Saturday 4 June 2016

New Music: Introducing - Joseph J Jones


It seems entirely appropriate to post about this new artist today, given the death of Muhammed Ali, the world’s greatest boxer, a man who also possessed a strong social conscience. 

The reason is that Joseph J. Jones, a man who looks like he's stepped out of a fifties or sixties movie, is a former boxer, but unlike Ali he’s now become a musician.

A couple of his songs have been floating around on the internet for some time now, with a handful of tastemaker and music industry connected blogs posting about him back in 2015, but he only came to my attention the other day whilst examining the line up for this year’s Bushstock festival – always a fantastic place to catch emerging talent - I'll be previewing that fairly soon. The chances are Jones is probably new to most readers of Breaking More Waves; despite the small burst of internet coverage, he's hardly a household name, with under 1000 plays on Spotify and Soundcloud.

Jones, who originates from Hornchurch in Essex, cites his main influences as Johnny Cash, Kanye West and West Ham United, and has spent time working with songwriter and producer Richard Frenneaux (who some of you may remember from the band Red Light company). His debut track The Video, a gutsy piano ballad, is halfway between a stirring blues anthem and a m-o-r pop belter that finds him singing of ‘real life, real lows, nothing like the video.’ It’s powerful without ever becoming overly bombastic and suggests that he’s as well suited to pulling musical punches as he was ones in the ring.

Joseph J Jones - The Video

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