Photograph courtesy of Steve Gullick
“Umm… I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Cometh the hour and Jim Jones, rock & roll firebrand and frontman of The Righteous Mind, is still whittling his list of 20 or so albums down to his final 13. In common with the vast majority of Baker’s Dozen participants, choosing the necessary albums has proved to be anything but a breeze, yet in other respects, things are going according to plan for the band. Their debut release, the Boil Yer Blood EP, sees the light of day later this month. While the ramalama of the title track picks up where his previous outfit, The Jim Jones Revue, left off, the remaining two songs find Jones sailing into new waters. The dreamy and narcotic psychedelia of ‘1000 Miles From The Sure’ made its debut in the pixelated pages of this website earlier this year, while ‘Hold Up’ is a menacing exercise in a cappella that shows another side to Jones’ new vision. With ‘Boil Yer Blood’ scoring a resounding victory on Steve Lamacq’s Roundtable on BBC Radio 6 Music and picking up airplay elsewhere, the band’s headline show at the Stow Festival, brought to you in association with the Quietus, has sold out. And all this before their debut UK tour kicks off on September 30.
With beers and chasers in front of us, Jones settles on his choices and explains his criteria. “I wasn’t sure if I should go for my absolute favourite albums or not but in the end I decided to go for the albums that show where my head is at right now,” he says.
What becomes apparent over the course of the next few hours is that not only is Jones absolutely in love with being a musician, he’s equally as enthusiastic about the music that moves him. For Jones, this isn’t a game, but something that beats at his very core.
“Right then,” he says as we clink our glasses, “Let’s do this!”
Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind play the Stow Festival in Walthamstow on Saturday, September 19. Boil Yer Blood is out on September 25 on Raygun Records with the band beginning a tour of France and the UK on the release date at L’Ouvre-Boîte, Beauvais, France; for full details and tickets, head to their website
