40 years after his debut, Howard Jones comes to Savannah still revolutionizing electronic music

Nearly 40 years after the debut of his first single, “New Song,” 80’s synth-pop icon Howard Jones is still producing incredibly moving and forward thinking music with his latest electronic album, “Dialogue.”

Having recently come off of an acoustic trio tour with his friends Nick Beggs (chapman stick, bass) and Robin Boult (guitar), Jones is now embarking on an electronic tour in support of the new record, including a highly anticipated stop at District Live on July 21.

Throughout the 80’s Jones released a steady string of chart-topping songs from his first two hit albums — “Humans Lib” (1983) and “Dream into Action” (1985) — including “Things Can Only Get Better,” “What is Love?”, “Pearl in the Shell,” and “Like to Get to Know You Well.” His songs stood out from the pack for their infectious pop melodies, thought provoking lyrics, and boundless optimism.

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Jones is considered a synth pioneer for successfully embracing new technologies in a music cultural climate that was often skeptical, or downright hostile, towards synthesizers and their legitimacy in music.

“It was painful having to defend that position at the time because it was just born out of terrible narrow mindedness and conservative thinking,” said Jones in a Zoom interview.

“It was painful having to defend it especially from things like if you used electronic instruments you could never express human emotion. I would say to people, ‘Well, have you heard of the piano? It’s got a series of switches on it and when you press the switch you get a sound. A hundred people can play that piano and they will all sound different, and some of them will sound horrible, and then one person will be playing it and you’ll cry and you will be in a state of joy.’ It was like having to explain to people the basic meaning of music.

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“Now, of course, people get it, but it was painful having to explain that to practically every interview that I did. You just have to keep going, don’t you.”

Jones shutdown many naysayers when he performed his song, “Hide and Seek,” in front of the whole world at Live Aid in 1985 with only himself and a piano.

“I thought it would surprise people because they thought I was just a button pusher,” Jones said with a laugh. “Also, I thought the song was the most appropriate, because it was a song about hope, and it’s the most spiritual song from that first album. I thought that would be the bravest and the best thing to do.”

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A classically trained pianist, Jones was first taken in by synthesizers when he saw Emerson, Lake & Palmer perform live.

“I was a huge Keith Emerson fan from his days in Nice,” recalled Jones. “It was at the Isle of Wight Festival I saw their first major show, and he had the big wardrobe Moog on stage, so as well as playing piano and organ, he had this incredible synthesizer as part of his arsenal and that was it for me. I could see that that’s what I wanted to do. It was two things — one, he was the frontman of the band and keyboard player, and also he was using this brand new instrument of the time, and that’s me. He grew up classically trained, so did I. I just related to him so much.”

When Jones was in his first band, the prog-rock outfit Warrior, his drummer built him a wooden synthesizer from an electronic kit magazine. Sure, it went out of tune all of the time, but Jones made it an important part of his arsenal.

Later, when his wife received a settlement from an auto accident, she purchased him his first professional synthesizer. The store accidentally sent him two, but Jones enjoyed the possibilities of playing both at the same time so much that he offered to pay for the other one, earning the nickname “Honest Howard” from the shop owners.

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Today, you could say that Jones has entered the “I told you so” phase of his career. Synthesizers and music software are an accepted part of songwriting and music production, not to mention more accessible than ever. I mentioned to Jones that my 11-year-old son created seven “albums” worth of music playing around with a midi keyboard and Reason software with no prior training.

“When I started my career, I did predict that would happen,” said Jones. “That you would be able to create amazing music on your laptop and do it in your bedroom. Then it would be a big revolution in making music available to everyone, whereas when we started you had to go into a studio. You had to be signed to a label to be able to have access to a studio and make records. Now all those barriers have been broken down — which has it’s good points.”

“Dialogue” is the third part of a four part album cycle that Jones conceived during the pandemic lockdown. The final part, “Global Communication” is due next year.

Jones’ concept was to describe how human beings can evolve. The first album, 2015’s “Engage,” is about deciding not to be a bystander and engaging with the world around you. 2019’s “Transform” suggests that before you try to change the world, you need to work on yourself first and learn to respect other people.

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“We go on to ‘Dialogue’ where the next step is to fully communicate with people,” explained Jones. “We we as human beings can uniquely do is communicate, and talk, and express ideas. And exchange ideas. Through that we discover that we have things in common, our common humanity. I guess, ‘Global Citizen’ is putting all of that into practice and realizing we’re all totally connected, and what each person does affects everyone else. Realizing we’re all responsible for the world, we need to act accordingly.”

Jones’ new music carries many of the hallmarks of his 80s heyday, but with shimmery, beefed up modern production. “The challenge now is everyone has access to everything,” explained Jones. “If you want to create something a bit unusual, a bit different, you’ve got to put the time in, which I’m happy to do if I’ve got it.”

Much of Jones’ song ideas are inspired by Buddhism, which he has practiced for nearly three decades.

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“It’s helped me so much to really realize that it’s our actions that create the future,” said Jones. “What we do now will affect what happens tomorrow and that we’re all incredibly connected. When the spiderweb is plucked everything is affected. It’s really helped me stay in that frame of mind of make your work very hopeful and positive so that when people hear it they can get a bit of a boost of energy so that they can get through whatever difficulty or problems are coming their way.”

“Buddhism really teaches to not worry about when things go wrong. They will go wrong for everyone and difficult things will happen right up to the end of our lives, but don’t worry because hidden within that difficulty is a great silver lining. Just find what that silver lining is. I think that really helped me to power my life and career with an always forward momentum.”

Although he is best known for his synthesizer work, Jones is also a brilliant pianist and has released several solo-piano works. Even when he is just playing piano, Jones finds interesting ways to explore technology. Next year, Jones plans to release a collection of piano pieces that he wrote and edited on a computer and then will record being played back by his Steinway Spirio piano.

“It enables me to create pieces that you can’t actually play as a human being,” said Jones. “I like instrument that really push the boundaries of what’s been done in the past. The piano is sitting there at home and I can’t wait to get back to play it.”

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Jones will be joined on tour by his good friend and industry legend Midge Ure. Ure has had an incredible career including playing in Silk, Thin Lizzy, Visage, fronting new wave band Ultra Vox, co-founding Band-Aid and Live-Aid with Bob Geldof, and co-writing the holiday classic, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

“I don’t have many famous artist friends, it’s quite hard to do that, but Midge is definitely one of them,” said Jones.

“He lives quite close to me in the southwest and comes to our house and we know his kids, our families know each other. He played on records of mine, and we’ve actually got quite a big history together, so I was so pleased when he said he would do this tour with me because he’s a proper legend with an incredible legacy”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA events: Howard Jones performs new album at District Live