When frontman of Stereophonics: Kelly Jones, Patty Lynn and Dwight Baker from The Wind and The Wave decide to form a band then you know that it is going to be good, very good!

All well established songwriters and musicians with years of experience, together they have birthed something incredibly special that will undoubtedly be a huge success.

With only two songs out so far (Turn This Back Around and Take It Through The Night), and whether you are a fan of Stereophonics and The Wind and The Wave or not, trust us that Far From Saints are well worth a listen. Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic songs blended with a gorgeous string of genres, we are already ridiculously excited for the album because if the two released tracks are anything to go by, then we are really in for a treat!

The debut album comes out June 16th and can be pre-ordered here. Signed CD’s and Vinyls also available on their store here.

Having already played a debut show at the Oslo in Hackney and a set at The Royal Albert Hall for The Teenage Cancer Trust, Far From Saints also have a string of shows this year including supporting Kings of Leon, Hozier, Paul Weller at Forest Live, Black Deer Festival , two sold out gigs in Leeds and Glasgow and more!

These shows will be a wonderful opportunity to see this band before they start playing large venues as headliners themselves.

We caught up with Kelly, Patty and Dwight to discuss the album, their shows and so much more! All of us on Zoom, Kelly was in London, Patty was in Austin (Texas) and Dwight was in Denver (Colorado).

The three were an absolute joy to talk with and so interesting and funny! We hope you enjoy our chat!

Hello – how are you all?

All – Very well

Patty: I am great, I get two whole hours off watching my son today. I am drinking coffee, having snacks, talking to you.

How has your week been?

Dwight: I have been on vacation so it’s been nice

Good. Well I am very excited for this new group, it’s new to us but it isn’t really new to you as you have been a group for a while now haven’t you?

Kelly: Yeah! The record was done in 2019. Then the world stopped. But yeah, it’s ready to come out and we are excited to play some shows and do some tv and radio stuff and get back together for a while yeah!

Where did the name Far From Saints come from?

Kelly: Patty found the name. We don’t know where she found it from.

Dwight: We had a board of like 100 names and Patty came in one day and said “I’ve got it!”

Patty: We had this white board and I was like writing words! You were saying (she addresses Kelly and Dwight) write them down, just like words that pop into your head. I don’t know, words that made you feel something! I was writing words and circling words and writing ideas and it was like right after lunch one day. Somewhere in the middle of those nine days in the studio and it just came to me on the walk back from lunch to the studio. I wrote it down and I was like, I think I got it and I turned it around (The board) and they were like “Yeah that’s cool”.

Kelly: A good name. Then I realised that it was FFS too and that was even better.

Hahaha, yes that didn’t escape my notice haha!

Dwight: Yeah we realised that pretty quickly so…

Please tell me you will have merchandise out with that as a logo?

Kelly: Yeah we are hoping to haha

I hope so haha. Did you have a name that you nearly went for?

Kelly: Yeah we had all our surnames, we sounded like a prog rock group from the 70’s.

Haha

Patty: We didn’t have anything that everyone was like ooh yeah! But here’s a picture of the board.

(Shows picture of the board of names, however too blurry to see)

Dwight: I thought that we should have gone with Dwight from the beginning but I also tell everyone to name their children Dwight but no one does.

Awww haha!

Kelly: It’s a strong name haha!

How was your first show? Obviously you are used to performing but how was your first show as FFS?

Kelly: It was brought forward a little early. We were planning on doing it all now (May ish) and then the opportunity to do the Royal Albert Hall came in. I think somebody pulled out and I have been doing work with the Teenage Cancer Trust for a long time. It came up for Stereophonics to do it and I said we weren’t doing shows at the moment but I said we have this other thing going on (Far From Saints) can we do that? They said we could do it. We decided then that we needed a warm up show because we didn’t want our first show to literally be walking onto the Royal Albert Hall (stage) as cool as that sounds. I think everyone would have f***ing fallen apart.

So we did a warm up show in Hackney, which was cool, in the Oslo and then the Albert Hall. The Albert Hall felt really controlled and really together, it felt really good! I really enjoyed it!

Dwight: Yeah the Hackney show felt a little bit like when you walk on stones with bare feet and you kind of go “ow”.

Kelly: or a box of lego!

Dwight: right? Haha, that’s what the first show felt like. The Royal Albert Hall felt really good.

Patty: It was good to get those jitters out!

I want to talk about Take It Through The Night because, from my perspective, it sounds like parts of it are a bit dark, haunting and cinematic and I wanted to know how the song differed from how you first wrote it to how we hear it now and did you have that sort of hypnotic chorus sound in mind when you were writing it? as it’s all the instrumentation together that make up that sound that you probably didn’t use in the writing room?

Kelly: It started with a tiny riff that I had on the phone that I gave to Dwight. Dwight went off and made it into a 70’s epic song! Then Patty wrote all the lyrics for it!

Patty: Those are probably the last words that I wrote to kind of round out this record. I wrote the lyrics, most of them anyway, sitting on the steps just outside the studio where you guys were doing something completely different (Dwight and Kelly). I remember Dwight leaning over me and saying “Patty we’re going to do this song next so you probably want to write the words”. So I stepped out and remember doing them there in the studio.

Dwight: It always had a Zepplin-y vibe to me, from the acoustic place because it has some weird kind of cashmere-y chords in the pre-chorus and stuff. Then I think Kelly and Fiona really took it all the way there. They said, “let’s take these strings and just go” Jamie’s drum part on that is really good too.

Cool. Let’s Turn This Back Around has a slight country, folk way about it! What can you tell us about the album? Can we expect a beautiful blend of genres?

Kelly: It kind of has got a blend of that really! Let’s Turn This Back Around, there’s a few songs that have those kind of flavours. There’s a lot of finger pickin’ guitar that Dwight does really well. There’s a song called We Won’t Get Out Alive that has a similar vibe and very reverby guitar that blends a kind of atmosphere to the record. Then there is another track called The Ride which is similar in vain I guess to Take It Through The Night so there’s a couple of bluesy kind of more Rock and Roll songs. The majority of it I would say is kind of hypnotic, kind of country/folk elements to it but very contemporary as well. Not trying to get anywhere just trying to represent the songs the way they were written.

Dwight: If you love Turn This Back Around, you will love this whole record. It really is kind of a little bit of everything that’s on the record is on that song.

Oh cool!

Patty: It’s kind of exactly what you said when we were in the studio, I think we were in the studio? When you said “we don’t really know where this is going but going there feels good” we weren’t really following any set of rules or looking at a map or aiming towards any particular place but we were just kind of following the feeling and whatever felt good!

Did you all get involved in the production of the record?

Kelly: Yeah we did!

Dwight: Everyone just kind of said ideas and we tried them!

Kelly: Patty chained me to the chair once to finish the guitar solo the way that she wanted!

Patty: Yeah I almost wrote an entire guitar riff

Kelly: Unfortunately that song was too cheery for the record so we never got to use it but the guitar solo was not cheery, she darkened it up but we never got to use it.

Dwight: Yeah Patty will once a record go “I don’t like what you’re doing there” and you’re like “ok, what do you want me to do?” And she will say “Not that” hahaha

Kelly: yeah so go work it out haha!

I love the strings on Let’s Turn This Back Around. Did you get to use those at The Royal Albert Hall?

Kelly: we did not! But we are going to use them on the Jools Holland Show!

Ooh

Kelly: Yeah I was talking to Fiona this morning. So Fiona Brice is an arranger I first used on a very very independent solo record that I made on 2007 when our record company was being sold. She had been doing a lot with Placebo and stuff like that, so I knew she was doing arrangements that were kind of to the left! Not traditional stuff. She was great so she is gonna do the Jools Holland show but we never had the opportunity to bring the strings section to The Royal Albert Hall. Maybe one day if we do our own show at The Albert Hall we can take a strings section. I have been wanting to take a strings section to the Albert Hall for a long time and I still haven’t f****** done it!

You have said that this is an album that is meant to be listened to from start to finish. How do you determine the track-listing order and is it done in a certain way on this album to make it somewhat of a story, whether that be lyrically, sonically or both?

Kelly: The original stream that I delivered to the record company or even before the record company to get a record deal, I didn’t give anybody individual songs, I gave them a stream of a 50 minute album because I didn’t want them to sift through to find a single because it’s not that type of record so! I felt that the album worked as a whole piece and a body of work. The running order as well takes you on a bit of a journey! It’s important to me, it’s important to what we feel the audience of the record would be. I also know that people haven’t got a lot of time these days, particularly business people etcetera, so I just wanted them to suck up the atmosphere of what the album was and it worked really. A lot of people took an interest in the record in that way anyway. I am sure people will skip tracks and pick their individual favourites and all the rest of it but I feel it is in album’s album and if you put it on when you are driving your car, you will want to listen to the whole record driving around or on a train journey or whatever you are doing!

Patty: I feel that the people really care and appreciate the thought on that; songs and transitions and arcs of albums and how the track listing is. People who care about that really appreciate that and the people who don’t it’s inconsequential. The songs are good on their own too. However you come by it or want to listen to is fine by me.

I love albums and care about the order so am looking forward to having a good listen. I will get the CD for the car (yes still have a cd player there) and a Vinyl as collect Vinyl.

Kelly: It’s great on vinyl, the way that it starts and ends, the vinyl works really good.

Dwight: It sounds really good on the vinyl.

What was the first song that you wrote together and is it on the album?

Kelly: My memory of the first song we wrote together was in the dressing room of Bath and it was Screaming Hallelujah where we had a bit of a warm up set up in the dressing room. That is on the album, it’s the first track and is the next single. It may not actually be the first song that was written but it was the first song that we sat down together to try to do something together, that’s my memory.

Dwight: Your first co-write (addresses Kelly)

Kelly: Yeah! Exactly! The first time I had ever written with anybody!

Oh gosh! What song took the longest or quickest or were they all pretty similar?

Dwight: Turn This Back Around probably took the longest to figure out just because there’s a middle aid that is basically ….

Kelly: Three songs haha

Dwight: it’s almost a key change and then there’s two tempo changes and then a return back to tempo at the end. Those type of songs are sort of a puzzle. The rest of the album came pretty quickly and kind of figured themselves out pretty easily to be honest.

Is there a particular song that you are excited for people to hear? Or excited about anything else?

Kelly: I am really excited for somebody to have the vinyl in their hands with the vinyl cover and all the artwork and just look at the thing and listen to it as a thing. Me as well, I am looking forward to that experience myself! Just to actually realise that it has happened.

I will definitely be buying a Vinyl. I am coming to see you at Westonbirt Arboretum when you support Paul Weller. I am really looking forward to that, it’s a beautiful setting!

Kelly: Is that the Forest Live shows?

Yeah!

Kelly: I did one of those shows as Stereophonics. You guys did it with us? (Kelly addresses Dwight and Patty as The Wind and The Wave).

Dwight: Yeah, we did Thetford with you! That’s an amazing place! I love that place!

Patty: The Eden Project too, I am looking forward to that!

Oh that’s cool!

Patty: I am looking forward to just seeing what people gravitate to and why because everyone is so different.

You are all the sole writers on this album aren’t you? You haven’t brought in any outside writers?

Kelly: Yes it’s just the three of us.

Have any close family or friends listened to the album yet and if so, do they have favourites?

Kelly: Justin our new guitar player live, he plays it for the whole family. He plays it for the kids when they go to bed, plays it to them when they go to school.

Dwight: They are super fans yeah!

Kelly: his two daughters who are about this big (small) they really like it!

Patty: Kevin, my husband, I think he really likes The Ride!

Dwight: My wife is not a fan, she just likes me but never really listens to my music.

Haha

Dwight: and my kids are 21 and 17 and they could give a shit less about what I am doing haha!

Kelly: I can say that that is exactly the same in my house! If I could get a track in between Matilda and any f****** musical theatre song in my house then I’d be lucky!

All laugh

Kelly: Nobody cares about what I do in my house haha!

Dwight: Yeah! I go “have you heard the new single?” And my son would go “yeah well have you heard the new Strokes record?” And I am like oh well, no!

All laugh!

You have said that our record collection will thank us if we get the vinyl album. So I want to know what the most rarest or most special record that you have in your collection.

Kelly: Oh….

Dwight: I have an original copy of Abraxas by Santana which was a record that I first learned to play drums on when I was 6 and 7 years old with big giant Mickey Mouse head phones. I had to try and get them extended far enough to where the record wouldn’t skip when I played the drums along with it! I still have that record! It was my step-fathers. I love that record!

Kelly: My brother had that cassette in his bedroom and to this day I never knew how the f*** to say that title (Abraxas). Oye Como Va (song on album)

Dwight: that song and Hope You’re Feeling Better, I mean there are some incredible songs on that record. Re visit it Kelly, you will actually be blown away!

Patty: I have a very old copy of Rise and Shine by Raffi, so….pretty much have you guys beat!

Kelly: You do!

Dwight: Yeah pretty much, you got us!

Kelly: I have for the 7” of 2 Minutes to Midnight by Iron Maiden! Haha! I’ve got a Red Vinyl of Ace of Spades by Motörhead.

A Wind and The Wave question: I am a fan of the show Nashville and have read you have songs in Season 4 but despite research, I can’t find which songs.

Patty: I wouldn’t be able to tell you that…

Dwight: Our big shows in America are 1000 people so we have never been playing giant arenas and stuff so we were able to exist for a long time getting songs on tv which in America, pays a lot of money. We actually had a really good publisher early on that got us 100’s (songs on tv shows) we have no idea but we are grateful they used it and cut a cheque haha!

You will have a great time playing Black Deer Festival. It’s such a special festival unlike no other. It’s so chilled out! Will you get to hang out and see any acts?

Kelly: I hope so!

Dwight: It’s a good line up!

Kelly: I would have liked to have seen The Pretenders but they are on a different day to us. I am looking forward to going and having a walk around!

Dwight: Lucinda Williams and Nathaniel Rateliff. There’s a bunch of really good acts that day!

Patty: I would like to see Kurt Vile (& the violators) is he on our day?

Dwight: Yeah he is great!

Well thank you so much for talking today, I really appreciate it and very much look forward to seeing you at Forest Live and getting the album on June 16th!

All – Thank you Hannah!