On Stereophonics' third album, "Just Enough Education to Perform" (V2), the too-many cigarettes tenor of singer Kelly Jones' voice remains, but acoustic guitars have replaced the dirty, distorted ones.

The band canceled two planned tours of North America in 2001, but has lined up another run of dates for January.

In the noisy lounge of San Francisco's Triton Hotel, Jones and bassist Richard Jones (no relation) talked about the new record.

LiveDaily: How would you characterize your approach for this record?

Richard: Relax, take your time and do the best for the song, rather than just doing your job.

Kelly: We wanted to concentrate on the whole picture of things. We recorded the first two albums on our weeks off, basically, from touring. So this time we took six weeks to submerge ourselves in recording.

A lot has been made about the song "Mr. Writer" and the line, "I'd like to shoot you all," but I thought that song was kind of an anomaly on this record. It seemed like this record was more about travel, with songs like "Have a Nice Day," "Nice to Be Out," "Caravan Holiday" and "Vegas Two Times."

Kelly: I don't know, really. The album was written over a period of 18 months. We traveled a lot while we were writing, but I wouldn't call it an "on the road" album. You experience a lot doing that. You meet a lot of people, and you write about some of those [people] on the album. It's not a hotel-room album.

This album has a much mellower feel to it than your other records.

Kelly: It's not much mellower than the last one. "Performance and Cocktails" had three rock songs on it, this one's got two. There's a lot more space around it.

Richard: It's only our third album, as well. It's like another side of the band. We want to see what we can do.

There's a line in "Have a Nice Day" that says, "We've all become the same/We dress the same ways/Only our accents change." Is that what it's like being on tour?

Kelly: You know when you're in Europe, you know when you're in America and you know when you're in Australia--obviously, because you've been on a f---ing plane for 25 hours.

The record was originally going to be called "J.E.E.P." What happened?

Kelly: We told the record company last August we were going to call the album 'J.E.E.P' and later they told us Chrysler wouldn't let us. It's going to be called "Just Enough Education to Perform" anyways, but Chrysler had a problem with the word "J.E.E.P.," even though it's not a word. It's an acronym.

Richard: The British side of Chrysler said it was OK, but the American side said it wasn't. The record company was scared that they were going to threaten the record with an injunction to keep it out of shops. Instead of all that happening, we were just like, "Great, we'll just use the name 'Just Enough Education to Perform.'" It's pretty much exactly the same; it's just the design that's changed.

You recorded a song with Tom Jones for a TV program. What was that like?

Kelly: It was a good laugh. He asked us to write a song for his new album, but I haven't got around to doing it yet. I'd like to write something. He's great. He's got good stories. We did lots of drinking. He does one song a day and that's it. He had lots of stories about Elvis and Sinatra.

How concerned are you with breaking through in America?

Kelly: If it happens, it happens. The [spring] tour [of the U.S.] sold out every night, and it's not a massive tour, but it's a good-size tour, especially just for an acoustic show. Obviously, a lot of what we do is influenced by American artists, and we've got an audience here. There's so much radio, and it's so categorized and spread out in different states and different cities.

And we've got a new label as well; sometimes it's an advantage, sometimes it's a disadvantage. Sometimes it really works, and it works amazing, sometimes we get frustrated. In the long run, I think it's still better than being on a big corporate label like Sony, where you're on a roster with a million other bands, and you've got to compete with other bands on the label. I think in the long run, we're going to be fine, but at the moment things are tiny.