Combining blue-eyed soul grooves, acid jazz ambience, vintage Stax sounds and funky licks, Stone Foundation emerged as champions of modern British soul music and collaborated with legends including Paul Weller, Betty LaVette and Graham Parker. As obsessive music fans bass player Neil Sheasby and singer Neil Jones had been plugging away on the Midlands music scene since their teenage years, but got together in 2004 and set out to create their own vintage mod-inspired sound. Early albums In Our Time (2005) and Small Town Soul (2008) were experiments with Americana, rootsy twang and bluesy riffs, but they gradually evolved into a smooth, eight-piece soul outfit and things really took off for them when The Specials drummer John Bradbury spotted them playing in a small London pub and took them on a 15-date UK arena tour supporting the ska legends in 2011. They also caught a break when tourist board Visit Britain took them to Japan as representatives of the UK music scene and they ended up signed to Japanese label P-Vine for album To Find the Spirit (2014) and played to 4,000 people at the Fuji Rock Festival. Paul Weller also became a big fan, featuring on three tracks of their 2017 album Street Rituals and he helped them record follow-up Anyone, Everyone (2018) at his personal Black Barn Studio in Surrey. The album also featured English folk singer Kathryn Williams and typically captured Jones's heartfelt songwriting and the band's unashamed love of Curtis Mayfield, Dexy's Midnight Runners and Style Council. Stone Foundation followed in the 2020s with albums Is Love Enoug? (2020), Outside Looking In (2022), Standing in the Light (2023), and The Revival of Survival (2025), the latter featured contributions from Omar, J.P. Bimeni, Laville, Carmy Love and Sheree Dubois.
