GLENBURN -Tom Jones is playing at a church near you.

No, not that Tom Jones. This one lives in Glenburn, not L.A. He’s an expert with the piano, not the microphone. He performs for parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Orono, not middle-aged women on vacation at the MGM Grand in Vegas.

But you’ll have to catch him when he’s not aboard the historic Delta Queen steamboat every other month, leading interdenominational services and playing the piano aboard the 76-year-old ship. Passengers travel all the way from New Orleans to Memphis, St. Paul, Chattanooga or Pittsburgh, lending an ear to Jones’ reverent discourse and ragtime ditties.

Jones, 53, is known as “Jazzou” aboard the Queen, a combination of “jazz” and “Yazoo,” a tributary of the lower Mississippi. But the adopted persona, free of celebrity attachments, hasn’t followed him to Maine, Jones said.

“It just sounds odd when I’m home for people to call me Jazzou,” he said. “It’s just the way I react, probably because I have two lives, two personalities.”

A native of Northfield, Mass., Jones has lived in Glenburn since 1991, dividing his time in Maine between serving as organist and choir director at St. Mary’s, operating his piano-tuning business, and releasing a CD of popular liturgical music, titled “Of the Heart,” in June.

Although Jones describes the album as more meditative than religious, its music reflects the spiritual fulfillment he has discovered since his conversion to Roman Catholicism, his wife’s faith, in 1975, he said. Reared a Protestant, Jones completed six months of private training with a priest and officially converted on his first wedding anniversary.

“I just had always wanted to be a Catholic. I always thought Mass was interesting,” Jones said. “What really appealed to me was the deep spiritual calling that [Mass] represented to me.”

At the time of his conversion, Jones continued to play the organ at a Protestant church while attending Catholic services. But the spiritual double-duty caused little inner strife, Jones said. Singing along to Catholic music came easily, as many of the hymns are traditional – with different lyrics, he said.

“People said Catholics didn’t sing much,” Jones said. “I found a lot more similarities than I did differences in the music.”

His approach to leading services on the Delta Queen, however, does require a change of pace, Jones said.

“You do it with a certain different type of attitude than when you’re on stage doing a stage performance,” he said. “You always have to bear in mind that people come to church to nurture their spiritual lives.”

But his audience’s intentions aren’t always quite so noble. Jones’ first piano performance aboard the Queen’s sister ship, the Mississippi Queen, in 1978 left fans of the famous lounge singer somewhat disgruntled, he said.

“They said, ‘Come to the Paddlewheel Lounge and hear Tom Jones,’ and a lot the women were disappointed,” he said. “They wanted to hear the real Tom Jones.”