By the time he reached 55, Stone Jack Jones had spent a lifetime as a carnie, ballet dancer, lute player and hundreds of other things, trying his luck from Buffalo Creek to Charleston to Boston to New York to Fort Worth to Atlanta to Nashville. Mostly, he made music—even if it was just playing on the street or at a nearly empty open mic. Then in 2003, he met Roger Moutenot, who’d engineered albums for They Might Be Giants and Yo La Tengo. And all of a sudden, something happened. Jones’ third album, Ancestor, is out now via Western Vinyl. He will also be guest editing all week. Read our new feature on him.
Jones: a professional skipping stoner? or stoner skipping? i was not sure how to word it, but then i grew up. i wanted to be a professional person who skips stones. i had a passion, and i was pretty good. these confessions usually got a grin and grimace and a behind the eyes “wacko kid.” nonetheless, i could not resist a body of water and a flat smooth stone. looking for the perfect stone was an intense occupation, and when i found that perfect record-breaking, plus-seven-skips stone, i was ecstatic. my young philosopher would ponder how like life skipping a stone is. we search for perfection, find it or so it seems and then we joyously skip across the water in a moment of perfect freedom and abandon and then sink to the bottom never to return. i would ponder the stone sinking so out of control, a slave of gravity and resting on the bottom with some serious fish swimming around. is the stone just as happy at the end as it was at the beginning? does the stone even care? better hunt for another stone and leave some things unanswered.
