Interview: Singer Ben Jones's New Album Is Heartbreaking, Raw & Brutally Honest

Tomorrow, September 26, 2025, singer Ben Jones releases a brand new album made in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning artist Laurence Hobgood. Jones writes that the album is "a heartbreaking, raw, brutally honest representation of what Laurence and I do together" recorded live at Skywalker Sound. "Every breath, every chord, every risk we took is right there for you to hear," captured in real time.

The songs are a mix of the familiar and the unexpected: "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," "Nature Boy," "Take the Long Way Home," "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," and a few surprises. It’s 75 minutes that moves from whispers to fireworks, tied together as one continuous story.

Read a conversation with Ben about the new album and their upcoming tour dates.

How does it feel to be releasing this album?

It feels both long overdue but still deeply personal. Laurence and I recorded this back in April; we poured so much of ourselves into this project–musically, emotionally, and artistically–that finally sharing it with the world is a bit like opening a door we closed six months ago, letting people into a creative home we've since moved on from. Part of the excitement in creating the track list was the breadth of material we got to tackle. There are Broadway connections throughout—like Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “This Nearly Was Mine” from South Pacific (which only appears on the LP version), and Adam Guettel's “Build a Bridge,” a contemporary theater song that’s always moved me. There’s excitement, of course, but also a profound sense of gratitude for the journey that got us there. We both asked our fans and supporters to help us out–we raised over $50,000 on GoFundMe in order to get this done–and we're of course incredibly grateful, flabbergasted, and elated that so many of them came out of the woodwork so we could get it done. It's been incredible this summer to see the streaming numbers for the singles we've released... we've already got over 100,000 streams, and the album isn't even out until Friday.

What was important to you about recording this album, now?

Laurence and I just began collaborating less than a year ago, and from our first meeting it felt like lightning was striking. We wanted to capture the raw, spontaneous energy of our live shows in a way that could last. The music industry has shifted—recordings are no longer just souvenirs, they’re proof of concept, a way to stand out and reach new listeners, new talent bookers, new opportunities to perform. So that’s part of it, for sure… if you know any bookers or talent buyers, please send this to them! But another huge part of why now was the right moment is that we had the chance to do it at Skywalker Sound, one of the most extraordinary recording environments in the world. The room itself almost feels like a third collaborator—it’s that alive. And then to be surrounded by this Grammy Award-winning team: the trailblazing producer Leslie Ann Jones engineering, the meticulous Chris Sulit at Trading 8s Recording mixing, and the immersive audio pioneer Michael Romanowski mastering (check it out on Apple Music to hear the immersive Dolby Atmos masters Michael did for us!)—and of course, Laurence at the piano. I like to joke that I’m the only one on this project without a statue, which either means I’m out of my league or I’m the luckiest guy in the room. Either way, it raised the bar and pushed me to deliver something worthy of the company I was keeping.

When did you start collaborating with Laurence Hobgood? How did the two of you decide to create this album together?

We started working together because I had a date booked at Birdland in New York, and no one to collaborate with. All of my regular collaborators were busy! From the very beginning there was an undeniable musical chemistry. Laurence is a master at finding new colors in songs people think they already know. After enough nights where audiences kept saying, “You’ve got to record this,” we realized we needed to create an album that could capture what happens on stage between us.

What was the process of working together on this album and coming up with new arrangements for some of these songs like? How much of the arrangements are your idea versus Laurence's?

Honestly, what makes this collaboration so alive is how little is ever “fixed” on the page. Laurence is an extraordinary improviser—his instincts constantly push the music into new shapes. His motto is "Never the same way once." Ha. Every performance feels like uncharted territory, because he’ll take a familiar tune and suddenly tilt it toward a fresh groove, or shift the harmonic palette in a way that opens up a completely different emotional space. For me, the challenge—and the thrill—is to stay fully present in the moment, ready to follow where he leads and transform the vocal storytelling to match. One night a song might lean into swing; the next it might morph into a bossa nova, or even take on a gospel feel. Take “Ballad of the Sad Young Men.” It comes to us from Broadway's The Nervous Set, but in Laurence's hands it becomes something else entirely. We take it excruciatingly slow—almost like time itself is stretching—to give every word room to breathe and every ache in the lyric space to land. And then, by placing it inside a jazz setting with Laurence, the song suddenly has this elasticity: on the album it opens out into an eight-minute meditation, almost a rhapsody, where the themes of loneliness and longing are explored from every angle. For me, that’s the beauty of this collaboration—it allows a song from another era to be rediscovered, re-experienced, and refracted through the lens of today for a new audience. And instead of saying, “this part is my idea, that part is his,” the truth is: the arrangements live and breathe in the space between us, in real time. For the album itself, Laurence of course gets all the credit for arranging. We needed to lock down some sort of "definitive" version of what we do. If you're a fan of Led Zeppelin, you might understand how ludicrous the notion of "definitive" might be for some artists. What's on the record is what we did that day in the studio back in April. 

What’s coming up next for you?

We’re in the middle of a release tour, with upcoming concerts in Japan, at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and San Jose Jazz, among others. Beyond that, I’m already working on new material for future projects—both in the jazz world and in theater. I like to keep multiple creative fires burning at once.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

What I’d really add is that this album is an invitation into a nascent conversation, one that Laurence and I have been having on stage for just a little while. One that we now get to share in this more permanent form. It’s for anyone who loves great songs, whether you first encountered them through Frank Sinatra, or through Paul Simon, or through Joni Mitchell. We also see ourselves as carrying forward a tradition of duo albums that have become touchstones in jazz and popular music–albums like The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album, Play, or Ella and Oscar. Those records endure because they’re intimate, stripped-down portraits of artists in dialogue with one another, discovering something new together in real time. That’s the lineage we’re consciously stepping into with this project. On a personal level, I'm drawn to the way Joni Mitchell charts the arc of love (found, lost, mourned) on her album Both Sides Now with such honesty and poetry. In our own way, I think this album fits into that continuum: a reflection on love in all its complexity, filtered through the improvisational fire that Laurence brings to the piano and the storytelling lens that I bring as a singer. For Broadway fans especially, there are treasures here. “This Nearly Was Mine,” “Ballad of the Sad Young Men,” “Build a Bridge"–each of those songs carries the theatrical DNA of the stage, but reimagined through a jazz lens. My hope is that listeners who love Broadway will hear something both familiar and brand new in them. If there’s one thing I’d want everyone to know, it’s that this isn’t just a collection of songs. It's a diary entry; it’s our attempt to add a meaningful new chapter to the Songbook that’s still being written.

You can stream the new album on all streaming platforms here.