JOSS STONE

She sings soul and loves camper vans - what more could you want?

The face says it all, she's lost her VW van. Is it just me or is there a slight resemblance in some photos between Ms Stone and Megan Fox? Yes there is, but only when the camera shades the two ladies in a certain way. You must have noticed it. Come on!

Fans of soul music will love Joss Stone, though dismissed as a precocious teen with a penchant for American soul and R&B, cos she's white and young, when she should be black and mature with that voice - which is just about the great divide - appearances - and something Joss takes umbrage at, we know.

Stone's full name is Joscelyn Eve Stoker (nickname Jossie). Any relation to Bram Stoker? We could just imagine her as a vampire femme fatale. She was 15 when she recorded her first album, "The Soul Sessions." Today she's 25 (2013) and giving evidence at the Old Bailey in London. Better giving evidence than being the evidence we say. Pity though to put poor Joss through all that.

During a tour at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival some years back, Joss and her sister stayed an extra day to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity, helping to replace homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That is the kind of thing that endears her to us. We know she'd still be there helping out, but for her musical commitments which she takes seriously.

On this page is a collection of pictures of Joss showing her wild side and collection of superb bikinis. These are the more tasteful shots. One should not forget that the body is natural, it's only our strangely developed sense of hiding equipment and pretending that we are above the basic processes of life.

One day sex will not be necessary. We'll live in a utopian society where women don't have to exercise the full potential of their bodies. Machines will do that for them, sparing their dignity, then humans will have gone full cycle. But is that true. Surely full cycle would be bionic machines with human intelligence. Okay, that's going a bit deep, when we should be listening to this talented animal, and watching her artistry as she struts her stuff. 

Joss will be the first to admit that taking love (and sex) out of the equation would be a lot less painful. But then what would her songs be about? A common theme in her new songs [written in Barbados] is romantic disappointment, as in "Bruised But Not Broken" and "What Were We Thinking." Is that not true of Adele and a hundred other singers. Of course it is. Singing about a dinner that got slightly burnt just doesn't quite stir the blood. It might work for losing a Camper though.

JOSS QUOTES

"Basically, when you're 15, there's no way that anybody's going to give you complete control over making your album," "The Soul Sessions" and "Mind, Body & Soul" - as "music lessons."

"Without those albums I would never have known how to make this one."

"You have to make mistakes. Once you've figured out what you like and what you don't like, then you're free to make something beautiful. And that's what I feel like I was free to do with this album."

"What I like about him [her director] is that he didn't try to guide me," "I don't want to be told what to do anymore. And I feel like I found somebody who understands that. He trusts what I think and he trusts my ear."

"I'm kind of like a little sponge. Because when I get around something I love, something inside me will change. If I'm around Gladys Knight or Patti LaBelle, I'll shut up and watch. And I try to learn from there."

"I lost a little faith in human beings and human love, because I felt I couldn't trust it. It just disappears, it hurts you, it doesn't look after you,"

"If you give somebody your heart, they can drop it - and they quite regularly do. And they don't care."

"I realized that the unconditional love that I can trust is music. That's the love that's never going to go away."

"We do mostly the new songs because those are the ones I'm feeling right now," Stone said. "When you sing songs so many times, it's like, 'Enough already.' But these are very fresh and I'm loving them."

"I was cuttin' wood and hammerin' - and it's all wood, too," Stone said. "In England, we don't have wooden houses, not really, and it's quite cute to see them. And they're all very colorful. We were just helping with whatever they needed."

"I recognize that I have kind of a fragile voice. I don't sing well. I don't sing technically brilliantly. I pretty much bust my voice up every night," she said. "So I have two days off in between shows to make sure I can give a good show. I don't want to disappoint."

HABITS

Joss probably doesn't know it, but she sticks her tongue out quite a bit. Nothing wrong in that, it's kinda cute, but some might interpret the wrong way.

ACTING

If she does lose her voice, she might do well acting. How about a film called: "The Search for Janice." 'Janice,' being the name of her trusty Volkswagen tour bus. Check out this story outline:-

-  THE SEARCH FOR JANICE  -

The plot is that a heartless lothario called Jake, seduces our fair maiden (Alison), a rich heiress, to chuck in her love of music in favour of lustful pursuits and endless substance experimenting. He uses his charm and bedroom skills to great effect. Alison's head turned, ditches her best friend, who she'd shared her dreams with from childhood. Eventually, our heroine loses the plot and becomes an addict, head over heels in love. When all the money from her inheritance is gone, Jake abandons the maiden in a wood miles from anywhere, taking all their modern equipment. Bounder. Our fair maiden weak and disorientated has to quickly learn to survive in the wild or die. She is a survivor and finds food and water. But she loses the plot, suffering delusions residual to the drug taking. Eventually, she finds a road and hitches a lift back to civilisation. She's a mess. After a period of hospitalisation and flushed of chemicals, she remembers striking out from her treasured tour bus, but cannot remember where. Alison reunites with her best friend Jane, who forgives her for ignoring her advice about Jake. With the money gone Jane suggests using all the songs Alison had written to begin again, the problem being that they were on the camper. The friends set out determined to find a diary and iplayer, containing all her songs and thoughts - that she'd hidden under the dashboard. The chums retrace Alison's travels, finally finding the wood and her trusty bus looking very sorry for itself. After filling the petrol tank from a jerry can [and a jump start from a local garage], the camper fires first time. Feeling under the dashboard, they find the diary and player, a huge relief. It had occurred to them that Jake may have found the stash.

A local rag hears about the camper story and during an interview with a local radio station they play one of Alison's songs from the iplayer. It goes national and tops the charts. Cue the credits, with Alison on stage at Wembley, panning to Jake hiding in the audience, a tear in his eye for the girl he loved and abandoned.

- THE END -

Okay, it's gorgonzola cheese, but it's just a 5 minute story. It could be a comedy ala Austin Powers, or it could be a feel good, two fingers is the air to the rat boyfriend kind of story - Legally Blonde was cheese on toast, but superb thanks to Reese' mastery of celluloid and a great supporting cast, but what is a 'bend and snap'? Am I going mad or was that complete twaddle. I think the latter.

JOSS STONE'S PERFECT WEEKEND NOV 21 2012

When she's not off on tour or travelling in her VW camper van miss Stone spends weekends at home in Devon with her beloved dogs, friends and family.

Country girl: Joss Stone prefers to go incognito in wellies and her VW van, Janice, when she returns home from international tours.

She says that normal weekends aren’t really happening for her at the moment. She's been touring for the past couple of months and that has taken her all over. By the time you read this, She’ll be about to do a gig in São Paulo, Brazil, and then there is Argentina and Chile to tour before things start looking a bit calmer. She is quoted as saying:-

"When I’m touring I don’t really want downtime. Even if we go to beautiful parts of the world where I’ve always wanted to go, I’d rather wait to experience them properly with my friends or family, not just by myself."

"As soon as I have time off, I’ll go straight to my favourite place in the world, my home in Devon. Being there is very grounding, especially because my house is the place where I spent my childhood. I bought it from my parents when they split up, and now I live there with my dogs and Emily, my best friend since we met at school as eight year-olds, and her baby son and boyfriend. My mum still lives down the road as well, and my younger brother Harry, who is 23 and currently training to be a game ranger and wildlife photographer in South Africa, lives with me when he comes home. People come in and out all the time, I like it nice and friendly like that."

The house still looks similar to how it did when I was little, but I’ve been messing about with it for the past couple of years so it is kind of under construction. I keep knocking walls down and building things and making funny shapes, and now I really need to get decorating – I’ve just got to find the time to do it. It is like my big old art project I suppose, a bit mad but I love it.

I don’t think I could ever live in a city, not even Exeter which is my nearest big town. The countryside just makes me feel better. I guess you love wherever your home happens to be, but for me it is the countryside where I grew up, where there is a forest just up the road and the smell is so clean and fresh. Well sometimes it can smell like cowpats, but I just feel much more healthy when I am there. The days go by so fast and I sleep so much better. It is so quiet.

I don’t really work down in Devon because there is no real studio there, so it is purely my escape where I can chill out. If I am going to record songs I usually go somewhere else, but I prefer to make music by working quickly and in a kind of off-the-cuff way so it usually only takes me a couple of weeks to make an album. That means that unless I am touring, I am not far away from my home for very long.

In a perfect weekend down in Devon all my friends would come round to my house, I’d make dinner and then everyone would just drink wine and chat. When I’m home I cook and bake a lot: sometimes I spend entire days doing it when my friends are at work. I’m always making cupcakes and cookies, or bread and muffins, so when everyone comes home they can have something nice and fresh from the oven. Baking is very therapeutic, I find.

My other absolute favourite thing to do at home is spend time with my dogs. At the moment I have four, but if I could, I’d have one of every breed. Mine are a real mix of shapes and sizes but they all get along pretty well: there is a Caucasian Ovcharka called Egor who is a bit of a beast but such a gorgeous boy. Then I’ve got Maggie, who I guess is a mix between a Collie and an Alsatian but I adopted her from Battersea Dogs Home, so I am not quite sure what she is. I also have a little Teacup Poodle called Dusty Springfield and a Rottweiler named Missy Elliot! They are all my babies and I am really, really lucky to have a big group of family and friends to take care of them when I’m not there.

Last year – or maybe the year before – I did some travelling, going around Europe for about four months in my VW camper van, which is called Janice. I took the Rottweiler and the Poodle with me, and it was the real quintessential traveller’s dream. Missy Elliot is great for protection because she can be quite fierce to other people, though she is very soft and sweet really. If ever she thought that I was being threatened, or even when a big guy comes into the room, she is definitely wary. She is not one to be messed with so I like to have her around.

I sometimes tend to stay in my house like a little hermit so my friend Rie will often call me up and make me go out to the cinema, or our lovely local pub. Whether people locally recognise me depends on whether I put make-up on or not: if I actually dress up and look nice then they do know who I am, so I try my best to look as horrible as possible. I usually just wear wellies and hoodies.

Sometimes we’ll go out to Exeter, which is a great town for music. My mum’s bar [Mama Stones] is there, and that is like another little piece of home for me just 25 minutes down the road. Mum doesn’t play any instruments or sing, she just really loves music and helps it happen. Though both of my parents liked music I suppose I got myself interested in it when I was little. I listened to all the records that were playing in the house and also anything else I could get my hands on; I didn’t really need any encouragement to love it.

My family are so important to me and I’m really close with all of them. As well as Harry I have an older brother who is 32, and a sister who is 27. When we were little our weekends used to be family outings to the beach, going in convoy with my friend Lucy’s family for a wonderful day by the sea with a huge barbecue. Croyde and Putsborough were our favourites, they are such beautiful beaches. People always think I live right beside the sea because I’m from Devon, but actually it is about half an hour away; my dad would get really annoyed with us kids on the drive over because we were so loud and irritating, and in the end he started cycling the whole way there every time we went instead! He got the great end of the deal because he’d do the drive back home, when we were all tired and quiet.

"I’m so excited about spending Christmas and January at home once this tour has finished. I’m already planning the next; in 2013 I really want to do a world tour, that’s something I’ve always dreamt of. We’re trying to organise it at the moment, especially the gig I want to do in Antarctica – whether it will happen or not I don’t know, but anything is possible!"

Well, if Joss does make it there, not only will it be chilly, but she'll be performing to the penguins. The best thing about Antarctica, is the Jameson Hunter book called Sectasaur. Well, at least the cover looks good.

JOSS STONE'S FAVOURITE THINGS

My dogs
Family
Friends
Chocolate
Sleep and cuddles
Herbal tea
My home in Devon

Q. If not a musician, what would you be?

A. I’d love to have been a vet or a nurse, but it would probably be something creative like a florist or carpenter. I want to make a chair - just one chair - in my lifetime.

Q. Best present?

A. Twelve duck eggs and an incubator! Sadly the electricity went off without me knowing, so they never hatched. But I thought it was the best gift I had been given, what a lovely thing.

Q. Who inspires you?

A. Melissa Etheridge, who has been so strong for women. But musically, Lauryn Hill.

Q. What would be your desert island disc?

A. A song that I covered on this album called I Got the Blues by Labi Siffre – the original is about 15 minutes long so it would take you longer to get bored of it.

Joss Stone’s latest album, Soul Sessions Vol 2, is out now. She is performing on the album Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, out November 26 (Sony Music).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/9694196/My-perfect-weekend-Joss-Stone-singer.html

We can't imagine anyone wanting to harm Miss Stone, even Hannibal would

share this sentiment. Rather, he might barbecue the culprits, allegedly.

MURDER TRAIL & VERDICT

One man has been jailed for life and another awaits sentence after being convicted of conspiring to rob and kill the singer Joss Stone in a plot that, at times, bordered on a sinister farce.

Kevin Liverpool, 35, and Junior Bradshaw, 32, planned to decapitate the pop star and dump her body, but were stopped by police within a few miles of her rural Devon home after a series of blunders aroused suspicions. A jury took four hours on Wednesday to convict the two of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to rob after a three-week trial at Exeter crown court.

Sentencing Liverpool to a minimum 10 years and eight months before being eligible for parole, Judge Francis Gilbert QC told him: "You intended to rob her and kill her and dump her body in the river, according to your words, and then leave the country with your accomplice Junior Bradshaw." Sentencing on Bradshaw was adjourned to a later date.

The trial heard the would-be killers crashed as they drove to the scene of their planned crime and later got lost and had to ask for directions. They made no real attempt to hide an arsenal of weapons packed in their battered old Fiat Punto and helped detectives enormously by detailing their scheme to kill the singer – real name Jocelyn Stoker – in a bundle of notes culminating in one saying: "Once Jocelyn's dead … find a river to dump her."

On the day of their capture, Stone was at home relaxing. She had recently launched her own label, Stone'd Records, and had finished her fifth album LP1 in Nashville.

The unemployed assailants – childhood friends who shared a one-bedroom flat in the Longsight area of Manchester – left home at 2am on 13 June 2011 in their newly purchased car and headed for the Cullompton area of Devon.

They were armed with a samurai sword, hammers, a metal spike and knife and equipped with balaclavas, gloves, body bags, gaffer tape and a roll of plastic bags. They also had maps showing the area where the singer lived, including one marked: "Here Joss Stone."

Stopping at a service station on the M5 in Gloucestershire at dawn, they filled up with petrol and drove off without paying. As they left the service station Bradshaw crashed into metal railings and a mechanical digger. The front of the vehicle was badly damaged and Gloucestershire police attended. Officers said they would report the pair for motoring offences but did not believe the vehicle could be moved – and did not know they had previously left the service station without paying – so departed without searching the car.

The plot could have stopped there. But Liverpool and Bradshaw were nothing if not persistent. They got the car back on the road and arrived in Devon two hours later. However the lanes around Stone's home are narrow, complicated and confusing, and they got lost. In desperation they showed a postman a picture of Stone asking him where she lived, but he told them he did not know.

Later, three residents seeing them in their car appearing "agitated and behaving abnormally" all called police. A patrol car stopped the Fiat. The weapons and equipment were found and the pair were arrested for possessing offensive weapons and going equipped. As police searched the car more carefully – and later the men's flat in Manchester – they realised that something bigger than a robbery had been in the offing.

At the flat were a crossbow, a BB gun, and notes, one of which read: "Joscelyn [sic] Stoker … RIP for ever" and: "I don't kill just for dollars, only for good cause or reason." One mentioned decapitation and another read: "Once Jocelyn's dead … find a river to dump her." They also described her as a "she-devil" and took umbrage at her links to the monarchy (Stone has sung for the royals and was invited to Prince William's wedding). "Invited to Will's wedding by Queen. Where's the sense in that?" mused one note.

When she gave evidence, Stone told the jury she had been enjoying a "really nice" day until police banged on her door and told her they believed Liverpool and Bradshaw had been planning to rob her. It got worse when they returned later and told her that, actually, the pair had been planning to kill her.

The two refused to reveal their motivation. They did not appear to be fixated on Stone, and they did not even have copies of her CDs. Detectives have not ruled out others may have been involved.

Liverpool has previous convictions for assault and having bladed articles or knives in public places. In 2010 he was given a community sentence with a mental health requirement. Bradshaw has an IQ level often associated with a learning disability and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He has been jailed 11 times for persistently breaching a court order after being convicted of exposing himself on the steps of Leeds town hall in 2006. After he was found sleeping rough in London and appearing at the Old Bailey, he was given a hospital order, and cared for in a mental health unit in Manchester between June 2009 and April 2010. On his discharge he went to stay with Liverpool, and stopped taking his medication.

By January 2011, police believe, the conspiracy plot was hatched. The pair had no computer at the flat. Instead Liverpool used a computer at his local library to research various artists, from Girls Aloud to Beyoncé, Dizzee Rascal and Eminem, before they fixed on Stone.

Texts to contacts in Manchester found by the police showed Liverpool had tried to source semi-automatic guns, silencer and night-vision kit. Bradshaw's fingerprints were not found on any of the weapons nor could any text messages or notes relating to the plot be attributed to him directly. He told the jury he had not even heard of Joss Stone before he was arrested and was just on a "day out".

Sentencing Liverpool the judge said it was clear he had been planning to rob someone of what he "hoped would be in excess of £1m". He had chosen Stone as a "random target" because he thought she was wealthy and assumed "she was a friend of the royal family" and would be able to give them that sort of amount.

He said Liverpool had recruited Bradshaw into the scheme. "It may have been … 'a crazy scheme from a crazy person and must be likely to fail' but when you decided to travel from Manchester to Devon you intended to carry it out," he said. He was considering a hybrid sentence for Bradshaw, meaning he would receive a custodial sentence but would most likely serve it in a secure psychiatric unit.

Stone lived among the community where she ran an "open house" to which neighbours were encouraged to pop in. She told the court she did not have a proper lock on her door or set her alarm. "But I do now," she added.

In a statement after the verdicts, she said: "I am relieved the trial is now over and that these men are no longer in a position to cause harm to anyone".

COVER ART

Not bad. In fact very artistic, especially the flowing hair and body paint. We had our in house artist try his hand, without a brush in sight. He usually paints in oils - so forgive his excess with the mouse.

This website is Copyright © 2015 Kismet Girls Trust.   All rights reserved.  All other trademarks are hereby acknowledged.