; most of my friends anyway.... There's another line in there: I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice.

"When I hear songs like that, the first thing I think is, 'How can somebody come up with something like that? … They're songs I wish I could write myself. But … if I hear something and I feel like I can put myself into it, then it's my song anyway. The big difference is," he says with that hearty Welsh laugh, "I don't get the royalty payment."

Elsewhere on the album, Jones reaches back as far as Blind Willie Johnson's existentially inquisitive "Soul of a Man" and as far forward as the Low Anthem's "Charlie Darwin," stopping in between with deeply probing songs from Richard Thompson ("Dimming of the Day") and Paul Simon ("Love and Blessings").

He also sings Paul McCartney's "(I Want To) Come Home," which has never been included on a McCartney album. He'll be touring the U.S. more extensively with the new album than he did with "Praise & Blame," including stops May 11 and 12 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.

Producer Johns, who has also worked with Ryan Adams, Emmylou Harris and Rufus Wainwright, surrounds Jones' voice with bare-bones instrumental support, adding subtle but evocative production touches: a gently picked acoustic guitar for "Tower of Song," Pops Staples-like tremolo-drenched electric guitar lines on "Soul of a Man," eerie sustained keyboard notes underpinning "Love and Blessings."

Johns has all but done away with the polished stage orchestra treatments that characterized, and sometimes hampered, Jones' work through the '70s, '80s and '90s.

"Once we sat down and talked about the fact they wanted to make a spirited, honest recording, rather than a produced affair, and we started talking about the kind of music he wanted to do, I thought, this could be great," Johns said. "It looked like a really good opportunity to do something he's never done."

Jones' work with Johns on "Praise & Blame" would do more to stretch his image than the singer's 1999 dance-floor hit "Sexbomb" or his 2008 album with Wyclef Jean. It upped Jones' artistic credibility and elicited comparisons to Johnny Cash's victory lap run with Rick Rubin — with one key difference:

Where Cash's voice was slowly deteriorating over the course of his decade's worth of recording with Rubin — a powerfully moving component of the resulting performances — Jones' double-barreled vocal cords sound every bit as potent as when he was in his 20s and catching part of the wave of British Invasion rock led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

His genuine passion for songs becomes apparent when he starts quoting various lyrics. "There's a song on the 'Praise & Blame' album … 'If I Give My Soul' by Billy Joe Shaver," he said. "It's saying, 'If I give my soul, will my son love me again?' Because the man messes up in his life, playing the devil's music. He succumbed to rock 'n' roll.

"That one again, that could have been me. I could have gone down that road, but I didn't, thank God. I held onto my wife, and I held onto my son," he said referring to his wife of 56 years, Linda, and their only child, Mark Woodward. "He put some great lines in it — 'Please put new boots on my feet' and 'If I give my soul to Jesus, will you stop my hands from shakin'?' Things that I can relate to."

Some of the songs' writers couldn't agree more.

"Tom played me his take on 'All Blues' just after he cut it — though I did not know beforehand that he was aiming to," Joe Henry said of Jones' version of "All Blues Hail Mary." "You can't imagine how strange — and wonderfully so — it is to hear that come off his tongue."

Jones is managed by his son and his son's wife, Donna. Mark also offers his suggestions on song choices, along with Johns.

"Ever since he was a kid he was always suggesting or wondering why I'd do certain things," Jones says, chuckling. "But kids are kids. As you get older, of course, I realized he knew what he was talking about."

The experiment that has turned into at least a trio of albums — Jones was off immediately after the interview to record basic tracks in England for a third CD with Johns — began after Island Records signed Jones to a multi-album deal in 2010.

"You'd have to be kind of deaf and insensitive to music," Johns says, "to not get how astounding his vocal performances are on 'Praise & Blame.' It's so evident he's inhabiting a world that is natural to him, and doing it in a way so few people historically have done it. He has a real facility for it. There aren't that many people around now who can genuinely sing that material the way he does — and it's not just the sound of his voice, but the way he phrases, his swing."

It would seem a natural turn for a singer in his 70s who grew up loving American blues, gospel and R&B, but Jones says bemusedly, "No one ever asked me to do a record like this before.

"I just thought of this: Because I'm of a certain age and I've been around a long time, maybe I can take advantage of that. Maybe I can not have to chase pop music or trends. Maybe now I can just do what I want — as long as people like it. It has to appeal to people, you know what I mean?"

But that's not to say you'll never see Tom Jones, the "What's New Pussycat?" sex symbol, shake his hips ever again.

"I still get fired up by old rock tunes," he said. "I still love to sing 'Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On.' When in doubt: 'Great Balls of Fire.' Those songs still resonate. If I was at a party and there's a piano player there," he says with a mischievous chuckle, "at the end of the night 'Great Balls of Fire' is gonna be in there."

By Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times April 20, 2013

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-tom-jones-shakes-his-soul-with-fresh-spirit-20130421,0,6391523.story

Tom Jones talks blues, roots music and latest album, Spirit In The Room with Music Radar

"Tennessee Ernie Ford doing Catfish Boogie... records like that were the start of rock 'n' roll" Tom Jones talks blues, roots music and his new album, Spirit In The Room “The album reminds me of all the stuff I listened to when I was growing up in Wales," says Tom Jones of Spirit In The Room. It's the veteran singer's second collaboration with producer Ethan Johns, and like their first effort together, 2010's Praise & Blame, the gritty, stripped-down production is light years away from the big and brassy Las Vegas orchestra trappings that attended much of Jones' late '60s and '70s work.

"The music I listened to early on was on the BBC," says Jones. "There was big band music and pop, but occasionally we would hear a more raw sound, and those were the blues records, the gospel records and some country things, too. Tennessee Ernie Ford doing Catfish Boogie and Blackberry Boogie – to me, records like that were the start of rock ‘n’ roll. That stuff caught my ear."

Jones and multi-instrumentalist Johns (the latter is the son of noted producer Glyn Johns) assembled a tight band of musicians (Richard Causon on piano and vintage keyboards, Ian Jennings and Sam Dixon on bass, and drummer Stella Mozgawa) and recorded songs in a loose, leisurely fashion at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Bath, England. "The whole thing was quite different from how we used to make records," says Jones. "We used to do three songs in three hours, with everything prepared beforehand. With Ethan, we went in and recorded from scratch – it was very free and open. And Ethan is a player, too, so I was talking to one of the people who would be making the music."

The songs, a haunting, soul-enlivening blend of Americana and blues-tinged covers by such names as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Blind Willie Johnson, Paul McCartney, Odetta, Paul Simon, Richard Thompson and Tom Waits, among others, (along with the Jones/Johns-penned Travelin' Shoes, based on an original by Vera Hall-Ward) were picked by artist and producer with an eye towards, as Jones puts it, "getting down to the nitty-gritty. You can do that with roots music – there's nothing artificial in it."

Jones' minimalist, unvarnished approach to recording with Johns has been compared to Johnny Cash's late-period work with Rick Rubin, and the singer acknowledges the similarities. "With Johnny Cash, God bless him, he was doing that near the end of his life," says Jones. "The way that they made those records is sort of along the same lines. I think the beauty in what Johnny and Rick Rubin did is that, once you take the bare-bones approach, you get into the lyrics of the songs, the essence, without big arrangements trying to sway you. It really suits me."

Spirit In The Room will be released in the US on 23 April (it came out in the UK last year). On the following pages, Jones discusses the selection and recording process of seven of the album's 13 cuts.

1 Tower Of Song - Originally recorded by Leonard Cohen

“I love Leonard Cohen; he’s an incredible writer. With this song, I connected with it as I would with anything when I hear it and say, ‘Hey, that could be me.’ I’m singing about myself, my experiences, what I feel. That’s what I thought when I heard Tower Of Song. ‘My friends are gone and my hair is gray.’ Well, that’s true: Most of the friends I grew up with are dead, and my hair is gray. Those words really hit home.

“When we recorded our version, Ethan said, 'I want to get this as live as possible.' The microphone was wide open; it wasn’t a directional mic. There’s a great room sound, very ambient, as if you’re walking in on a band rehearsing.

“Of course, you get a good sound when you’re at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. We did both this album and Praise & Blame there. A very natural-sounding room.”

2 (I Want To) Come Home - Originally recorded by Paul McCartney

“I know Paul, and I’ve asked him over the years to write me a song. He’s tried it – he sent me one, but I was recording with Wyclef Jean, and the song he wrote me didn’t fit in with what we were doing. But I’ve always wanted something by Paul McCartney.

“Actually, here’s a story: When he wrote The Long And Winding Road, he gave it to me. I was talking with him one night in London way back, and I said, ‘I’d love for you to write me something, Paul,’ and he said, ‘I will.’ But what happened was, we had a record coming out, and I couldn’t stop it. Paul wanted me to do The Long And Winding Road, but he wanted it to be my next single. So we just couldn’t do it.

“From then, any time I see Paul, I always ask him about a song. Ethan heard this one, and he loved it. Everything that Paul has done is so popular, but this song, which was in a movie, wasn’t that well known.

“I listened to it, and I said, ‘That’s fantastic.’ Again, it applies to me. It could be me, my life. The production is minimal, and it works very well with what we wanted to do with it."

3 Dimming Of The Day - Originally recorded by Richard Thompson

“I’ve sung Richard Thompson songs before; I’ve always thought that he was a powerful writer. When we were getting ready to do this album, I definitely wanted to see what else of his might work. A few other people have recorded Dimming Of The Day, so I listened to what they did to see if I could take it somewhere else, which I think I did.

“We put a very simple beat to it, a natural style of production. The key to this song, and this whole album, is that you don’t want to over-arrange. That gets in the way of the song, gets in the way of what I’m trying to put across. For me to deliver a song like this well, it’s got to sound like I wrote it myself. Getting the right production can make a big difference.”

4 Traveling Shoes - Written by Tom Jones and Ethan Jones, based on Traveling Shoes by Vera Hall Ward

“Ethan and I were listening to some old blues songs, and I said, ‘Why don’t we elaborate on some of these?’ These kinds of songs have been done before, but the trick is to move things around; you take what was originally there in some form and change the pieces here and there. With a lot of blues, it’s hard to even say what the original of something is sometimes. They’ve been done and redone so much, but that’s how they continue to live on.

“I play guitar when I write, if it’s in a certain key. I’m not a great guitar player, but I do enjoy playing, and I know a few keys. Ethan is a far better guitarist than I am, so I let him take over in the recording."

5 Love And Blessings - Originally recorded by Paul Simon

“I know Paul. I’ve listened to a lot of his songs, and I knew that I wanted to do something that he wrote. He’s such a beautiful writer. Ethan played this one for me and asked me what I thought, and I said, ‘I love it.’

“We did it in the same rhythmic pattern as Paul, but we changed it quite a bit in the middle section – he had himself singing with the background vocals. Ethan played a real rock guitar, quite bluesy, which sounds incredible.

“I’m a big guitar fan, especially when it comes to the blues. Ethan is a great blues player. He’s got a bloody wall full of guitars. What's great about him is, you can talk to him about your ideas on how the guitar should go, and he gets it. He’ll try things out until you say, ‘That’s it. That sounds good to me.’”

6 Charlie Darwin - Originally recorded by The Low Anthem

“It’s a message song, but it's not morbid. It’s telling you about the world and the kinds of things that Charles Darwin was warning us about. I’m a historian – I love history – and when I heard the part about the Mayflower coming across, I could see it. These desperate people looking for a better world... It struck a chord in me.

“When I did it, it sounded so real. There’s a big piece in the song – it happens twice – and I said, ‘I hear English church singers in these parts.’ It’s not a gospel choir; it’s an English church choir. So that’s what we did – we went to a church and recorded a choir singing those parts. I had that sound in my mind, and I’m so pleased that we got it across. We kept the song, but we brought it somewhere new.”

7 When The Deal Goes Down - Originally recorded by Bob Dylan

“To me, it had the feeling of an old music hall song. That’s how I heard it. It reminded me of what I used to hear in pubs when I was growing up in Wales. The people would sing songs that were much older than them, things from the First World War and even before that. It had a structure as if it was from a very different time.

“That’s the sound we tried to get. We did it with a old pipe organ – you have to pump it with your feet as you play. That’s Richard Causon playing it, and he sounds incredible.

“I’ve never met Bob Dylan. For some reason, we’ve never been in the same place at the same time. I’ve always been a fan. He’s one of the best lyricists who ever lived. It’s never flowery with Bob Dylan – he says just what he means. On the Praise & Blame album, I did What Good Am I?, which he wrote. You can take a Dylan song and do it your own way, because the way Bob records, he does it very sparse. God bless him.”

By Joe Bosso March 27, 2013

To read the full review at musicradar.com click here

The Guardian Q&A: Tom Jones 'My fancy dress costume of choice? Dick Turpin'

Tom Jones was born Thomas Jones Woodward in south Wales in 1940. He left school at 16 and married his wife Linda a year later, just before the birth of their son Mark. In 1963, he joined his first band and two years later his career took off with It's Not Unusual, his first hit in the UK and US. He went on to have success with the classics Green, Green Grass Of Home and Delilah. He has sold more than 100m records. He was one of the coaches on the TV talent show The Voice. His latest album is Spirit In The Room and next week he releases the single (I Want To) Come Home. Tomorrow he performs at Radio 2 Live In Hyde Park. When were you happiest? When I was able finally to get out of bed when I had TB – after two years.

What is your greatest fear? Being locked up in jail.

What is your earliest memory? I can see the kitchen in the house where I was born – so think I was in a high-chair having some nosh.

Which living person do you most admire, and why? The Queen, for her loyalty and determination.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Bad sense of time – on the clock, not in music!

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Bullying.

What has been your most embarrassing moment? I was in the toilet somewhere on the M1, sitting with my trousers down, and some girls jumped over the door.

What is your most treasured possession? My voice.

What would your super power be? Immortality.

What makes you unhappy? Not being able to sing.

What is your favourite smell? The scent of a woman.

What is your favourite book? The Rise And Fall Of The British Empire, by Lawrence James.

What would be your fancy dress costume of choice? Dick Turpin.

What is the worst thing anyone's said to you? "I heard you were paid off." Early in my career there was a rumour that I was paid not to play at some club – which was not true. It still rankles.

Cat or dog? Dog.

Is it better to give or to receive? By giving you receive – it's a good deal.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party? Winston Churchill, both of my grandfathers – whom I've never met – John Wayne and Boudicca.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Any and many swearwords.

What is the worst job you've done? Twelve-hour shifts in a paper mill.

When did you last cry, and why? When I listened to one of my [The Voice] team members sing.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Being knighted by Her Majesty.

What keeps you awake at night? Knowing I have to get up early.

What song would you like played at your funeral? I haven't given it any thought.

How would you like to be remembered? As a helluva singer.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Don't make decisions when you've had too much to drink.

Where would you most like to be right now? Wherever I am, breathing and well.

Interview: Rosanna Greenstreet guardian.co.uk, Friday 31 August 2012 22.59 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/aug/31/tom-jones-singer?INTCMP=SRCH

Tom Jones and Ronnie Wood interview: Why everyone’s still singing the blues

Tom Jones, Ronnie Wood and other stars tell Neil McCormick about their love of blues ahead of performing at Bluesfest 2012.

In a dingy, crowded rehearsal studio in north London, Sir Tom Jones sits on a high stool, facing his five-piece band as they come to the rumbling end of another song. “Sounds a bit timid to me,” says the grey-haired, grey-bearded, deeply tanned 72-year-old veteran. “Let’s do it again.”

A set list rests on an instrument case, 32 abbreviated titles representing the day’s work. Jones’s pop standards are easy to identify: Pussycat, Unusual, Delilah, Kiss, Green Green Grass. But the set is bulked out with less predictable fare, represented by titles such as Burning Hell, Memphis/Shotgun, St James and Evil. “Kick out the jams, brothers and sisters!” proclaims the bassist cheerfully, as the band shift back into action with a slinky bass and guitar riff, grinding through a tough, tight version of a song by the late US blues preacher Blind Willie Johnson. Jones slides off his stool, stands at the microphone and growls “Won’t somebody tell me what is the soul of a man?” in a low, dark voice that could strike the fear of God into an atheist.

Jones and his band are preparing for their Sunday-headlining slot at the Bluesfest 2012, a series of gigs running at various venues in London and Manchester from this week to July 6, in which stars such as Van Morrison, Hugh Laurie, Erykah Badu and Robert Cray gather to celebrate the enduring appeal of the blues. “This is our musical heritage,” according to Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, who will be performing on Saturday night in an ensemble featuring ex-Stones Mike Taylor and Bill Wyman. “The blues echoes right through into soul, R’n’B and hip hop,” says Wood. “It’s part of the make-up of modern music. You can’t turn your back on the blues.”

Blues music has been around for over a hundred years. Its basic 12-bar structure and simple chord progressions consolidated out-of-the-field songs of American slavery with elements of gospel and country. Developing in the ghettoised US margins as race music, early, low-quality pre‑war blues recordings feature near-mythical travelling minstrel figures like Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Lead Belly and Son House, telling tales of hard lives and weaving magic on acoustic guitars.

In its electrified form in the Fifties, blues underpinned rock and roll, the swinging attack of Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters and BB King infusing R’n’B and soul and developing into the heavy rock of the Seventies, with artists from the Stones to Led Zeppelin deeply indebted to the blues. And while it might at first seem wishful thinking to imagine blues still matters in the 21st century, Adele’s massive international hit Rolling in the Deep can essentially be boiled down to a fairly basic blues song, while Jack White, arguably the greatest rock star of the modern era, plays music absolutely drenched in the blues.

“The blues is a lot more open than it might seem,” according to American bluesman Robert Cray, who opened the Bluesfest on Tuesday night. “It’s had to constantly change in order to broaden its base and maintain a relationship to what’s going on now. Electric guitars, horns, beats – we’ve come a long way from Robert Johnson, and even he didn’t always play the blues, he played all kinds of songs. The reason the blues survive is because it’s about people’s lives, love and loss and things that really matter, not because it follows a certain chord progression.”

“To me it’s a language that represents personal truth,” says renowned acoustic bluesman Eric Bibb, an American based in Finland (who played the Bluesfest last night). “It began with people in very difficult situations unable to really honestly express their feelings except through music, so there is something transcendental about the blues, something universally powerful. It’s important to tap into its heart by being well-versed in the older recordings but it’s vital that people write new blues tunes from their own experience and not just hack away at old chestnuts forever and ever, songs that had great personal and collective meaning 60 years ago but might not have much relevance now. To pretend we’re living those lives is absurd. The way the music will survive is by carrying on our own history through it.”

To Ronnie Wood, the context is personal. “It came out of slavery, the cotton fields, but everybody gets p----- off with their day-to-day stuff, anyway. It’s a bit like a chain gang, even if you’re only chained to a desk. For me, it’s a music of spiritual release. It’s a way to battle life getting you down. Even though it’s simple and repetitive, it’s a bit like reggae – there’s always a little intonation, insinuation, little nudges and nuances that make it original to each artist. We interpreted it in a British way and sold it back to the Americans. And they were delighted about it. Most white Americans only discovered the blues with the British invasion.”

Tom Jones links blues and gospel to the music he would hear being sung in the mining community of his childhood in South Wales. “The songs were different but they had the same feeling, it was where those people came from, work songs, field songs, songs about the things that affected their lives, singing because it was the only way they could get it out. My old man was a coalminer, so he’d come home sometimes and he might be a bit grumpy and my mother would say: 'Don’t take any notice of your father, he’s got the blues.’ So I knew the feeling before I knew the music.”

Having rose to fame with a vigorous version of easy listening, Jones might not be the first person you would associate with the blues. But his most recent albums, Praise and Blame (2010) and this year’s Spirit in the Room, have seen him strip back to bare-bones arrangements of rootsy gospel and blues-inflected songs to critical and popular acclaim.

“I don’t know why it took me so long,” he admits. “It has been in me all the time. I remember when I heard Smokestack Lightning by Howling Wolf (released in 1956) I thought: '---- me! What is that?’ The feeling these records put out was tremendous, the structure was simple, they didn’t have too many chords to get in the way, it cut to the quick. The raw emotion, that never gets old. Maybe I just had to get older to really sing it.”

“I was in Helsinki airport yesterday, and over the sound system, piping music into this shiny, modern building, I heard Robert Johnson singing Come Into My Kitchen,” says Eric Bibb, in tones of wonder. “Instead of some kind of plastic pop, I’m hearing a recording from 1936 that is timelessly fantastic and powerful. He would never have been able to imagine that.

“There is something interesting about the fact that people who were basically the offspring of slaves, under the thumb of so much oppression, could come up with a music that is played in all corners of the world. It was a survival tool for the people who originated it, and a century later it is still giving voice to people’s inner feelings. I like that. It’s kind of a cosmic revenge.”

By Neil McCormick 28th June

For details of Bluesfest concerts go to bluesfest.co.uk. Ronnie Wood & Friends are at HMV Hammersmith Apollo on Sat. Tom Jones performs on Sunday at 8pm.

Read the article at www.telegraph.co.uk by clicking here