Interview

Babble & Beat - 'Just As I Am' is due for release in early 2008. We absolutely love the track, ‘Trouble’! What was the inspiration behind this song?

Stone - One day I was sitting down and I was just so overcome by the sense of helplessness you feel when you’re a bystander watching what is happening in the world. It’s the first time in the UK that we are starting to have gun crime stories make the news regularly. I really had this sense that as a society some of us were asking the question what is going on, you know? Why are things this way and how do we stop it, where are the people that can help give us the answers? Gun crime is new to us, I mean it existed but now it’s becoming the norm. You either get affected by it, you’re numb to it, or you turn and walk the other way like I say in the song. I guess it was just me kind of reflecting on where we are at.

Babble & Beat - Can you tell us about some of the other songs on your debut?

Stone - We have this track called ‘I’m A Man’ which is a song Stevie Wonder wrote but he never recorded or released it. So, this will be the first time (if we get clearance lol) that this song is going out. It’s an incredible song, real funky type sound with live horns like the vibe of Earth, Wind & Fire. I remember I first heard it as a kid when he performed it on a TV show. It’s one if not the only time he has ever performed it. So it is a real honour to be recording it.

To be honest there are quite a few different tracks although we don’t know what the final track listing is yet as we have something like 17 songs trying to fight their way onto the album. We have a song called ‘Leave No Stone Unturned’ - I just don’t want to exist during my life and live for me, myself and I. 'Leave No Stone Unturned' is about rolling up your sleeves and taking some of the issues and questions that affect all of us and trying to find a way to deal with it or at least grapple with the question so that we get closer to finding some kind of answer, or at least a better quality question. It’s a bit of a social political song.

'Find You Again' – I think this song is really beautiful... it is a mid tempo vibe. Lyrically it is all about a relationship in which one person feels they don’t deserve to be loved and they want to call it a day. Reject before you’re rejected mentality, and the other person is responding and saying ‘look if you leave I will find you because I believe in you’... we all have bad days, days when we don’t feel deserving of being loved but this song is saying I will find you. I guess it is about the type of commitment in a relationship that says I am in this for the long haul.

'Impossible' – I wrote this song with my wife when we were away. We got a call from one of our close friends whose mother was just about to pass away. As my wife was on the phone talking to her I started to hear this melody come into my head; my wife was there on the phone and I was just playing the chords (I always travel with a keyboard!). By the time my wife came off the phone the song was basically finished; we just needed to write the lyrics. It’s about the sense of how helpless you feel when something or someone gets taken away from you, whether that is a person, a job, a stage of your life and how you can feel so vulnerable and you really can’t see yourself existing beyond that moment.

'Heal Me' – This song was inspired by Sarah McLachlan’s ‘Angel’, just in terms of the mood. I got to a point where I started to look back and started to sense that maybe my best years were behind me. It’s a song about those moments when you feel like you are a day late and a dollar short. It’s a song that allows me at least, to release that emotion without it staying inside and becoming toxic or becoming negative self talk.

We have some really funky, up tempo stuff as well. ‘Try Again’ has a really cool vibe, it has like an 80‘s type feel to it. Great song called ‘We Have Enough’ deals with the human disease that always wants more, you don’t need a million and one things to make something happen. We have to learn to see things that we think are common and ordinary as really powerful tools to move us forward. Again this is a song I wrote with my wife, and it’s about saying no matter what happens we have got enough to handle it, in the context of our relationship we will always find a way to win.

Babble & Beat - You are signed with your family-owned label, Fivestone Records. I am assuming it doesn’t mean there’s 5 ‘Stones’ in your family. Are any other artists signed to the label and how long has it been around?

Stone - No, the "Fivestone" is the five kids I said I wanted to have until I had my first 2 (lol) and then I realised 2 was enough... so we should have called it Twostone Records (lol). No, actually I am Stone and my kids are the pebbles! We set up the label really to record and release this project. We have always talked about wanting to work with other artists particularly to help out new artists, to help them discover and hone their craft. But that’s for the future. At the moment we are just focusing on this project. It will be interesting to see how things go.

Babble & Beat - Along with the piano, what other instruments can you play?

Stone - Piano is definitely my main instrument; I have played Piano since I was 7 years old. At the moment I am really getting into these vintage software emulations like the Minimoog and CS80V. They are software versions of some of the original sounds that were featured in the music that I listened to when I was growing up. I just got hold of these the other day and they are blowing my mind. They are making their way onto the album, so I mainly play keyboard.

Growing up I played in a lot of orchestras. I used to play violin for a few years, French horn and saxophone as well. I played all these for long enough to become really proficient in them. My goal though, after the album is finished and I am out of the studio and hopefully on the road doing live shows, is to really pick up the guitar properly, bass and guitar, and in the next couple of years really get those under my fingers and keep myself challenged.

Babble & Beat - You attended the Berklee College of Music on scholarship. What are some of the most valuable music-related bits you learned there?

Stone - To get out of the way, let the music happen. I think as a musician you have the privilege of being able to create moments for people that can touch them and move them and inspire them. One of the things we did a lot at Berklee is we trained and studied hard so that we could get out of our own way. That allows this special thing to happen. So you practice hard and you train hard and you develop your musicianship but then you can get out of the way and let the music speak.

Quincy Jones, who also went to Berklee, said in an interview once that when he was working with Michael Jackson he would always leave space on the track for God to walk in the room. Oleta Adams told this story when she came to do a clinic at Berklee... There was this guy who lived in a really old village, he had this flute, he had been playing this flute furiously for years. One day he stopped and played just one note. The whole village ran to him and asked him what was wrong and he responded by saying, "I found the note I was looking for."

Herbie Hancock said a similar thing. He said he spent his whole life trying to become complicated as a musician only to realize that the real beauty is often in the simplicity of it. So being at Berklee, one of the huge things we learnt was to just get out of the way and not allow egos to take over but to be a servant of the emotion that the music is trying to convey and if one note will do, don’t play two. Some of the most beautiful music, music that has affected millions of people, has been 3 notes and a chord.

Just being in an environment like Berklee, where excellence is the norm, was amazing. You were surrounded by these gifted people. After you heard someone practice or perform you did one of two things. You either cried and walked straight into a practice room so that you could get better or you folded under the pressure. But everyone there worked hard, they took their gifts and they multiplied them.

Obviously aside from all that was the excellence of the curriculum. I learnt Jazz Chops, ear training, harmony and all the traditional stuff. Coincidentally, you can go online and study at Berklee now, distance learning! See www.berkleemusic.com.

Babble & Beat - Would we recognize the names of any of your Berklee mates?

Stone - John Mayer left the same semester I arrived! Natural, the guitarist for Usher Raymond. A good friend of mine, David Balfour, is the Music Director for Anthony Hamilton. Myles Johnson was Pink’s drummer. A whole bunch of singers but they are all doing lots of different things now.

Babble & Beat - After college you went into ministry. Did you lose your interest in creating music for awhile?

Stone - I think so. I think I hit a point in my life where I was more trying to figure out what my life was about. I just couldn’t figure out how the music fitted into that equation. So, I kind of took a bit of time to discover myself, and work with other people and help them to discover their potential and in that process I ended up finding myself. Music was something that was always there at the back of my mind, it runs through my veins. So, even though I had put it down I knew that one day there was a strong possibility that it would remerge and I would be able to do something with it.

Babble & Beat - You also used to run an independent school for troubled children. Can you tell us more about that?

Stone - Basically, one of my passions is education. I love to learn and I love to talk about what I have learnt (lol) for long periods of time without taking a breath (lol). I had noticed that a lot of the kids in the church were really great kids but they were falling out of school and they were being branded as truants, troublemakers, etc. I couldn’t understand why their reports were saying one thing, when I knew them to be something completely different. So we set up this school and took these kids that weren’t going to school, or had been thrown out of school, or had just given up on school. We discovered this educational methodology that allowed them to play to their learning strengths. We created an environment where they felt safe enough to grow by making mistakes and challenging themselves and to do it in a really fast way. It was incredible.

Even to this day, I still see some of the kids. This is like 5/6 years later. They are still young, they are mostly in their early twenties but they look back on it as one of the most important chapters of their lives. It wasn’t just about teaching them subjects. It was about preparing them for life. What is the point in going to school and filling your head with information if it doesn’t have any practical application afterwards? Teaching me science is like pushing water up a hill. It’s pointless and it’s a waste of time because that’s not my thing. So, we helped them discover what their strengths were and helped them play to it. Helped them map out where they could go in the future and how to get to it.

Babble & Beat - Will you be doing a large tour in support of your upcoming album?

Stone - If anyone will buy the album or show up to a tour, yeah (lol). I would love to. To be honest, making the album has been such an incredible experience, but throughout the whole time I have been hearing each song in the context of what it will sound like live. I have been rehearsing this live show in my head for the last year. That is where it becomes a living conversation. It’s not just about me making music in isolation and then people listening to it in isolation. We all get together in the same room and start to discover these moments and go on these journeys together. So I cannot wait to do the whole live thing. I think it is going to be absolutely incredible; I am really looking forward to it. But, first I must finish the album (lol) but if I got the opportunity to do a huge tour, to have the opportunity to go out and share this project with different people from different walks of life and different backgrounds, that would be the most humbling privilege.

Babble & Beat - Are there any particular cities or venues you dream of playing?

Stone - Japan (pronounced Jahhh Pan lol). I would love to go to the Far East. I love all different parts of the world. I obviously lived in the States for a few years and am quite well traveled. But there is something about the Far East; I just have this fascination with it. I have never been there but everything appears to be so different. I am fascinated with the Japanese culture. I would love to get out there and do some shows. Find some people to buy my records (lol).

Juicy Tidbits Section

This is where we ask personal questions for the fans. Yeah, they're often stupid questions. We like reading the answers though!

Babble & Beat - We understand you love books. What are some of your favorite titles / authors?

Stone - Obviously, first would be the Bible. A book I started and have yet to finish is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. It’s a really good book but I just haven’t finished it. Also, a great book is A Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. At the moment most of my reading time is spent reading articles and manuals on mixing!

Babble & Beat - Please tell us one of your biggest fears.

Stone - How much time you got? If you want a surface, shallow answer, heights! Do not put me up a ladder!

Some of my other biggest fears... I remember Bono said in an interview that he is afraid he will get found out to be an imposter. You look at Bono and you think, is he absolutely crazy? This guy is like a living legend! But I really identify with that as an artist and as a person. When you pursue something that is out of your comfort zone and you follow a dream there is always this part on the inside of you that doesn’t really know if you qualify for it. You know it’s the right thing to pursue but you aren’t really sure how it is going to turn out. As a result it is almost like you need someone to come and say ‘Hey, it’s ok, you’re heading in the right direction’. So for me my fear gets wrapped up in that somehow. Fear of making no difference. Missing the mark. Not really a fear of failing but more that you don’t have what it takes. The knock on effect of that is how it affects your self identity your self image, etc. So yeah, it’s a fear that I will get found out, even though I am not doing anything wrong (lol).

Babble & Beat - Besides money and credit cards, what’s in your wallet?

Stone - A picture of my kids. I have twins, a boy and a girl. They were born on my birthday and will be 3 this December. Apart from that (searches his wallet), a Borders Loyalty card (laughs), how sad is that? My driver's license, and no money (lol).

Babble & Beat - No money in mine either! Similarly, I have a punch-card for the coffee bar at Borders Books.

Please name one favorite song by each of these bands / musicians: Stevie Wonder, Jamiroquai, Peter Gabriel, Bob Marley, Soul II Soul, & U2.

Stone - Stevie Wonder – This is a bit of a strange one but a song called ‘They Won’t Go When I Go’. I love it. I first heard George Michael do it and I thought WOW. Then I got a hold of Stevie’s version and it blew me away. There is something really other worldly about it. It’s just simple, it’s just him and a piano and it’s a great, great song.

Obviously all the classic Stevie songs but then he has this track on the 'Characters' album called ‘Free’. If I could sum up what I would like to help people discover, it is the type of freedom spoken about in that song. ‘Free-er than the meaning of Free that man defines... Me havin' nothing but possessing riches more than all’.

Jamiroquai – Their first single ‘Too Young To Die’. I went to a performing arts school and they came down to our school to do their first national radio performance. They performed it live in our theatre and the band was incredible. I just remember the energy of the song and I just loved it. Also from that album I loved ‘Blow Your Mind’.

Peter Gabriel – Where do we begin (smiles)? At the moment I have ‘Washing Of The Water’ on repeat. ‘I Grieve’, which was on the City Of Angels soundtrack, is an incredible song. All the classics. ‘Father, Son’ is great as well, and ‘Signal to Noise’, yeah.

Bob Marley – ‘Turn Your Lights Down Low’. There is something really spiritual about that song and every time I hear it, I see this (this is gonna sound really strange) but I see all these colours. It’s like I see a whole world and that is such a great example and inspiration for me to understand what music has the power to do, to create worlds for people to enter into. There is something really sensual about that song.

Soul II Soul – Probably the ones that everyone says, ‘Back to Life’ – an absolute classic, ‘Keep On Movin’... you know, all the standard ones.

U2 – ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’ off the last album is just magical. They have a song from the ‘All You Can’t leave Behind’ album called ‘In A Little While’. It’s beautiful. ‘Yarweh’, I love and then ‘A Man and A Woman’. All the singles are great but I tend to like U2 albums as a whole. I feel like I am going on some type of a journey.

Babble & Beat - 'In A Little While' really gets to me too.

Stone - Sorry, you said one song. I just get carried away.

Babble & Beat - If you were allowed to dress up for Halloween as a child, what was your favorite costume?

Stone - I wasn’t allowed to dress up, but if it was like international costume day I would definitely wear a Homer Simpson outfit.

In Closing

Thank you so much, Stone, for your time. We look forward to hearing the rest of 'Just As I Am'! Best to you!

Links:
MySpace - music clips!
Official website