Alex Lindsey Jones

Alex Lindsey Jones

Alex Lindsey Jones is an independent artist with an original and addictive brand of sing along rock, his unique style and vocals represent a breath of fresh air in the music scene.

From an early age, Alex was musically minded and influenced by his parents taste in music from Elvis to the Beach Boys and would raid his parents record collection any chance he got. At the tender age of 15, Alex had written his first song and within two years he had penned over 200 original pieces, already developing the distinctive style that can be heard in his music today.

Alex began his career playing acoustic gigs around Sydney in early 2000 before heading over to the UK where he formed the band 'Falling Down' who played 120 shows in their first two years and supported artists like Chuck Prophet and Tom Hingley (from The Inspiral Carpets). Over this time on the road Alex played over 100 songs he had written and judged their merit on how well received they were from week to week by the audience. A tiring but enjoyable process, he came back to Australia to record his best 10 tracks onto his debut Album 'Learning the hard way'. Funding the album himself over a 4 year period, he threw literally everything he had at this dream, and upon completion of the album in early 2008 put his feelers out for feedback and support from the industry. Alex was met with open arms by the team at Explode Entertainment who believe Alex to be an extremely unique talent, something sorely lacking in today's crowded music scene. Alex's debut album originally scheduled for release in late 2007, was postponed due to him writing what he refers to as his "most powerful pop tune", a song titled "Your Love Is Amazing" resulting in the decision to send Alex back to the studio to record the song and add it to a newly re-mastered and newly renamed version of the album becoming 'If She Knew'.

Most recently, Brian C Miller Richard - a brilliant Director from the US, heard Alex's debut single 'Your Love Is Amazing' and jumped on board to direct the music video. Another fan of Alex's work, Craig McLachlan (from Neighbours and 'Hey Mona' fame) volunteered for a cameo performance in the clip as he was happy to help out any way he could.

Currently in pre-production is the video for 'Saint' which has taken its place as the second single to come off the album due to overwhelming positive response from fans online and Alex's looking forward to his first national tour come Early 2009.

Tell me a little bit about the song "Your Love is Amazing"?

Alex Lindsey Jones : My latest song, Your Love is Amazing, is actually the last song on my album. In fact the whole album has been a long time coming. Some of these songs on the album stretch back from maybe ten years ago. I have just been kicking these things around for years and they have been going through different versions and different ways of performing them. They have kind of haunted me in a way, I have been trying to get rid of them and they keep coming back. The actual album had been finished, recorded and mastered and the artwork was done, everything was finished and we were about to release it, this was in late 2007. Then all of a sudden I wrote this song, called Your Love is Amazing and I went 'Ok, Great! That's the song I've been trying to write for a few years now, and now I have finally written it, really bad timing, right after I have completed my album.' My manager convinced me to record it and it had to be the first single released from the album, so we went back to the studio, where I spent a few months and recorded the song. We then added it to the album and gave the album a whole overhaul, we added new artwork and even called it a new name. The new song has really become the center piece of the album.


How did it feel to hear your CD?

Alex Lindsey Jones : You know what? At the risk, again, of sound cheesy I have to say, the first time I heard the completely mastered, finished album it would have been the greatest moment of my life so far. It just felt so rewarding, I had been chipping away at songs for so many years. Overall it came to be four years of recording. Just to finally hear it, hearing it sound as good as I've ever heard it was amazing, it created a real buzz. For that 24 hours I was on the biggest high, the biggest natural high of my life.


What drew you to music?

Alex Lindsey Jones : At the risk of sounding cheesy I guess you could say it is an obsession from my childhood. It really is the only thing I was ever really interested in doing. I can't even remember a time when music wasn't apart of my life. Yeah, it's really good, it has been a constant driving force ever since I was a little kid, just wanting to write songs. I was dreaming of playing in front of people, which is now starting to come true.


Where do you get the inspiration to write your own songs?

Alex Lindsey Jones : I began writing, as a serious writer, at about 16 years of age. I guess I learnt from the fact that I was listening to a lot of other music and I had already discovered music a few years before that raiding my parents record collection. But then at about the age of 15, 16 when I was in high school and it was very trendy for everyone, especially the boys, to play guitar. I recall sitting under a tree, when I should have been in class, playing guitar and thinking I should probably write my own songs. I was listening to all the sort of, 80's American Pop Rock. I guess I was always a little old fashioned in that sense, so I was listening to Bruce Springsteen and Brian Adams and stuff like that. It made me think, this is great and I wanted to write that type of songs, catchy sing along songs, and then I started doing it. I had no musical training, no idea what I was doing, I just started writing songs and hoping for the best. I kind of taught myself to play the guitar, I took a few pointers here and there. As a guitar player I am not a particularly great guitar player, it's not something that you would actually see me do onstage or anything. I mainly use it to compose my own stuff, when I am doing my writing. It kind of worked for me, it produces a raw edge of how I write my stuff and how I approach the writing of my stuff. It's not pretty, if you look at my sheets with a new song on it, it's just lyrics, which is virtually unreadable and chords are just scribbled all over the page, nothing pretty or technically proficient about it. As long as I get down what I want to get down and remember it, that is kind of the process creatively.


How does it feel to have Craig McLachlan as a fan?

Alex Lindsey Jones : Wow. Now Craig McLachlan he is probably the sweetest guy you would ever meet, he is the nicest guy. He was so supportive and wonderful, we met by chance and began talking music and when we met we found we had a lot of things in common we had a lot of the same influences. After hearing my album he said he was really on board with what I was doing and offered to help anyway he could and as it turned out we were filming the first music video and he quite happily put his hand up to do a little cheeky cameo and as it turned out he had to re-arrange his television shooting schedule to come and appear in our music video for a couple of seconds. What a great guy he is. That was a great buzz having someone as well-known as Craig McLachlan in our video. It feels great.


Did you have any pre-conceived ideas about the music industry?

Alex Lindsey Jones : Um… I think what happens is you, start out and hopefully your reason for starting out as a musician is because you don't have anything else to do in a sense and you have this need to be creative and to write and perform, u have this urge to get into that. Once you realise there is this whole business side and what you have to go through to actually make an album. That side of it, is really kind of boring. You are too invested, I'd been writing and playing for so many years, by the time I got to record and finish my debut album, I kind of went, 'Oh okay, that's great' but the fun part of recording but then all the rest the trying to get it out there and get people to like it and listen is the harder part. Artists don't generally realise this. It has been a real learning experience in those terms.


What music/artists do you listen to when you are not playing your own?

Alex Lindsey Jones : I guess I would call my musical taste fairly old fashioned and I still listen to American influenced pop-rock sort of stuff, Bon Jovi who has been one of the big bands that influenced me and Huey Lewis, all that old classic rock as far as more recent bands go, Australia band Thirsty Merc has really done wonders for me. I guess I am not so much into a lot of new music, right now. In a way not many classics are written now, you barely ever turn on the radio and hear a classic anymore and say 'Wow! This song is really speaking to me'. Lucky there is about 50 years of classic music I can go back and revisit, it is stuff you never get sick of.


Do you prefer performing live or recording?

Alex Lindsey Jones : That's an interesting question, they are both rewarding in their own ways. I think that the greatest thing about recording is that you can spend so much time inspecting and going back and revising and really trying to get what you want out of a song, like the way you hear it in your head, it can take a long time. Even in regards to my album there are some songs that we recorded early on that we ended up a year later going back and ripping it down and doing another version in a different style of the song. That part is nice, but the difference is that in performing live it is an instant process; you can gauge how people feel about your songs straight away. I don't know if I prefer it, but it is the other side from recording, you can tell if the audience is connecting with your song. They both have their own special qualities.


What is the biggest challenge you have faced along the way to your musical success?

Alex Lindsey Jones : I guess, would be the fact that for the most part do it on my own, I mean things would probably go different 15, 20 years ago when it was a lot easier to get a record deal and I think artists had more freedom and time to focus on the writing. Now days if you want to make it or give it your best shot and get out there you need to really do as much, often all of it yourself. That has been a struggle and I funded the album myself and just trying to find these people to help me along the way. I have been lucky in a way, because I have come across a lot of very supportive people that have helped out where they can. Being an independent artist does have it's bonuses too, but it can be fairly tough.


If you could collaborate with another artist, who would it be?

Alex Lindsey Jones : My childhood hero is, Huey Lewis. If I could pick only one person to work, write a song with, or work in the studio with it would definitely be him. Gwyneth Paltrow bet me to the punch a couple of years ago, (laughs). Definitely Huey.


'If She Knew' is available digitally through iTunes now.

www.myspace.com/alexlindseyjones