Holding a physical copy of Jeff Jones’ last solo effort is like gripping a relic from a different era of the Canadian music industry. It has been nearly 20 years since the veteran bassist stepped out from the massive, stadium-sized shadows of his collaborators to claim a piece of the spotlight for himself. Jones is a man whose career functions as a walking map of CanRock history. He was the voice and the low-end on "Put Your Hand in the Hand" with Ocean and the driving force behind the rhythmic spine of Red Rider during their "Lunatic Fringe" peak.
But for two decades, the solo work sat on the back burner. The industry knows him as the ultimate utility man, the guy who makes everyone from Burton Cummings to Tom Cochrane sound better. Now, at 70, Jones is finally ready to let his own flag fly. He is set to release new solo recordings at the end of this month, marking his first independent output since the *Heir of Desperation* EP dropped in 2007.
The pedigree here is almost absurd. Jones made his professional debut at 16, a kid with a bass and a voice that helped propel Ocean into the stratosphere. Before that, he was famously the man who stood between Alex Lifeson and John Rutsey in the earliest iteration of Rush, only to be replaced by a guy named Geddy Lee. It is a "what if" that could haunt a lesser musician, but Jones turned it into a lifetime of work with Randy Bachman, Gowan and Ronnie Hawkins.
I sat down with him to figure out why a man with this much history waited nearly two decades to get back into the solo ring. The answer is the usual suspect: the grind of the road. Jones is rarely not working.
"I did an EP in 2007, *Heir of Desperation*, but it didn’t get the same kind of promotion and attention as the *Positive* album in 2001," Jones says. "It was slated to be a full album, but the tour schedule for Tom Cochrane, for Burton Cummings, for Bachman Cummings, became busy in those years and I never had the chance to complete it so I just released it as a three-song EP independently. That’s the reason for everything that’s happening now. The guys that I play with weren’t playing as many shows since the end of last year, so, I looked at that time at one piece I had been mulling around with which is 'Velvet Sky' and we said, we have the time, let’s start recording that and see if anything else comes up."
And something did come up. The creative floodgates did not just creak open; they burst. Working alongside his longtime duo partner Gerry Finn—a man who shreds in The Carpet Frogs and provides the guitar textures on these new tracks—Jones found a rhythm that bypassed the usual over-produced sludge of modern rock.
"Lo and behold we wrote two more and we have three songs in the garage up on the hoist," Jones says. "Two are a little more autobiographical, and we’re just moving through it like that. We’re using a very different method. We’re not doing demos going in and trying to make them real after. We try to make it real right from the beginning and don’t stop working on it until it’s done."
There is a raw, unvarnished quality to this approach. In an age where artists spend months polishing the soul out of a track in Pro Tools, Jones is taking the opposite route. He is treating the studio like a workshop, not a laboratory. It is a gutsy move that only works if you have the right hands on the board.
"We’ve got three in the hopper ready to do the same thing and if they don’t start to take shape, we’ve got nothing to lose by letting it go, but it just seems that with Ken Friesen our producer, and Gerry Finn my duo partner, it goes easily," Jones says. "We work together really well."
Friesen is the secret weapon here. His resume reads like a Hall of Fame induction list: Blue Rodeo, The Tragically Hip, The Sadies and Kris Kristofferson. He knows how to capture the grit of a performance without losing the melody. But more importantly, Friesen noticed something about Jones that the bassist had not even clocked himself.
It was slated to be a full album, but the tour schedule for Tom Cochrane, for Burton Cummings, for Bachman Cummings, became busy in those years and I never had the chance to complete it so I just released it as a three-song EP independently. That’s the reason for everything that’s happening now.
"Ken noticed the last few years doing so many shows with Tom Cochrane and my carrying a lot of the load of the harmonies that I was not losing range but had gained range," Jones says. "It’s crazy that at 70, I have more range than I did at 17. I’m just happy that it’s like this so I’ll do it while I can and feeling good about it."
Hearing a 70-year-old vocalist talk about an expanding range is a rarity. Usually, the conversation is about tuning down half a step to save the vocal cords. But Jones has spent years in the trenches of high-stakes harmony, and that labour has paid off. To capture this newfound power, they headed to Almonte, a town that feels like a time capsule.
"We’ve been recording in Almonte which is a little Hallmark kind of town and Ken’s studio is in a former land registry office built of stone in 1859," Jones says. "They put doors in the hallway to separate where they kept the records from the front office and the doors are made of iron and weigh about three to four hundred pounds. Those doors were hung 150 years ago and still swing freely and latch perfectly."
That sense of permanence and history seems to have bled into the sessions. The lineup of players is a Canadian indie dream team. You have Steve O’Connor from Jim Cuddy’s band on keys and Davide Direnzo, who hammers the kit for Tom Cochrane, handling the percussion. Then there is "Strange Obsession," a track that features Jimmy Bowskill—the former Sheepdogs guitarist now with Blue Rodeo—and the incomparable Molly Johnson.
"We spent a full day in Jimmy Bowskill’s studio near Port Hope and my God, we got some good stuff," Jones says. "Jimmy played some lap steel on the song 'Strange Obsession' which also features Molly Johnson. We also did a bit of work at Blue Rodeo’s studio 'The Woodshed' in Toronto. I recorded some of Molly’s vocals there."
"Strange Obsession" is not exactly new, but it is evolved. It is a look back at a track from the 2007 era that never quite got its due. Jones decided to strip it down and build it back up with a different emotional centre.
"The song 'Strange Obsession' is actually a song that I recorded in 2007," Jones says. "We reconfigured it and retitled it. The melody and lyrics are what they are but how we couched it is different. It took on a whole other life when we said let’s see what those melodies are like with a shared vocal and different instrumentation and I can’t wait till you hear it."
The project is also leaning into the personal. One track serves as a memoir of the Yonge Street scene in Toronto during its golden age. It was a time when you could walk into a bar and find the future of music drinking a cheap beer at the next table.
"We’re also working on a song that’s kind of autobiographical about my younger years in Ocean," Jones says. "I was playing in Toronto at The Friars Tavern and we played on the main floor. Ronnie Hawkins was in the upstairs pub and my father played in the downstairs piano bar. It was quite a time when we would all be playing there because we would go up and down the stairs to catch a bit of each other’s set. It was jazz to pop to rock and roll, and Ronnie took me during that time, I think it was to The Brown Derby or another tavern on Yonge Street and he took me to introduce me to Ian Tyson. There’s a whole lot of memories like that."
The connections in Jones’ life seem almost predestined. He describes a world where the phone rings at exactly the right moment, usually with a legend on the other end of the line.
"Ironically a year after I met Ian Tyson, Ocean was a guest on his television show," Jones says. "It just happened that way. Then when Ocean was at the end of the rope, I got a phone call from Ronnie Hawkins asking me if I wanted to play in his band. I don’t know how he knew, but somehow, he knew that we were packing it in because it was that very day."
When he is not busy reclaiming his solo career, Jones remains a fixture in The Carpet Frogs, a band that has been his musical home since 1992. They are the engine behind Burton Cummings, and they recently wrapped up work on a new solo project for the Guess Who frontman.
"This is the third record we’ve done with Burton," Jones says. "We did *Jukebox* which was with Burton and Randy Bachman. That was a collection of cover songs that they loved. And we did *Above The Ground*, which was all original music. The one we just recorded, I don’t know what the title will be and I haven’t heard any final mixes, I just know I recorded about 15 tracks with him and that’s a lot of tracks."
Fifteen tracks with Cummings is a marathon, but Jones seems energized by the volume. It is that same energy he is bringing to Windsor for a release party at River’s Edge on May 25. The event is a dual-purpose affair, serving as a launch for the new music and a fundraiser for the Windsor Essex County Food Bank.
Long & McQuade is sponsoring the weekend, which includes an in-store performance and meet-and-greet at their Walker Road location on May 25 at 1:30 pm. The main event at River’s Edge will feature Jones and Finn alongside guests Dusty D’Annunzio and Rochelle Day. Admission requires a non-perishable food item or a cash donation.
It is a fitting way for a veteran to return. No ego, no massive corporate rollout—just a stone studio, some iron doors and a voice that, somehow, sounds better than it did 50 years ago. Jones is proof that in the Canadian music scene, if you stay in the game long enough, you eventually get to write your own ending. Or in this case, a brand new beginning.
