It's only rock 'n' roll, but he loves it

Tim Ries may not be a household name, but the 45-year-old saxophonist has a slew of household names as sidemen on his new CD of Rolling Stones covers.

''The Rolling Stones Project" will feature folks who know the band's catalog quite well. Keith Richards, Ron Wood (who also contributed the cover art), Charlie Watts, and Darryl Jones make appearances, as does Sheryl Crow. A little more surprising are brand-name jazzers such as Bill Charlap, Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Larry Goldings, Brian Blade, John Patitucci, Ben Monder, and Luciana Souza.

And that's not to mention Norah Jones, who delivers a gorgeous version of ''Wild Horses," backed primarily by Frisell's lush, languid guitar work and the leader's soprano sax.

''Thank God she did it," says Ries by phone from Toronto, where last week the Stones were in the final stages of rehearsing for the tour that kicks off in Boston today. It'll be Ries's third tour with the group. ''The arrangement changes keys three times, and she generally doesn't like to do that. Everyone basically that night just started reading it for the first time. I said, 'Do you want to play piano?' And she said, 'Sure, I'll do both.' So she played piano and sang simultaneously, and that was the first take. She nailed it. Beautifully. She's an incredibly gifted musician."

Aside from one Ries original (''Belleli," named for his twin daughters, Isabella and Eliana), the tunes throughout the CD are as well known as the musicians covering them. ''Honky Tonk Women" gets two versions, the first put in motion by Richards's unmistakable guitar chords and the second, a swinging organ-trio take with Ries on tenor, Goldings on Hammond B3, and Watts on drums. Charlap and Patitucci are among those having at ''(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," ''Gimme Shelter, and ''Paint It Black." Frisell weighs in elsewhere on ''Waiting on a Friend" and ''Ruby Tuesday," as well as ''Belleli."

''Street Fighting Man" gets the hardest-to-recognize arrangement. Ries recast it with a Brazilian feel after watching the Stones do their hornless version of it on tour, and had Souza provide the vocals.

''One night I was backstage," Ries recalls, ''and I was hearing the melody -- 'do dee do dee do dee do dee' -- and as it happened, I was thinking the pandeiro [a tambourine-like percussion instrument]. I went back to the room that night and sat at the piano, and I immediately went to these chord changes that were totally different. And I put it in a different key, and it just flowed out."

Ries figures he's earned the right to breathe some jazz into the Stones repertoire. He was a veteran session man with several albums of his own to his credit when trombonist Michael Davis and trumpeter Kent Smith called him in 1999 about joining them in the Stones' four-piece backing horn section, along with longtime Stones sax sideman Bobby Keyes. Sunday's Fenway Park concert opens Ries's third tour with the Stones.

His first jazz cover of a Stones tune, ''Moonlight Mile," came on his previous CD, ''Alternate Side." But making a CD of jazz covers of recent pop music was something Ries had been thinking about for a long time.

''I always wanted to do a record of popular music," he explains, ''but for many, many years what I didn't want to do was a smooth-jazz version of a tune. I didn't want to be that guy who did a three-minute version of a tune and became successful, because then you actually have to show up and play it that way."

What made ''The Rolling Stones Project" different was its openness to improvisation -- ''so it's still a jazz record," says Ries -- and Ries's authentic connection to the music he was covering.

''I had the gig with the Stones," he says, ''[so] it just seemed like, ''OK, this is the right time, this is the right music, and being that I'm in the band makes it feel genuine to me."

To Frisell, too. ''He loves those guys, and he loves that music," says the guitarist, who was in town this weekend to play Scullers. ''It's not like a jazz guy slumming around with some rock guys or whatever. . . . There are other reasons for doing these things that are genuine, and I think his motives are really in a good place."

Folks here will be able to get their first live look at Ries's spin on Stones standards when he brings guitarist Ben Monder, bassist James Genus, drummer Clarence Penn, and a vocalist to be announced to the Regattabar Sept. 20, during a week off from the Stones tour. So far audiences in New York, Seattle, Toronto, Japan, and Sweden have liked what they've seen.

''It's been a really good response," Ries reports. ''And especially from Stones fans, which I was really nervous about."

Next up for Ries will be material taped in May with Frisell, Goldings, Genus, and Jack DeJohnette. The CD will be mostly Ries originals, but there'll be yet another Stones cover on it, too.

''It's mostly my stuff," says Ries, ''except we did 'You Can't Always Get What You Want,' an arrangement of that. And when we did it, Jack said, 'Oh, I think Mick's gonna like that.' "