JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys Fall Tour

After wrapping up a handful of dates supporting Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and her new band – JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys – are hitting the road next month for a U.S. headlining tour.

The JP in Hynde’s new six-piece band is a 31-year-old Welsh singer-songwriter named JP Jones.

Hynde and Jones met at a party in London in November 2008. While Hynde toured with The Pretenders, Jones sent her song ideas and texts, suggesting that they “could make a great album together.”

The duo ended up taking a spontaneous trip to Cuba where they wrote the bulk of their debut album from a suite atop the Hotel Nacional de Cuba overlooking Havana.

“We just went on a whim,” Jones told IFC.com. “I took a guitar; I take one everywhere. We didn’t even talk or think about writing an album. We just ended up being there, and we realized how we felt about each other, but this age gap between us – we can’t be together and start a family. So we just kind of wrote songs to each other in the hotel suite in Havana about it, and crying.”

Photo: Doug Seymour
WXPN Non-Comm, World Cafe Live, Philadelphia, Pa.

JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys’ full-length debut, Fidelity!, is set for release Aug. 24 on their own label, La Mina, through a partnership with Rocket Science.

“We really didn’t know that we would, you know, get along so well and realize that our relationship had to be confined to being in a band together and it couldn’t really be anything else,” Hynde told IFC.com. “We had to take it on the chin and that’s what came out of it, this album.”

The fall headlining tour begins Sept. 17 at Atlantic Station Park in Atlanta and wraps up Oct. 28 at Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, Calif.

The band will also make stops at Nashville’s Exit/In (Sept. 18), Fillmore New York At Irving Plaza (Sept. 25), Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto (Oct. 7), Park West in Chicago (Oct. 10, Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco (Oct. 23) and House Of Blues in Anaheim, Calif. (Oct. 27).

Fans can catch Hynde and JP at this year’s Voodoo Experience at New Orleans City Park Oct. 31. See the band support Lucinda Williams on tour Aug. 17 and Aug. 24-27.

JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys will perform the single “If You Let Me” on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” Aug. 11. 

The video for “If You Let Me” was inspired by the 2008 Swedish horror film “Let the Right One In.” Check out the video below.

Click here for JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys’ website.

Click here for the IFC.com story.