Wishbone has always come back to playing shuffles, and Roger and I were conscious of that in coming up with this music. We introduced the groove to Ted Turner during a visit he made to Connecticut, and he was inspired to try some slide parts that Roger later took over. We demoed the track at North Shore Studios in Ridgefield CT, in between fishing expeditions on a nearby lake. During Ted's visit, he and I put the lyric together. The original chorus was,"You got me hanging by my fingernails", which was an unpleasant image, to say the least!

The lyrical concept of the verses is all about being responsible for one's own actions, and about the struggle of being really, positively, alive. The chorus was changed to "You're on your own", which became even more apt later when Ted bailed out of the recording project! The imagery of this song is very graphic - I love it. It would be a great inspiration for a video. Roger does a great job on the lap steel guitar, and Tony turns in one of his best performances on the album.

This is another monster riff from the chicken coop! It reminds me of Cream's "Politician", and has what Miles Copeland used to call a "bull demon" of a chorus. Mike Sturgis came up with a great groove on this, and there is a huge harmony lead guitar ending to the song, with the Flying V and Gibson ES345 Stereo in full throttle. Tony lays down an impassioned vocal, and there are some interesting back-up harmonies by Roger and yours truly.

Lyrically, this song follows on from the last verse of "On Your Own". The title came while we were trying to figure out the heating system in one of those American hotel rooms. They have a setting called "Comfort zone" where the temperature is supposed to be most relaxing. It's not the place to set it if you want to work and keep an edge on things. Musicians are notorious for getting itchy feet when Life and relationships become too comfortable, so this song is in the first person, about not falling into the trap of complacency.

This song celebrates the coming of the Millenium. It asks questions about the coming spirituality and enhanced awareness of that event, maybe even about the Second Coming. It has a very optimistic, "up", vibe, and the title came from a phrase I heard on a radio program. I had a brainstorming session with Roger, and he went off and wrote the lyric. He put together the music on a little cassette portastudio at home, although we had tried out the main riff during sound checks while on tour. By our standards, "1,000 Years" is a short song. We felt that was needed by way of a change from the rest of the album. Check out the Beatles' influence on the bridge section!

This was one of the first songs we put together. It is largely a Roger Filgate production, although I collaborated on the lyrics and guitar parts. It's about a situation a lot of people can relate to, where one partner takes off into a new life or career and leaves an embittered mate behind. It's something a lot of men experience these days, a kind of `90's dilemma if you will.

It's a very melodic piece, with an emotional chorus that suits Tony's voice perfectly. We previewed it on stage during our `95 U.K. tour, and many people commented on its being very "radio friendly". We used just about every guitar in our arsenal on this one, including the Gibsons, Stratocaster, Music Man, Rickenbacker 12-string, and assorted vintage acoustics.

This track has a great groove, and gives us plenty of space to stretch out, guitarwise. In fact, the whole song is a lighthearted excuse to show the new "twins" off in their element. It starts with a Filgate-inspired riff with a slow shuffle feel. My contribution comes in the chorus, and the song climaxes with an all-out, heads down guitarfest before letting the audience down easily through a repeat of the opening figure.

Musically the song has a very American feel, which tends to put off some of our die-hard British fans. But since we are truly a trans-Atlantic band, I think we deserve that license. We've kept Roger on the left and myself on the right for the twin passages, but for solos the guitarist moves centre stereo, much the way it happens onstage.

This is a Filgate/Kishman song that explores the nature of the outsider in society. There are a lot of guys in this country who were promised things that the government never delivered. Some Viet Nam vets and other disaffected groups can be found living in the backwoods of small-town U.S.A. They harbor deep feelings of resentment for one reason or another - they are the "mystery men".

Roger really lets it rip on the lap steel here, the song being written primarily on that instrument. I supply the quirky chords on the solo section, where Mike's interpretation blends nicely with some of Roger's dissonant slide licks. We made a real effort to create a straightforward rock song on this one, since we realised that many of the songs were becoming mini-epics. That's always a danger with songs written by guitarists - we can never stop playing the damn guitars!

Seriously though, I hope there is enough guitar work here to satisfy everybody. We wanted to take things firmly back to that concept. Although there are keyboard parts throughout the album, played by Mike Mindel and Mark Templeton, we tried to use them to enhance, rather than dominate, the music. After all, this band is about guitars!

Just as an aside, I got to use Roy Buchanon's 1952 Stratocaster on my solos for this one. This guitar has been a special favorite of mine ever since I acquired it in the early `70's, and it has made an appearance on lots of Wishbone albums since then.

"The Ring" harks back to an earlier set of influences in Wishbone's career. Being largely an acoustic song, it has a very British flavour. The song was inspired, like others in the past, by folklore - Scottish folklore, to be precise. I was reading a book on the legends of the Scottish clans, and set the words to a piece of music I had in mind. Roger collaborated on the choruses and part of the middle section, and Tony did a really nice job of interpreting the lyric.

All the old hallmarks are there: harmony guitars, melody, emotion, and a strong folk influence. We first started work on this song in the spring of `93, at another rural retreat in darkest Connecticut. We were in a small demo studio constructed in a massive old barn in the backwoods of Redding, where our writing partners were pigeons and swallows. The barn's owner (and purveyor of the concept of "Mind Milk") was a local artist and eccentric named Don Messer. Some time later, he threw a party for us in his backyard, where Roger and I were joined by Ted Turner and the band Blue Law, a house-rockin' blues band I have been gigging with. The fact that the police were called to bring things to a halt (a small noise problem!) just added to the day, which left us all with some good memories.

I'd like to draw attention at this point to the bass lines on the album, which are an integral part of the music as always. Due to the restrictions of time and geography (Tony lives in Arizona, and his wife was "heavy with child" when we were recording) the parts were written here in Connecticut. Roger did a first-rate job of recreating the classic Wishbone bass sound, and provided some truly virtuoso playing on a vintage Rickenbacker bass.

In the same way that "Mountainside" cried out to be the opening track on this album, "Wait Out the Storm" had to be the closing one. It's a song about keeping the faith, sticking to a plan - really the story of the making of this album! It has a mixture of Celtic and Middle Eastern elements to it, as well as an almost-reggae middle section added by Andy Pyle (who was present when I first laid down the main riff).

Roger and I originally cut this song in a small studio called Active, in Greenwich Village. At that time I was doing the vocal. We re-recorded it at Studio Unicorn using Tony, which gives it a consistency with the other songs. The mandolin makes a brief appearance, and this is one of the few Ash songs without a guitar solo.

The bulk of this recording has been done in the States. Paul Avgerinos of Studio Unicorn was at the controls for the overdubs, and John Etchels engineered the drum tracks and some of the bass ones. The exceptions are "Mountainside", "Top of the World", "On Your Own", and "Tales of the Wise", which were recorded at Element Studios on a little island in the River Thames. John Etchels engineered those as well. The studio is run by Jody Sherry, who inherited it from his father John Sherry. John managed Wishbone and was our booking agent for many years. He passed away in 1994, and we'd like to dedicate this album to his memory. He was to have been involved in this whole project, but sadly, that was not the case. He was on the sidelines cheering us on in the early stages, and I think he would have gotten a kick out of it now that it's finished. No doubt he's still cheering us on!