There are records that capture a moment, and then there are records that change the direction of a band's life. For Stone Foundation, Street Rituals was emphatically the latter.
In 2027, Neil Jones and Neil Sheasby celebrate ten years since the release of the album that took the soul, determination and sheer bloody-minded persistence of Stone Foundation and carried it to a much wider audience. And to mark that anniversary, they are bringing the songs back to Barnoldswick Music & Arts Centre for something rather different: a special quartet performance, stripping Street Rituals back to its bones and rediscovering the songs at close quarters, alongside a selection of Stone Foundation fan favourites.
This isn't about attempting to recreate the record note-for-note. It is about getting underneath it.
Because before Street Rituals, before the acclaim and before Paul Weller entered the story, there were the two Neils.
Jones and Sheasby are the constants at the heart of Stone Foundation — two songwriters and friends who spent years building their music the old-fashioned way. Writing. Rehearsing. Driving. Gigging. Making records when they could afford to make them and refusing to disappear when the easier option would have been to call it a day.
Their songwriting partnership is particularly fascinating because they don't necessarily arrive at a song from the same direction. Jones has described himself as approaching songs more conventionally with a guitar, while Sheasby might arrive with fragments, ideas and recordings captured on a Dictaphone. Those different instincts meet somewhere in the middle, each Neil pushing and reshaping the other's ideas.
And then came the phone call. Paul Weller had been listening.
Weller had heard Stone Foundation's previous album, A Life Unlimited, and liked what he heard enough to make contact. What began as an invitation to work on a demo became "The Limit Of A Man", and that initial exchange quickly grew into something much bigger. Stone Foundation were invited into Weller's Black Barn Studios, and before long they weren't simply working on a song together — they were making an album.
The significance of that relationship shouldn't be underestimated, particularly for Sheasby. He has spoken about The Jam being a fundamental reason he picked up an instrument and formed a band, while The Style Council subsequently became another huge part of his musical world. Suddenly, one of the musicians who had helped inspire the entire journey was standing alongside the two Neils in the studio.
But Weller wasn't there simply to lend a famous name to the sleeve.
He produced Street Rituals at Black Barn and contributed to every track, playing guitar and piano and adding vocals. He shared lead vocals with Jones on material including the title track and took the lead on the sublime "Your Balloon Is Rising." Weller also shares writing credits with Jones and Sheasby on "The Limit Of A Man" and "The Colour Of…". Sheasby later summed up the extent of his involvement by saying that Weller effectively became part of the band during those sessions.
That involvement matters because Street Rituals never sounded like Stone Foundation dressing themselves in somebody else's clothes. Weller appeared to recognise something already present in Jones and Sheasby's writing and helped bring it into sharper focus.
The two Neils were reaching back towards the socially conscious soul records that had shaped them — Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and that early-'70s intersection where beautiful melodies, street-level observation and serious subject matter could occupy the same three or four minutes. Jones specifically recalled wanting that early-'70s soul atmosphere and social commentary when they made the record.
Released on 31 March 2017, the ten-track Street Rituals became Stone Foundation's fourth studio album. It reached the UK Top 30 and No.2 on the independent chart, giving years of perseverance a remarkable sense of vindication.
But chart positions only tell part of its story.
Listen again ten years later and Street Rituals still feels wonderfully human. There is warmth in it. Optimism and uncertainty sit side by side. There are grooves that nod backwards without ever becoming museum pieces and lyrics concerned with people, relationships, society and the world immediately outside the window.
Most importantly, you can hear Jones and Sheasby at the centre of it.
And that is what makes these anniversary performances at Barnoldswick particularly intriguing.
Rather than arriving with the full-scale Stone Foundation live machine, the band will perform as a quartet, taking songs from Street Rituals and pulling them apart before putting them back together in a more intimate form.
Stripped down. Up close. Different arrangements. Space around the songs.
It offers the chance to hear the writing itself — the melodies, words, chord changes and little details that can sometimes be hidden inside the glorious rush of a full-band soul performance.
Alongside those Street Rituals songs will come fan favourites from across the Stone Foundation catalogue, making these shows as much a celebration of the road travelled by Jones and Sheasby as they are an anniversary concert.
And there could hardly be a more appropriate place to do it than Barnoldswick.
With an audience only feet away from the musicians, there is nowhere for songs to hide. Every lyric matters. Every musical exchange can be seen. What was created at Black Barn a decade ago can be returned to the simplicity from which most great songs originally emerge — people in a room, instruments in their hands, listening to one another.
For Jones and Sheasby, perhaps there is something beautifully circular about that.
Two men who spent years following their instincts eventually found themselves making a record with one of the musicians who had helped inspire those instincts in the first place. Weller didn't manufacture Stone Foundation's identity; he recognised it, encouraged it and helped the two Neils capture a record that became a landmark in their story.
Ten years later, they're going back to those songs.
Not to polish the museum piece.
To open it up again.
Special intimate quartet performances
Barnoldswick Music & Arts Centre
Featuring stripped-down interpretations of songs from Street Rituals alongside Stone Foundation fan favourites.
Two Neils. Four musicians. Sixty people in the room. Ten years of Street Rituals.
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