Re-Introducing Joss Stone

Joss Stone was a teen when she busted the charts with her multi-million-selling "The Soul Sessions," an album of covers that introduced her big, soulful voice with a bang. Rolling Stone magazine announced that she had "divatude."

No wonder. For her debut, Stone, who grew up loving soul music, collaborated with legends including Betty Wright, Angie Stone, and The Roots. The first single, "Fell in Love with a Boy," a reworking of a White Stripes run, reached the Top 20 of the singles charts, as did her version of "Super Duper Love (Are You Diggin' on Me}."

She brings her soulful singing to Chrysler Hall on June 5 as part of the Virginia Arts Festival. 

After two successes, Stone took a turn with her third, "Introducing Joss Stone," which found her diving into more modern R&B sounds in 2007. It featured appearances from Lauryn Hill and Common and once again topped a million in sales.

The album indeed introduced her to a wider audience climbing to number two on the Billboard charts, the highest debut for a British solo female performer, topping the record set by Amy Winehouse. 

Stone returned to her beginnings in 2012 with "The Soul Sessions Vol. 2” recorded during two live sessions in New York and Nashville. And then she took another daring turn with her next album, "Water for Your Soul," a collection of original reggae tunes. 

"The creation of the album has been going on for a while and I certainly had no idea what was getting myself into when I started it," she told an interviewer. "The songs on the album 'Wake Up' and 'Underworld' I wrote ages ago, with no real plan of them going on a record. Then I met Damien Marley when we were working on the Superheavy stuff and we started writing songs in the spare time we had between the sessions. I developed such a strong love for reggae music."

Recently, she’s been collaborating with another songwriter with a long history of working with soulful singers – Dave Stewart formerly of Eurythmics. Her latest features 10 songs they wrote. “The album’s title comes from my song, “Never Forget My Love.” Dave suggested that we use that title because he said, “Joss, that’s you. That’s who you are,” she said. “And that’s so true…Never forget my love…really, that’s all I want to do with my life, is to spread good feelings with love. So I do like that title and it explains where I’m at.” 

It's soul that Stone returns to again and again. "My first CD that I owned was "Aretha Franklin: Greatest Hits.' And I saw the advert on TV and it was just like little clips of her songs. I had no idea who she was—I was only like 10 so. I said, 'Oh yeah, that looks really good', so I wrote it down and I said to my mum, 'Can I have that for Christmas?'," she said.

Her live shows have been compared to the best of Aretha. "With a storming band and trio of backing singers behind her, the evening effectively turned into a rock concert with floor-trembling, wall-of-sound arrangements," wrote a reviewer of her performance last year. "Yet, Stone’s voice – gritty, soulful, utterly marvelous – cut through it all."

 
Tickets and all the info is at vafest.org.