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A blues win-win (win)
Muirsical Conversation with JW-Jones
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Thus far 2022 has gone very well indeed for award winning Canadian bluesman JW-Jones.

Earlier in the year the singer-guitarist with an old blues soul, in the company of fellow Ottawa blues alumni, drummer Jamie Holmes and vocalist & keyboardist Jeff Rogers, released Set The Record, the debut album from International B
lues Challenge Winners (representing the Ottawa Blues Society) the HOROJO Trio (Jones also won Best Guitarist at the 2020 IBC).
​
A first class, soul rockin’ rhythm & blues act, the name 
HOROJO is a combination of the first two letters of the members surnames.

Then, at the end of June, Jones fronted the
JW-Jones Big Band at the Ottawa Jazz Festival;
​the performance was a career high follow-on, in effect, to 2020 solo album Sonic 
Departures.
That album, like the Ottawa Jazz Festival performance, featured a 17 piece band with 13 horn players.


The stories behind both albums are as interesting, and indeed fortuitous, as they are seriously impressive.
They also showcase JW-Jones love of the old-school, both in blues-trio format and with a big band.

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​JW-Jones sat in with FabricationsHQ to discuss both albums and the serendipitous way in which the HOROJO Trio came into being.
We also discussed why House Concerts are as satisfying (if not more so) than any club gig and the reason why we haven’t seen JW-Jones in the UK with his own band since 2017; the latter encapsulates the issues for any international artist or act on the club circuit when touring the UK.

But the chat opened with the story behind how the band that would become the HORJO Trio got together…


Ross Muir: To go back a couple of years, I think we have to retrospectively request that, under the word Serendipitous in the dictionary, we lead with a meaning of "see Horojo trio," because the set of circumstances that led to the formation of the the band seem to be just that...

JW-Jones: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely, because we kinda got together by accident!
I had worked with Jamie Holmes, the drummer, before; he toured with me on one of my records and he’s also one of my best friends. Jamie had then started working with the singer and piano player Jeff Rogers.
What happened was there was a charity event here in Ottawa; I was playing the event and those guys were playing at the after-party, at a little pub.
The GM of the pub – Jeff O’Reilly, a great member of the live music community and a friend to all of us – said to me "hey, why don’t you bring your amp and guitar down, sit in and we’ll see what happens, I think it might be kinda cool!"
I asked Jeff if he’d be OK with that and he said yeah, all good; so I brought my amp down, threw it on stage between sets, got up there with them and we played for two hours straight!

RM: Well, there’s a marker right there...

JWJ: Yes, and what was so cool about it was Jeff was hearing me play all the B.B. King riffs, and stuff he’d heard on Bobby Bland records, all of that, while I was just loving how great a singer Jeff is and how deep his knowledge is of the R&B world.
And we have Jamie holding down the fort, in between the two of us as kind of the glue for the whole thing. 
So, yeah, it was just magic!

RM: A genuine simpatico; a love of playing together and the gelling of all three of you.

JWJ: Absolutely. It’s funny when you work with different players though. Jamie knew how I worked, and Jamie also knew how Jeff worked, but Jeff and I had never worked together!
So Jamie really was the glue, as I just said, and in many different ways – with the band in general, musically, and in managing our personalities! [laughs].
Me and Jeff are polar opposites in a lot of ways, but when we’re on the same page, it’s magic. It’s all about finding the happy medium and focussing in on that.

RM: That’s a salient point because from the outside looking – or listening – in, it’s all about the music; but for a band it’s as much about personalities and compatibility as that music.

JWJ: And what’s different about it with HOROJO is it was already working, in a sense, right from the start.
Jeff was the Yin to my Yang and Jamie was the glue. This band wouldn’t exist if it was just someone trying to find a keyboard player, or someone trying to find a guitar player, or someone trying to find a drummer.
This is not what this is; this is special because it's special.

You mentioned personalities there and here’s the thing.
With the musicians that I hire, when I’m looking for, let’s say, a drummer or a bass player, I’m looking for the best drummer or best bass player I can find at that time.
So, I find that person but, then, do they match personality wise? Can they handle being on the road as much as we are; can they handle the long drives; can they handle the hotels, all the rest.
That’s when you know OK, this is going to work versus OK, maybe we need someone else who’s not such a good player but can handle the road. That’s the balance you try and strike with other musicians.     

RM: But as you say that was not, and is not, the case with you, Jeff and Jamie.
From that first sit-in show you move on to realising there could be a band here, which led to an all-new material debut album, completed via a successful Kickstarter campaign.
But then, at the eleventh hour, you get a record deal – that had to be extremely gratifying…

JWJ: That was super surprising because I had already sent demos to a whole bunch of labels who hadn't replied, so this was going to be a self-release, on my own label; I would do the whole thing myself.
But you’re right, it was literally at the eleventh hour when I sent a message over to Stony Plain Music, who hadn’t replied yet, that said "we’re going to sign a distribution deal with another company in the US tomorrow, so if you have any interest in this at all, please let me know. If you don’t have any interest that’s totally cool, but I need to know right now."
All of a sudden – boom! – I get an email right back saying "here’s our offer."
It was like, woah, we’re actually getting a deal here?

That was great but, the downside to their offer was – as you know, because you were part of the crowd funding 
– they also said they couldn’t release it until the second quarter of 2022.
This, at the time, was fall 2021, so now I’m going "what, we’re going to have to sit on this for months, until next year? That’s crazy!"
I went to the guys and said "look, we have option A, sit on it, and option B, release it without a deal. I think we should do option A but the only downside to that is we have to beg for forgiveness from all our Kickstarter supporters!" [laughs]
But the next thought was, if these are the people that are supporting us and the record, then they want what’s best for us anyway, so hopefully they’ll be cool with it.

RM: Yes, it’s like a business deal; you want the best return, and best quality product, for your money.
And everybody did get the best return – Set The Record has great throwback appeal, mixing late fifties, sixties and seventies soul-rock and R&B, encapsulated by songs such as the rhythm and soul title track and the sixties beat-pop of Hard As I Can, to name but two.

RM: Set The Record is an album that deserves to get traction well beyond your own borders and, indeed, the usual blues borders.

JWW: Thank you so much; I really appreciate that. We actually wrote most of the album over Zoom video meetings because we were in the middle of the pandemic; here in Ottawa we had some pretty strict lockdowns where we couldn’t leave the house. But we also got together when we were allowed to, so it all worked out.
Musically, it’s another one of those things between Jeff and me – if it were up to Jeff it would probably be a record of at least fifty percent slow songs or ballads and it were up to me it would have been about ninety percent fast tunes!
We struck a balance and came out somewhere in the middle, but it’s definitely more of an upbeat album; that was the goal.


RM: Set The Record isn't the only great moment for you this year. At the end of June the JW-Jones Big Band performed at the Ottawa Jazz Festival – an auspicious follow-on, if you will, to your 2020 solo album Sonic Departures.
That's another great album; big band blues-swing, featuring a seventeen piece ensemble with thirteen horn players, as was the case at the festival.
That album, and such big band live performances, have to be incredibly satisfying for you as a musician.

JWW: Absolutely, man. The big band gig at the Ottawa Jazz Festival was interesting because that was only my third time playing in a band that size! The preparation that goes into that is something that I’m not super used to yet, because all the horn parts are on charts – so when I’m soloing all my solos are set in length.
Some of them say that the charts are open, and it depends on when I go back to the vocal mic to sing again, whereas others are set, so if I don’t stop soloing when I’m supposed to stop soloing, the horns just continue playing whatever they were supposed to be play! [laughs]

RM: So, a whole new discipline.

JWJ: Yeah, it takes a lot of brain power for me to know when to play and how long things are supposed to be! With my usual trio, I can just play how I feel but, man, it’s worth the compromise because the energy of having thirteen horn players on stage is just unbelievable.
It just sounds enormous and there’s nothing like it – it feels like you’re driving a train, or conducting a train, and you’re just trying to keep it on the tracks!

RM: That comes across on the album; it would be easy to lose what is a very big sound in production, but there's an almost widescreen sound here. The songs are, naturally, predominately swing arranged but there’s also the sixties beat applied to your own song Ain’t Gonna Beg and a handful of great covers, including a wonderful jive-swing take of the Everly Brothers Bye Bye Love. Great album.

JWJ: Thank you very much. What’s crazy about this album is I had to keep it a secret for the first year, basically, before it even came out, because this was recorded before Covid.
And this is not a studio record; this was a recorded live performance. It was also the first time I had played with the big band, live. When I walked in they said "do you want us to record the show?" and I said "yeah!"
Then they said "do you have a hard drive?" I said "yeah!" again [laughs] and they reply "OK, no problem, we’ll record the show!"

So we play the show but I was actually extremely sick – this was before Covid remember, but I was coughing up a lung and had no energy. But I have to rise above all of that so I play and we record the whole show.
We were initially thinking maybe we could make an EP out of the live tracks, and I could go in to the studio and redo some vocals.
So we pull up all the tracks and start working on it but then Covid hit! So now it’s like OK, well, we might as well make a full record because we have nothing else to do; we have no gigs, we have nowhere to be, let’s make a whole record.

That’s when we did all the vocals again and added backing vocals – I had my wife, Brit, sing on some of it.
We also did a couple of keyboard tracks again, and a couple of bass and drum things, but all the guitar solos you hear on this record are live, as recorded with the big band. And other than one, they were all first, and one-only, takes.
​RM: From live performance to live touring. We’ve only seen you twice here in the UK but my guess is, given the logistics and ever-rising costs involved – and let’s not forget Covid is still out there, albeit in a less prevalent state – the chances of seeing you back here in the UK with your band are, sadly, slim?

JWJ: I’d absolutely love to get back but, I hate to say it, the UK and all the places we’ve played in the UK, are wonderful to perform at once you’re there, but just getting across makes it almost impossible to create a tour that makes any money.
Basically, it’s the only market that I have avoided for my entire career and that’s because when I looked into it, the guarantees from the venues are so low; it’s shocking.
But I still said I really want to do this, so I ended up playing a really high paying gig that paid me enough money for me to say OK, I’m going to take this money and invest it in touring the UK.
That’s when I got in touch with Dudley Ross, who you probably know?

RM: I do, we cross Social Media music paths on occasion; very nice guy and great guitar player.

JWJ: Yeah; so Dudley and I booked a tour; that first tour in 2016 was relatively profitable – enough to pay the bills, so to speak.
The second time, for 2017, Dudley advised that I get a high-powered publicist; so I hired a well-known publicist in the UK who then recommended renting out a bunch of places and doing the hire thing.
​I did that, but it was a very expensive tour and I lost a lot of money.
So after that I was like “I just don’t know what to do with the UK,” so… I don’t know man, it seems impossible.

RM: It’s a tough ask for any international artist playing the clubs circuit venues in the UK, now more than ever.
And then there's the fall-out from Covid. It’s not the threat it was, obviously, but there’s definitely a correlation to a drop-off in numbers at club level
– the big-name ticket at an arena, or major event, still packs them out, but the club circuit is, generally speaking, still down on numbers.
With a slightly older or specific fan base, some now simply don’t want to take the risk.

JWJ: Yeah, it’s not like the US where it’s almost like Covid never happened! There’s just such a huge population there and most of them were just out and about and have been since day one, pretty much.        

RM: You mentioned your strict lockdowns earlier, which was the case here too. I’m assuming it’s pretty much back to normal now for a touring musician like yourself?

JWJ: Yeah, we are back to it. My perspective on the whole thing was I’ll get vaccinated when they tell me to but, otherwise, I want to go out and live my life.
If they tell me I’ll get sick, I’ll get sick; I don’t think, with my health level, I’d be in the very very small percentage of people my age who would have an issue.
I know that happens but I don’t think that would happen to me; therefore, that’s the chance I’m willing to take.
I still feel the same way now; when I see people we’re shaking hands, we’re hugging; I’m just going for it – as I said, if I get sick I get sick – what are you gonna do?

RM: You do what you have to do. People will play it as safe as they need to, or are comfortable with, but there’s also the acceptance of having to live with it. This, like the flu, is now a fact of viral life. 

JWJ: Absolutely.
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RM: We spoke earlier about the big show, big sound experience of the big band but you also work at the more intimate end of the performance spectrum – House Concerts.

JWJ: I do, yeah. House Concerts are a really great way of filling in the gaps on tours.
And you’d be surprised; sometimes there are people who will fit forty of fifty others into their house [laughs], and they’ll charge thirty or forty dollars.
You do the math on that and it’s OK, that’s paid better than almost any other club gig around!
You also have somewhere to stay, they feed you and people in that house are more likely to buy product from you than at any bar or club, pretty much anywhere 
– it’s so much more intimate that they feel like they know you and they want to take a piece of that home with them. It’s way better, in a lot of ways.

RM: Big Band at the Ottawa Jazz Festival one week, House Concert the next, and your own band and the HOROJO Trio the meat and potatoes between. That’s not so much a win-win as a win-win-win, Mr Jones.

JWJ: [laughs] It is a really good position to be in, honestly, because HOROJO will do some gigs my band can’t do and vice versa. It's great to diversify, so to speak.

RM: Well as we’ve touched on you can’t be one dimensional in this day and uncertain age and, 
Covid concerns aside, it’s been a great 2022 for you thus far; long may that continue through the ensuing years.

JWJ: Thank you very much, Ross, I really appreciate it. Take care!

Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation with JW-Jones
August 2022

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JW-Jones official website: https://jw-jones.com/
HOROJO Trio official website: https://horojotrio.com/
Photo credits: Laura Carbone (JW-Jones top image); Joshua O'Connor/ Arms Race Productions (stage shot)​
Website and text contents © FabricationsHQ and Ross Muir
All Rights Reserved