Cynthia Jones

“I’m a dare devil,” says neo-soul gospel artist Cynthia Jones who sports an eye-catching orange Afro. “I like sky diving, white water rafting. I like to do things out of the box.” 

Indeed, she does. The founder of the Soul Patrol biker club and an expert cyclist herself, Cynthia Jones is blazing a trail for neo-soul music in the gospel world with her fourth CD Gotta Soul. Released through Kingdom Records (the company that’s produced the gold-selling Shekinah Glory Ministry), it is her first national release. 

“I want people to know that there are other genres of music that can minister to your soul other than the traditional,” she says. “As a lyricist, there is a message in my music. There’s not fillers and a bunch of fluff. There’s a message that’s causing people to convert. I’m so happy when I see the comments of people saying, ` finally, some music that I like. I didn’t know gospel could even be done as neo soul.’” 

Jones has been on the road to this moment all of her life. The middle of three children, she was born in Raleigh, NC in 1964. Her mother worked for the state and her father was a steel company employee. “Mom always wanted her kids well-rounded.,” Jones recalls. “She’s the reason I’m in music. I had piano lessons. My brother played trombone. Even if we didn’t want the lessons, she made sure we took them.” 

In spite of her parents’ focus on education, Jones didn’t feel nurtured. “I felt no one loved me,” she remembers. “I just felt weird and different from other people. I’m a big animal lover. I had 12 hamsters, pet mice, dogs. Those were my best friends. They were the ones who really loved me. I never went to the prom, games or anything. My mom did what she thought was right. I couldn’t wear pants. I was sheltered but felt unloved. “ 

Jones soon became a runaway. She and her girlfriends would stay with men they met on the street. “I just wanted to be around people who understood me,” she explains. “The guys would say, `If we take ya’ll in, ya’ll gonna have to give up something.’ I wanted to go back home. I’m so glad that God really had His angels around me because it could have been much worse.” 

Jones often flirted with suicide during her teen years. “I used to play with death all the time,” she concedes. “I’d take a blade and say how many slashes will it take to end my life? I finally said, `I don’t want to do it but I got to do it.’ I took some green pills and I started to get sleepier and sleepier. If I died that was it. At the time I didn’t care. I just wanted to disappear.” She called her pastor who sent his son and a nurse from the church to care for Jones until her father showed up. “I felt like I was on cloud 9,” she says. “I remember being in the car with him and him saying he loved me. The wind was blowing through my hair and it just felt good.” 

After graduating from high school, Jones began to work in the North Carolina library system (in a position she still maintains) while singing R&B on the weekend. Her first big concert was opening for funk band Cameo for St. Augustine’s College homecoming. Her solo repertoire consisted of songs such as Chaka Khan’s “Through the Wire” and Atlantic Starr’s “When Love

Calls.” Then, she sang with a group called the 21^st Magnitude while working on a song she’d written called “Let Me Pump Your Heart Strings” for her demo CD. The song was circulating at various record labels when Columbia Records asked if R&B singer Penny Ford of “Let Me Change Your Wicked Ways” fame could record the song. “I was like no! I wanted to record the song myself,” she laughs now. “I wasn’t thinking with a business mind. I was just thinking as an artist, not realizing that could have opened a door for me.” 

Jones eventually opened her own door when she released her first CD Almost Midnight in 2000 on her own Angel Dove Records label. It was a traditional gospel CD produced by Bernard Harris, a bass player at the church Jones attended. Harris, who has gone on to play for Aaron Neville and American Idol’s Mandisa, also produced Jones’ 2003 sophomore CD Turn to You that placed her firmly back in the R&B arena.  “I went straight back to soul which is what I love,” Jones says. “I’m not a traditional gospel artist. That just is not me. I’m not one of these artists that screams and hollers. My notes are solid and clear. So, I did my gospel with an R&B style.” 

“I write songs that deal with every day life,” Jones continues. She writes from her own experiences. “When stuff gets rough I can hear the enemy say go ahead and do it,” she says of remembering her suicidal days on the song “Testimony.” “ I sang it on a cruise and this girl said, ` I know your story because you sang my story’ and she pulled her shirt sleeve down and showed me her arms with deep gashes all down her arm. “ 

In 2005, Jones released her third CD Soulogy that showcased her neo-soul groove. “I like these women that have some substance,” Jones says of her vocal influences Chaka Khan, Anita Baker, Alicia Keys, Erykah Badu and Ledisi. Jones was promoting the CD at the En Sound independent Awards in 2007 when a DJ named Kevin James fell in love with her music. “Kevin said Kingdom Records will love this,” she recalls him saying. He was correct. Kingdom signed her and decided to reissue her CD with five new tracks. 

The new project Gotta Soul has been released to grand acclaim in neo-soul circles.

“This is one of the Top 10 neo-soul albums that I have ever heard in the history of that musical style,” says Bob Davis of soul-patrol.com. “In short, whatever you liked about the first two albums of Erykah Badu is to be found here. The album is a perfect blend of classic soul, jazz and funk with a hip hop sensibility. The groove is hypnotic, the vocals are seductive.” The title song reached #44 on the Radio & Records BDS radio airplay gospel chart and the new single “Testimony” is beginning to smoke too. 

Jones also knows how to smoke a motorcycle. She fell in love with bikes as a teenager because her brother had a Honda 750. “He would leave his keys in his bike when he parked it,” Jones says. “So one day I said, ` I’m gonna teach myself to ride this. “ She ended up crashing the bike that day but that didn’t silence her hum to ride. She eventually took lessons and bought her own bike. She eventually began riding her various bikes across the country to raise money for her favorite charities such as the March of Dimes and the Oxford Children’s Home. 

“There’s nudity. There’s a lot of cussing and stuff and some people don’t make it home. They get killed,” she explains of activities at some of the biker meets. “Being a Christian, you have to set the standard in the beginning,” she says. “ I wanted to carry banners in Christmas parades that Jesus is king and some people didn’t want that. So, I stepped down from the presidency of the Ebony Angels club. When it’s soul winning, I’m a go getter. So, I started Soul Patrol biker club and the first requirement is that you be a born again Christian. So, if I can save one person that makes it worth it. All of them won’t get saved but I can plant a seed. That’s as close to church as some of them will ever get.” Gotta soul?

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