Vince Jones is a blessed man.
a trumpeter who has been blessed with an extraordinary technical ability; a singer blessed with a soft, beautiful voice, and a gardener blessed with some very green thumbs. Indeed when he talks to the BRAG early on a drizzly Monday morning, he’s not been practicing for his upcoming show at the City Recital Hall, a set that will see him reinterpret the work of Van Morrison. Rather, he’s been brushing up on his horticultural skills.
“I was just watching something on YouTube on how to propagate Kiwi fruits,” Jones says in his smoky, gentle husk. “I’m trying to grow a little forest … All these fruit trees. I’m trying to grow them from cuttings.” He sounds distinctly relaxed for a man about to play such an important show at such a grand venue, honouring one of the great singers of the Western canon. Isn’t he nervous?
“Oh, I’m always nervous,” he says in the voice of the least nervous man in the world. “It’s a huge workload. It’s a huge concert. I’ve done the Van Morrison shows twice now. To pull it off I practice twice a day. I try and make sure that it’s nice and loose, you know?”
For Jones, these upcoming shows are the culmination of a lifetime’s obsession: Morrison was a performer who he connected with at a very young age. “Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks was one of the first five albums I bought in 1972, when I was old enough to afford an LP. I bought itmostly because of peer pressure. All my friends had bought it. But I’d seen a couple of the musicians he used – I’d seen them … play with the modern jazz quartet. But it just made me wonder what an Irish folk singer – quite a rocky, soft-rock folk singer – was doing with that kind of band.”
“I started listening to the album,” Jones says, his voice rich, reliving that first pleasure all over again. “I heard some beautiful music coming out of that record. And then, many years later, when it was suggested to me that I play it, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve been listening to that music since I was a teenager.’ So I thought it would be fun to reinterpret it.”
Jones admits that there are differences between his and Morrison’s singing style, although if there’s one thing the two singers share, it’s drive. “I’m a natural tenor,” says Jones. “I’ve got a bit more chops than him because I’ve been a jazz singer all my life. But his singing is so beautiful. He really could sing. His passion was so strong, it was almost like he heard it in his head and he had to get it out somehow. Apparently he didn’t have any guitar tabs or anything. He just said, ‘Follow me’ to his band. And it sounds like it too. It sounds like a trainwreck that could happen at any time. But it didn’t, because he had good players.”
Jones’ set will include songs from across Van Morrison’s discography, and though audiences can expect every one of the hits, lesser known tracks will make an appearance too. As to be expected, given his role as both a fan and a musician tackling his works, Jones has a deep knowledge of all of Morrison’s albums, and is finely tuned to the delicacies of each complicated work. “Moondance is more commercial,” Jones says of that famous, multi-selling behemoth.
“It’s more complete; they’re complete songs. Whereas Astral Weeks is quite moody, and they’re not actually songs in the form of A-A-B-A. You know how a song goes: here’s the chorus, here’s the verse. But on Astral Weeks, the songs are kind of strange. And they’re quite beautiful songs. So I know it’ll be a challenge but I really enjoy it.”
Of course, the act of covering someone else’s songs is an innately fraught one. Of course, your covers will always be automatically compared to the originals, but there’s something more than that too. Playing a version of someone else’s tune can be a kind of trespass, particularly someone like Van Morrison, whose music is held dear by so many people.
But Jones understands the territory he finds himself traversing, and is at great pains to stress he will always honour Morrison’s originals, even as he and his bandmates riff on some elements of the classic tracks. “I don’t like screwing around with people’s songs too much,” he says. “I like to have respect for the original singer’s intentions. So the audience will get the lyric, and they’ll get the melody. But we’ll play with them a little bit. Particularly with the quality of musicians I’ve got. We’ll have strings and horns.”
Inventiveness aside, as far as Jones is concerned there’s only one real aim of the upcoming shows. He’s not tackling Morrison for any other reason than to pay homage to some songs he has been listening to for almost his whole life. “It’s the kind of music that hits you right in the heart,” he says. “Even though his lyrics can be quite obtuse at the time, jis lines seem to hold little pictures that grab you. I still can’t work out what the songs are completely. And that’s a good thing. That’s what art is, I think. It’s something that you can’t explain.”
Vince Jones performs Van Morrison’s Masterpieces at the City Recital Hall on Saturday September 10.
