In 2016 Laurence Jones, a nimble guitar finger of only 27, was inducted into the Blues Hall Of Fame. He has been on stage with the greats of the genre such as Van Morrison, Buddy Guy and Eric Burdon. Is a new Joe Bonamassa growing up here? His new album, simply titled "Laurence Jones Band", convinces with its stylistic openness, which goes far beyond the pure blues. Can this be interpreted as a new beginning with the emphasis on band identity? "Yes," Jones confirms, "I hope this has become a classic album of mine and shows what I have achieved as a professional musician over the past ten years."
But is the focus now on the band instead of him as solo performer? "Absolutely. I want to show how much all this is the result of a clean teamwork." The opener "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" with its sparkling piano sounds like a classic Elton John song from the seventies - with the Rolling Stones as backing band. "Yes, it's all deliberately very old school. And our producer Gregory Elias is a huge Rolling Stones fan. To your comparison with Elton John: There comes this British thing probably simply in things arrangement over. Our keyboarder Bennet Holland is also really talented." Jones mentions other sixties and seventies influences: Steve Winwood, Santana, Eric Clapton - especially the song "Lowdown" is a very conscious tribute to Winwood, the multi-instrumentalist of Traffic.
"When I wrote this album, I really wanted that sixties and seventies feeling on it." Even if Blues heroes like Eric Clapton or Walter Trout shine through again on songs like "Mistreated" or "Long Long Lonely Ride", the stylistic diversity is striking in the first half of the new album ...
