Tom Jones International

There’s lots of good stuff posted below on this page. If you haven’t been here since about 6 pm Wednesday PST, be sure to scroll down and check it out.

From Wednesday night in DC, we have a terrific photo that give you a real sense of what it must be like to be Tom Jones standing onstage looking out. That’ll be posted tomorrow. And it proves a picture is worth a thousand words.

With a wind chill that makes it feel like 29º F, the weather in Albany, NY is actually OK for winter. That can be a cold, cold place. But Tom should heat it up tomorrow night.

Tom Jones brings crazy sexy cool swagger to Palace Theatre

By GREG HAYMES, Staff writer/First published in print: Thursday, February 26, 2009/Albany Times Union

The album is chock-full of power, bravado and swagger. It’s the kind of sound that fills a dance floor and keeps it jumping and thumping late into the night.

Produced by the red-hot British duo Future Cut — who have helmed recent projects for Lily Allen, Kate Nash and Estelle — 24 Hours crackles with an electrifying, thoroughly contemporary sound. It features a new tune written by U2′s Bono and the Edge (the braggadociolicious Sugar Daddy), a potent cover of Bruce Springsteen’s The Hitter and a handful of tracks co-authored by the latest addition to “American Idol” (songwriter and new “AI” judge Kara DioGuardio).

So it might come as something of a surprise that “24 Hours” isn’t the fresh, new debut album by some overhyped Next Big Thing from Britain.

No, it’s the latest album from Tom Jones.

Yes, the very same Tom Jones who burst into the international pop music spotlight more than four decades ago with such blockbuster tunes as It’s Not Unusual and What’s New, Pussycat? earning him the Grammy Award as Best New Artist way back in 1965.

Not that he ever went away, but Tom Jones is back in a big way with his first U.S. album in 15 years and an American tour that makes a stop at the Palace Theatre tonight.



And after all of these years, the 68-year-old Jones has something brand spanking new up his sleeve with his latest album. The album marks the singer’s first foray into songwriting.

Of course, if you’ve ever seen the Welsh powerhouse in concert, then you already know that he doesn’t do anything timidly. So despite the fact that he’d never written a song before, Jones stepped up to the plate to co-write more than half of the songs on 24 Hours, making the album his most personal statement to date.

“It was by necessity, really,” Jones says from his Los Angeles home. “The songs that were being pitched to me just weren’t very good. So I was almost forced into it, which was great. It was a blessing in disguise.”

Much of Jones’ recorded repertoire over the past 15-20 years has consisted of brilliantly re-considered, re-invented cover songs — including Prince’s “Kiss,” a scorching rendition of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” and a fabulous duet with the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde on Iggy Pop’s classic “Lust for Life.”

That was the original plan for 24 Hours, too, but it didn’t turn out that way. “After I signed with S-Curve Records, they suggested we look at some songs to cover,” Jones recalls. “We tried a few, but the only one that I really liked was The Hitter, the Bruce Springsteen song, which we kept on the album.

“I really wanted some new songs, but none of the ones that were coming in were exciting me. So I had to do something about it myself. I wanted to sing songs about my own experiences, about my life, so I decided to have a go at writing some myself.”

Jones credits U2 frontman Bono for getting his song-writing juices flowing.

“Yeah, Bono really kicked that whole idea off for me when I talked to him in Dublin a couple of years ago about writing me a song. We sat down at this pub with a few pints, and I talked to him about growing up in Wales and digging ditches for a living — things like that. And he came up with the song ‘Sugar Daddy.’?”

Like the best of Jones’ vast repertoire, the song is sexy — as evidenced by the opening volley of lyrics: “I got male intuition/ I got sexual ambition/ I’m the last great tradition” — but sung with a sly, knowing wink, letting the listener know that Jones doesn’t take it all so seriously.

“I thought that if I could do that with Bono, why don’t I try sitting down with some other songwriters and get some of my views across? It’s all very well just singing songs, but for this record, I wanted to get properly personal,” Jones admits. “I’ve been getting reflective recently, looking over my journey through life, and I wanted to get that down on song. So that’s what we did.”

He wrote the album’s first single, “If He Should Ever Leave You,” with Nicole Morier, who had just come from co-writing with Britney Spears for her “Circus” album. The song also just happens to feature a sample from “I’ll Never Let You Go” — a song that Jones recorded back in the ’60s.

The album’s title track — co-written with Lisa Greene — also refers to one of Jones’ earlier hits, The Green, Green Grass of Home. “Lisa liked that song, especially the middle section where you realize that the man is in jail and reflecting on his life,” he explains. “She asked me, ‘Do you think we could write a song just about that? About a man in jail trying to come to terms with the end of his life?’ So after we did it, I played the song to some wives and girlfriends of friends of mine, and I asked them if they thought it sounded too morbid. And this one girl said, ‘No, it sounds sexy.’ So there you are. If I can make a song about a dying man sound sexy, well, then I guess I’m really onto something.”

Ask Jones about his most treasured possession, and he replies simply, “My voice.” So it’s no surprise that songwriter Kara DioGuardi came up with “Never” after a discussion with Jones about his high-powered vocal cords.

The song’s lyrics include such couplets as “From the first time I heard you I knew/ I’d be hooked on you forever like the blues” and “Can’t get enough of your highs and lows/ You take me places where nobody goes.”

“It’s a song that sounds like it’s almost about a woman, but it’s not,” Jones reveals. “It’s about my voice.”

And what an amazing voice it is — even after all these years.

“It’s just a God-given gift,” Jones says. “And it keeps on giving, thank God.”

Photo Caption: Tom Jones performs at the F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006. (Associated Press Archive / The Citizens’ Voice, Kristen Mullen)