In 2013, Patty Lynn and Dwight Baker, the Austin, Texas, duo The Wind and the Wave opened for Welsh rockers Stereophonics and bonded over a mutual musical kinship. Several years later, the two parties would reconnect when Stereophonics singer Kelly Jones asked the pair to open up for him on his solo tour in 2019.
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Over the course of the U.K. tour, Jones, Lynn, and Baker were cemented in their musical recollections, memories, and a performance they shared – a cover of Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks‘ 1981 duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” Soon after, the trio found themselves writing an album-worth of songs wherever they could on the road.
“We started to watch each other live and decided to do a song together on stage, which was the Tom Petty-Stevie Knicks track,” Jones told American Songwriter. “Then, we started writing in dressing rooms, swapping ideas late at night, and in emails, and it quickly gathered speed.”
The Wind and the Wave would later open for Stereophonics at the O2 Arena in London on March 6, 2020, just weeks before the pandemic shutdown. This blockage of time forced the trio, already calling themselves Far From Saints, to hold off releasing their self-titled debut, which they had finished recording in 2019.
Written and produced by the band, and mixed by Al Clay, who has worked with Stereophonics and Jones (solo), along with Blur, Pixies, and P!nk, among other artists, Far From Saints continues the threesome’s musical journey together. Like an extended offshoot of their fateful Petty-Nicks duet, Far From Saints crosses into their own stories of transitions and growth, and meeting all the unexpected in life.
Soaking up a sweeping Americana repertoire on the opening track “Screaming Hallelujah” and “Faded Black Tattoo,” the album curves into more Southern rock with “Take It Through The Night” and “The Ride.” Cascading around Jones and Lynn’s vocal consonance, more pieces of balladry beam on “Let’s Turn This Back Around,” “Gonna Find What’s Killing Me” and on through “Let the Light Shine Over You” and closing “Own It.”
With each member emerging from different musical backgrounds — Jones’ Stereophonics Brit-pop and The Wind and the Wave’s more country folk-pop — the three met somewhere in the middle and centered around something soulful.
“I think it is really interesting because I especially come from a very different world from Dwight and Kelly,” said Lynn. “They have some years on me, a lot of experiences, and also come from a different world, musically. I think it’s the commonalities in all those different things that find their way together because writing together was actually a very simple, very natural, and easy process.”
Through the songwriting process, all three would finish one another’s sentences in a sense, and work off of experiences and other stories that were beginning to take shape with Jones and Lynn and Baker, who also plays acoustic guitar, bouncing ideas back and forth.
“If Patty was feeling something, she would start a verse or something,” shared Jones. “At one point, she was writing about some friends of hers going through some experiences, which I think she related to her own relationship, and then I was responding to Patty’s lines, and then these things unraveled and became something unique in themselves.”
“Screaming, Hallelujah” is one song that came from Jones and Lynn’s cross-pollination of lyrics. “That was something very personal to me,” said Jones of the track. “Then Patty answered it a bit, and we combined [it] in the choruses, so it’s interesting how a lot of the time we both talk about very different things, but for some reason the thread and the feeling of what Pat’s going through, or what I was going through glued themselves together.”
Lynn added, “I feel like we were all in this state of flow because I think you were inspired by something new and different, and that ignited something in Dwight, and he was just rolling in ideas. He would throw something my way, and I’d get a verse down and send it over to Kelly to see what he thought, melodically lyrically. Sometimes, 10 minutes later he would send back a second verse and I was like, ‘What the fuck? That was too fast.’”
Between Jones’ swifter response and Lynn’s more slow-marinated writing process, the varied streaks of writing somehow complemented each other. “I get these bursts, and I just write them down, but then I go back and I sort of craft and mold them a little bit, refine them, and you’re [to Jones] just so off the cuff and just free with it. You’re seemingly just unafraid, just jumping off the cliff and I’m like “Wait, you forgot the parachute.”
For more than 25 years with Stereophonics, and through the band’s 12 albums, Jones insists he’s always worked at this speed. “I’ve kind of always written like that,” he said. “I try to keep the demos that I write. If I sit at a piano and just write an idea, and it all comes out all over the place, I try to keep those nuances, the wrong ones as much as the ones that are right, because sometimes those imperfections are the gold.”
He added, “It’s a completely different process because now I don’t really care about a radio hit. Obviously, in my 20s and 30s, I wanted the band to be really successful, but it’s a different set of rules now. I’m just not in that place anymore. I want to write bodies of work that mean something to me at the particular time I’m writing them.”
Lynn, who released her seventh album, Racing Hearts, with The Wind and the Wave in 2022, says songwriting is always about keeping the “spigot” open. “The songwriting muscle is like any other muscle,” she said. “You have to keep the spigot open, keep the water dripping so your pipes don’t freeze. Sometimes total bullshit can come out, but that’s good. Get it out, because it makes way for the good stuff.”
For Jones, who released Oochya! in 2022, Stereophonics’ 12th album, the collection of songs on Far From Saints is one he still enjoys, even after spending several years of sitting with the material.
“I’m really proud of the fact that the way we felt about the project at the time we did it, we still feel that way now,” shared Jones. “I feel like a fan of the record because I’ve been listening to it on and off for so long. It could have quite easily been something that felt cool at the time, and then it could have just completely lost the interest of all of us, but it hasn’t. This is one record I can listen to from beginning to end, and I don’t really want to change anything, which is a fucking rarity.”
Whether the trio will move forward with another project in the future is a possibility. Right now, Lynn is just living with the music Far From Saints has created.
“It’s about trying to stay in the moment and not dwelling too much on the past or hanging on too much to the future,” said Lynn. “I’m trying to take every little thing just for what it is in the moment, appreciating the beauty, and feeling everything authentically. I’m trying to trust the universe along the way, which is much easier said than done.”
Photo: Sophia French / Courtesy of Stunt Company
