“Pound It Out," the opening track, begins with the unaccompanied notes of a Hammond organ, an instrument whose quavering sound was integral to the records Jones made in the 1960s, both as part of Booker T & the MGs and as part of the Stax Records house band that backed Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, among many others.
Recorded in a converted movie theater in Memphis, Tenn., the hundreds of songs Jones cut for Stax were saturated in Southern grit and sweat, a sound that came to define and occasionally constrain his career. But Potato Hole, his first solo album in almost two decades, due out April 21, announces its intention to depart from that template right off the bat. Jones' opening riff is met with a thundering triple-guitar blast, courtesy of Southern rockers the Drive-By Truckers, who back Jones on all of the album's 10 tracks.
The muscular back-and-forth serves as a statement of purpose, heralding an album as likely to feature the echoing crunch of Neil Young's lead guitar -- which is heard on all but one song -- as Jones' trademark trill. That harder-edged sound will be on full display when Jones, with the Truckers in tow, takes a series of festival stages this year, beginning with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday and followed by the New Orleans jazz fest and Tennessee's Bonnaroo in June.
“It takes a little bit of courage to change your configuration, to actually step out and show your real self in the music business," said Jones, sipping green tea in a Manhattan cafe. “I always loved blues, I always loved jazz, I always loved country, I always loved R&B, and I always loved rock. This is just a part of me that never got to come out before."
Jones, who played his first Stax session at age 16, always has been a musical polymath. In addition to piano and organ, he learned saxophone and trombone while still in high school, and at the height of Stax's success, he took weekdays off to complete a degree in classical music.
Released in 1962, Booker T & the MGs' “Green Onions" was a major hit and enabled the front man and his band to record and tour as an instrumental quartet for most of the next decade. But Jones began to feel stifled by Stax's signature sound, and after the ambitious McLemore Avenue, an album-length tribute to the Beatles' Abbey Road, and the jazz-tinged “Melting Pot" met with tepid receptions, he quit the group and the label he had come to regard as a surrogate family.
