And the Hello and welcome to So Dijaker on Songwriting, episode 128.

This is Brian here with Simon, and joining us today

is an English singer, songwriter and keyboard virtuoso,

who first emerged on the British pop music scene

in the early 80s with his catchy, thoughtful,

unyieldingly positive songwriting, energetic life performances and pioneering use of synthesizers.

To date, he sold over 8 million albums across the globe.

As we record this, he's just reissued his first two classic solo albums,

Humans Lib and Dream Into Action via Cherry Red Records,

into Lux editions generously loaded with extras. We are very happy to welcome the brilliant

Howard Jones to the show. We travelled down to Somerset back in early October to meet with

Howard at his beautiful home and had a wonderful time chatting with him.

He showed us around his home studio where he keeps all his vintage scents and his gorgeous

Steinway grand piano and afterwards his lovely wife Jan made us lunch and it was truly one of the most pleasant experiences we've had doing the show.

It really was, wasn't it?

And then he saw us off by giving us a deluxe box set of his last album as well.

What a guy.

Very generous indeed. Our guest was born

John Howard Jones in 1955 in Southampton, England and started learning the piano at

age 7. His family moved around a bit during his youth living in Cardiff, then Buckinghamshire,

and then relocated to Canada when Howard was a teenager, where he joined his first band, age 14.

Returning to British Shores, Howard attended the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in the late 70s and played in various bands and even DJed on Piccadilly radio in his spare time.

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