Stereophonics are on stage tonight at The Wiltern Theater, on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue in Los Angeles, at the business end of an extensive North America tour, which kicked off in Montreal in mid-March and wraps up in Mexico City in a few days.

But not before the band’s head buck cat, Kelly Jones, joins Hot Press, a few hours before showtime, to chat about the band’s blasting new album, Make ‘em Laugh, Make ‘em Cry, Make ‘em Wait - their 13th long player. Is he superstitious?

“Thirteen has always been quite lucky for me,” he grins. “Actually, I came 13th in the Grand National the other day. We had a tour pool and our merchandise guy won it all.”

Thirteen Stereophonics albums not out. It’s some way back to 1997’s Word Gets Around, and its lead single ‘Local Boy In The Photograph’, the opening salvo from the Cwmaman trio and that voice.

Frontman Kelly Jones and late drummer Stuart Cable grew up on the same street, and recruited another native son, Richard Jones, before gigging the tough working man’s club and pub circuit. A gilded tour support slot with fellow Welshmen Manic Street Preachers set packs of labels on their heels, with Richard Branson’s V2 Records nabbing them.

Sophomore album Performance & Cocktails, with its iconic cover – the Scarlet Page photograph of the kissing couple under the Westway – was on the shelf of every decent record collection, and lead single ‘The Bartender And The Thief’ blared out of every respectable tavern.

The record went to Number 1 in the UK, a remarkable feat that seven more of the band’s albums have achieved since. The 2025 Stadium Tour, the band’s first run of live shows in over three years, has been billed as ‘No Hit Left Behind’. The title is bang on the money, with the setlist packed with hits and fan-favourites – ‘Dakota’, ‘Have A Nice Day’, ‘Maybe Tomorrow’,  ‘Mr. Writer’ – as well as a couple of cuts off the new record.

“We’ve only been doing the two that are out so far,” Kelly says. “When you’ve got 13 albums… We’ve got another song coming out the week after next and we’ll probably add that. Everybody’s filming everything, so I’d rather not have it that the first time somebody hears a new song is through somebody’s phone.”

Tickets to the shows are flying out the door, with over 300,000 already pocketed, and Kelly informs me that the audiences are multi-generational. After completing the North American leg of the tour, the band take an Easter break, before plunging into Europe, and arriving on these shores for three massive outdoor gigs in Belfast, Dublin and Cork.

That’s some pace and when you couple that with the current creative splurge which Mr. Jones is revelling in – between this record and Stereophonics 2022 effort Oochya!, he sandwiched in a solo record and other projects – the man is a machine.

“The Far From Saints record, which I did with my mates from Austin, Texas was an Americana record,” Kelly explains. “We co-wrote it together. So that’s one way of making a record that was very different for me, and the solo record was all played on the piano. Those songs kind of swam to the surface, and they reveal themselves to tell you which projects they are for.

“I can instantly tell what’s for the Stereophonics camp. But I’m grateful for the option to work with different musicians and learn from different people. This Stereophonics album came about quite fast. It was recorded in about two or three weeks. I had two songs – ‘Seems Like You Don’t Know Me’ and ‘Colours Of October’ – which were potentially going to be used by Universal to release a new greatest hits record, because they haven’t done one since 2008.

“But when they heard the two new songs, they suggested making a new studio record. So, I invited the boys to the studio for maybe 10 days and it was done.”

Sounds pretty effortless when you consider the impact Kelly’s songs continue to have on the masses.

“I think if people sense there’s truth and honesty in it – whether it’s ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, ‘Traffic’ or ‘Dakota’ – they know. They can feel it and they connect to it. That’s why 60,000 people sing those words back to you in a field, because they’ve gone through something similar to that feeling.

“For ‘Seems Like You Don’t Know Me’, I think everybody’s been in a relationship where the communication hits a wall, and nobody knows who they are in the relationship anymore.”

‘Backroom Boys’ could have featured on the Phonics’ debut, being as it is, a track about being young in small town Wales.

“That was a Friday night in the house,” Kelly explains. “I had a couple of beers, picked the guitar up, and it just come out in one take. I couldn’t actually believe that it happened, I’m glad I put the phone on record! It’s a song about leaving my girlfriend’s house when I was about 15 – I’m supposed to be catching the last bus home.

“But there’s a rock band playing in the local pub, and all my brother’s mates are taking the money on the door. I was always allowed to sneak in and watch the bands, because they knew I was in a band since I was 12 years of age. It was amazing to be sat in these old backrooms of pubs with grown men and grown women doing adult things.

“I was allowed to sit and watch the music and all this stuff going on around me. I was always surrounded by older people in working men’s clubs and pubs.”

Indeed, Kelly’s father Arwyn, a singer in Oscar and the Kingfishers, performed in working men’s clubs.

“I used to carry his speakers around from when I could lift them,” he recalls. “I mean being in those dress rooms, listening to people talk, and watching how somebody creates a setlist – how when they walk on nobody cares, and by the end, they’re receiving a stand ovation – that takes a craft.

‘I don’t care if you’re playing a stadium or whether you play a working man’s club – to make people who are not giving a shit, fall in love with you and not want you to leave, that’s an art. I learned that from playing those clubs.”

Further influence came from his older siblings.

“Having two older brothers,” Kelly expands, “there was lots of music around, and Stuart’s brother was playing all different sorts of music. So, we were exposed to so many musicians and styles of music. My older brother, Kevin, was always playing Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Chicken Shack, all sorts of weird stuff, so I was always listening to lots of lyrics about things I didn’t understand.

“And then there’d be Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin coming out of another room. And there’d be MOR stuff, like Foreigner and Journey, really melodic stuff, and Bruce Springsteen coming out of yet another room. When I listen to Stereophonics, it’s all in there, really – country, MOR, punk rock elements. And there’s an energy, obviously, AC/DC and the rock and roll thing.

“We were never a closed book. We’re into all of it, whether it’s Cyndi Lauper or fucking Metallica, I don’t really care. I like listening to whatever energy is being put out there.”

Indeed, the last song on the album, ‘Feeling Of Falling We Crave’, has a country hue to it.

“It has,” Kelly nods. “That could have gone on the Far From Saints record, and it was a contender for a while. Then I pulled it back and I got a guy, a friend of mine – Jason from Nashville – to play the lap steel pedal, he did an incredible job. It’s a beautiful song.”

Talk to me about the album title.

“It goes back to the setlist and working man’s clubs I was in,” says Kelly. “I didn’t want to get a job in a factory, like all my mates, so I ended up going to art school because I knew I could draw a bit. And then I ended up doing film school, screenplay writing and stuff like that, and it’s led onto lyric writing oddly.

“And one of the guys there, he wrote in my notebook, “Just make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em wait.” And I took that notion into all my setlists, and the arcs of my stories and songs. So, I thought it was time to use it as an album title.”

Credit: James D Kelly

I was reading that when you were touring with Bowie, you remarked that he would tinker with his setlist depending on what part of the States he was in.

“It was incredible,” Kelly confirms. “None of my brothers were playing Bowie records. So when Tony, our keyboard player from Manchester, introduced me to Bowie just before that tour, I wasn’t starstruck, because I wasn’t really a huge fan at the time. I really got into Hunky Dory on that tour.

“I was writing a short story, and I used the character names Hunky and Dory, and he would read my screenplay treatments and give me notes. But on the east coast, he’d be playing Trent Reznor songs, and when he’d get into middle America, he’d be whacking on ‘Let’s Dance’. It was great to watch him carving out parts of his catalogue to appeal to different parts of an audience across America, incredibly interesting.”

Let’s talk about the band’s huge upcoming Irish shows.

“We’re looking forward to getting back over there,” says Kelly. “It’s been a little while and it’s always nice to do the outdoor shows. We just threw caution to the wind, really. We just chucked a bunch of stuff on sale. No fucking idea how people are going to buy tickets these days.

“But as you can tell, the event has gone crazy. People are buying our stadium shows all over the world, and we’ve been a band that’s always been different sizes in different countries at different times. So, I’m really excited that people have bought the tickets, and we’re looking forward to getting back over and playing to the people.”

The Phonics are regular visitors to these shores.

“We’ve done anything and everything in Ireland,” Kelly confirms. “From the Witness festival to the Point, from clubs in Temple Bar right up to headlining Slane Castle – we’ve done it all over there, even played the Guinness factory. I’ve done all of them.”

The Stereophonics then make their triumphant UK return, playing stadiums across Britain, including two nights in the band’s backyard – the iconic Principality Stadium in Cardiff. Considering the awful run the Welsh rugby team are enduring, I risk bantering that when the Phonics touch down there, it will be a definite hometown win.

“Yeah,” he drily laughs, “Thanks for that. Appreciate it.”

It turns out that a young Kelly Jones was in the audience when The Rolling Stones played the then Wales national stadium, the old Cardiff Arms Park.

“I saw them on the ‘89 Urban Jungle tour,” he confirms. “I think it was the Steel Wheels album. That was a typical backroom boys story, they all took me to The Rolling Stones. I was 14. I think it was just after Keith cut his finger, so the Stones rescheduled the gig and one of the boys couldn’t go.

“I was weeding my mother’s shoe-shop garden at the time, and they said, ‘You want to come?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, fuck the weeds, I’m coming.’”

Make ‘em Laugh, Make ‘em Cry, Make ‘em Wait is out now. Stereophonics play Belsonic, Belfast on June 5; St. Anne’s Park, Dublin (6); and Virgin Media Park, Cork (7).