Far From Saints reflect on debut success.
L-R Dwight Baker, Patty Lynn, Kelly Jones. Image: Press.
Far from Saints are Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones and Patty Lynn and Dwight Baker of American duo The Wind and the Wave. This summer they released their self-titled debut album and can now be seen playing live in the final week of a sell-out UK tour.
In its first week, Far from Saints reached number 5 in the UK album charts and it spent six weeks at the top of the Country chart, something Jones admits came as a surprise. “I don’t think any of us had the impression these songs would become something; it was just something to do during the day.” In addition to an overwhelmingly positive response for the music, the artwork has been shortlisted for the 2023 Art Vinyl prize for best designed album cover. Lynn had connected with the artist Sara Edgar Shepherd years before when, having encountered her work in a Utah gallery, she tagged her on Instagram and discovered that the admiration was mutual. Looking for inspiration for Far from Saints, she found an image of trapeze artists that resonated with all the band. Shepherd also contributed to the lyric video for their second single, “Take It Through the Night”. “She’s never done anything like that so that was a cool new experience for her,” Lynn says. “I just love the way art can inspire art, and artists can support other artists in completely different mediums.”
The album was written and recorded during Jones’s solo tour in 2019, for which The Wind and the Wave were opening. They had supported Stereophonics six years earlier but this time they performed with Jones on stage and soon found themselves jamming together behind the scenes as well. “It was like an accident, to be honest, how it all started in the first place,” says Jones. Recording was completed by the time the COVID pandemic hit, delaying the release of Far from Saints for three years. “The recording was a good learning experience actually,” Jones explains. “We started from our vocals first, which is usually the last thing on a record.” Designing the running order was a priority for all three members. “If you put it on and it takes you somewhere, then something pulls you out of that moment, then it’s probably in the wrong place, or it’s the wrong song,” Lynn says. “It’s like riding a wave: there’s the songs that bring you up on the crest of a wave, and then you come back down. So you want to feel like you’re moving like this, never jarring.”
“When we’re in the studio, those songs are still ours to do with what we want and to realize how we want to. On stage they’re no longer ours – they’ve taken on all kinds of other meanings to everyone that’s in the crowd”
They take the same care with the live set, says Jones. “I’ve been playing in bands and pubs since I was twelve, and I used to watch my dad playing in pubs, bars and clubs. And the one thing I knew was if the show didn’t have a beginning, a middle and an end, it would fall apart. At the end, you need to get people totally standing on their feet, whether that’s a very unique beautiful song, with just one person singing it, or a crashing rock and roll song – it doesn’t matter. But people need to know when the end is. And the bit in the middle, it needs to be something important happening there or they switch off.” Baker observes that it can be tricky to craft a 90-minute set from just eleven recorded songs – the ten album tracks plus new single “The Weather Left to Go” – but he’s confident that it won’t be a problem for long. Writing for the next album is already underway, the band taking the opportunity of being on the same continent for a couple of months, and they hope to start recording in February. “We won’t be short of songs,” Baker promises. “We’ll probably have way too many for this one, so we’ll just keep on trucking. Double album, guys?”
Image: Press.
Although the previous album was also written on the road, Jones says that this time “it’s not as intensive, it’s not as frantic, because we know that we’ve all got ideas in the bag, and I think it’s just about collating them together and seeing what actually stands.” In the meantime, they are putting everything they’ve got into the live performance. “It’s a very dynamic show,” Jones says. “It can be very, very, quiet, unnervingly quiet, and then it can be pretty loud. It’s hard to find that balance sometimes, and find the right audience to go with you on that.” Although they played some dates in the summer before the album’s release, supporting the Kings of Leon and Paul Weller, this autumn’s headline tour has been the proper debut for the songs they wrote four years ago and, for Lynn, it’s like they’ve handed them over to their audience. “When we’re in the studio, those songs are still ours to do with what we want and to realize how we want to. On stage they’re no longer ours – they’ve taken on all kinds of other meanings to everyone that’s in the crowd.” Jones agrees: “The lyrics shift meaning too: it means something when you write them, and then you go on the road and you have different experiences, and then they become something else.”
The experience of touring has consolidated their sense that Far from Saints is much more than a side project for all of them. “We’ve worked hard for it to be its own thing,” says Baker, while Jones feels that the live set-up has really gelled. “I think it’s a great band, it’s great to have a bunch of the Welsh boys behind us as well, and have Dwight’s boys playing piano on this tour, and a Hammond organ. It works really well.” In addition to their undoubted musical chemistry, they are discovering personal synchronicities, which Lynn puts down to similarities in their upbringing and life experiences while Jones ascribes them to her Welsh DNA (a small but meaningful 5 per cent). For whatever reason, it seems as if this is just the beginning of an enduring partnership. “When we play together as a band every night, you realize the magnitude of the talent that’s on the stage,” says Jones, “You appreciate that, along with the personalities and the people. We all get on really well – we’ve got a great family of people on the road and in the band.”
Far from Saints is available now.
Author: Rachel Goodyear