America

May 17, 2012
by Andy Powell

America is an enigma in many ways. It's all things to all people. That's what I always tell my European friends. It's very hard to get to grips with it when you skim over the surface with a tour like this, frequenting fast food joints, truck stops and spending way too many hours on freeways BUT every once in a while you make these connections with the real side of it all, usually in the form of snatches of conversations, meals, bits of radio broadcasts or chance meetings and glimpses into folks' lives. And so it was during the two weeks we spent flying up and down the East Coast and then skirmishing out to the Mid West, ending our trip, slap bang in the middle of the country in Kansas City, where we had some of the most incredible barbecued ribs, chicken and pulled pork I've ever tasted (thanks to Rachel's family - and thanks to Rachel for a GREAT job on selling merchandise for us). If you've never tasted real American barbecue, you haven't lived and KC is rightly proud of its heritage in this meat capital of the US. You've got your dry rubs and wet rubs and they even have whole festivals featuring music and competitions to celebrate the art of barbecue. We played at one once near Chicago called RibFest. There were 30,000 people there!

Knuckleheads is, like its name suggests, a honky tonk BUT that would be fooling you because the band plays outside on a large stage beside the railroad tracks and the sound system is better than any honky tonk sound system I've ever heard. Talking of freight trains, these things trundled by 2 or three times during our set and let out the loudest whistles you've ever heard, completely drowning out the band, but in truth it all added to the vibe. I've heard this sound echoed in the playing of Chuck Berry who was able to emulate car horns and train whistles with his guitar licks. His daughter, Ingrid, did the same with her blues harp when she joined us on stage at Wildey Theater on the prior night. We seemed to hit a lot of places on this tour with Irish names: Fitzgerald's near Chicago and Callahan's in Berwyn Illinois, being two that really do support live music. Great nights in both of 'em.

BB Kings Club rocked to the sounds of the Ash and I'm pretty proud of the band and crew in the way that we navigated the whole New York stress thing. Tom Greenwood produced a killer sound for us at this place, as he did in many others on the tour. My son Aynsley and his girlfriend Tara came by and as usual, we had our merry band of well-wishers cheering us on the way. In some cases people joined us for whole stretches of our tour. Brits, Ian and Doreen from Chester - (I know you have been road warriors in the past but even you would admit that this was on another level this time). Atsuko and Pat, Steve and Ramona, Steve, Claudia and the gang from Milwaukee, Wally and Kathy - a great time had by all at the Ramshead Tavern in Annapolis, John and Mary - your hospitality was superb when we played in your home town of Mishawaka. Scott, I know I forgot your credit on the new CD. That's because you are a friend first and 'crew' second. (That's my excuse.) Thanks yet again for fixing our trailer door at the steel works in Youngstown, Ohio.

The band and I said our goodbyes in KC and I took the freeway home. My GPS said the journey would take around 20 hours but of course it took longer, what with gas stops and oh yes, sleep. The weather was good. I surfed radio stations, mostly NPR for news and yes, checked in with some of the inordinate number of Evangelical type radio shows. During one, we listeners were unequivocally told that there would be, in all certainty, a second coming in 1000 years and that Christ would return on an actual golden throne and this would herald in a new Creation. Quite how the two presenters could guarantee all this and secondly why they seemed so excited about it all was beyond me but that's another America. Towards the end of my journey, I seemed to be traveling through the beautiful Pocono Mountains for hours but it was quite ok, the weather being very nice. In the past, during winter, I've travelled these mountains on the notorious Interstate 80 and it can be one of the worst journeys you'll ever undertake where, it is not unusual to encounter snow, ice storms and fog all at the same time, to say nothing of the maniacal 18 wheeler truck drivers that hunt you down and pay absolutely no attention to the weather or speed limits. It's all about delivering that load on time. I once counted 11 trucks overturned or off the road during a snow storm on this highway.

We all remarked how despite the greater distances, the fatigue and work load, the band seemed to be playing much better on this tour if that's even possible. An American tour definitely shakes the dust from off your shoes and I personally can't wait to do it again in November when hopefully we'll hit the West Coast.

Wishbone back in the West Country

May 06, 2012
by Joe Crabtree

The Guildhall in St. Ives Cornwall has been added to the UK tourdates. St. Ives is one of our favorite places in the whole world and we are thrilled to be appearing there. It could well be worth taking a few days break for a date with Wishbone Ash. See you in one of the cozy pubs there or why not take in one of the great restaurants or visit the Tate Gallery on one of the great walks around town.

To see all the dates click here

Rock Chicago interview

May 04, 2012
by Joe Crabtree

Wishbone Ash is a British rock band which achieved success in the early and mid-1970s. Their popular records included Wishbone Ash (1970), Argus (1972), There’s the Rub (1974), and New England (1976). They were one of the first bands to use twin lead guitars.

Wishbone Ash are considered to be one of the major innovators of the harmony twin lead guitar format. Their contributions helped in Powell and Turner being voted “Two of the Ten Most Important Guitarists in Rock History” (Traffic magazine 1989), and part of the “Top 20 Guitarists Of All Time” (Rolling Stone). Melody Maker (1972) described Ted Turner and Andy Powell as “the most interesting two guitar team since the days when Beck and Page graced The Yardbirds”. Formed in Torquay, Devon, in 1969, out of the ashes of trio The Empty Vessels (originally known as The Torinoes, later briefly being renamed Tanglewood in 1969), which had been formed by Wishbone Ash’s founding member Martin Turner (bass & vocals) in 1963 and complemented by Steve Upton (drums and percussion) in 1966. The original Wishbone Ash line-up was completed by guitarists/vocalists Andy Powell and Ted Turner. In 1974, Ted Turner left the band, and was replaced by Laurie Wisefield.

The band continued on with strong critical and commercial success until 1980. After revolving line-ups featuring former members from King Crimson, Trapeze, and Uriah Heep, Wisefield left in 1985. In 1987, however, the original line-up reunited for several albums – Nouveau Calls, Here to Hear andStrange Affair – until 1990, when Upton quit the band. After Martin Turner was replaced in 1991, the band recorded The Ash Live in Chicago, before Ted Turner left in 1993. Above info taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishbone_Ash

I recently chatted with Andy Powell about the band and what’s going on with them.

Q: Tell me how Wishbone Ash came to be?

Andy: The band came together under the aegis of Miles Copeland. He’d seen Martin Turner together with his brother Glen and drummer, Steve Upton playing in a club in Hampstead, London. They were called Tanglewood. Guitarist Glen decided that London was too hard a nut to crack, so Miles and the other two guys started to look for a replacement and perhaps a keyboard player. I went along to an audition – I’d seen an ad in the Melody Maker Magazine looking for a positive mided individual, as did Ted Turner. The line is that no decision could be made as to which guitar player was best suited for this new outfit, so both of us were invited to Miles’ parents’ house in St. Johns Wood, London. We did some jamming together, tried a few songs and I also questioned the guys about what direction they wanted to go in. The rest is history. Both of us joined the party and a new band was born. We quickly realized that a new sound might be possible using the twin lead guitar idea. One of the first songs that Ted and I wrote was “Blind Eye.” That piece featured the guitars almost like a horn section, and it set the foundation for a methodology of working in a new way with guitars.

Q: Where did the name Wishbone Ash come from?

Andy: Two lists of names were compiled. We needed a name which would not pigeon-hole us as either heavy or light. Wishbone was on one list. I was thinking of ash trees and we put the two words Wishbone and Ash together. They sounded perfect.

Q: After all the instability with the band, how come you decided to hold it together still?

Andy: Instability? Well, compared to most bands we’ve been quite stable for major periods of time. All through the 70′s there was only one change and then through the 80′s, things were up and down a bit. The original line-up reformed for 3 albums, and then devolved again as people left one by one. This current line-up has proved very stable, with bass player Bob Skeat in his 16th year and Finland’s Muddy Manninen in his 7th year for example. All of this is to be expected in a band that has survived 43 years. Look at the Allmans, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull. It’s the same for those bands too.

Q: What was the influence behind your new release Elegant Stealth, and what was the creative process like?

Andy: We wanted to make a very democratic album. We decided to get it together in the country as we had done several times in the past. Normandy, France was the location this time. You can see the whole spontaneous process on the DVD, This is Wishbone Ash, which is a fly-on-the-wall rockumentary about the making of Elegant Stealth. Sessions ran every day for a week and all the ideas were recorded. Working this way took a little longer, but the results have been very satisfying for all of us. Later on, we refined things in our studio in Lancashire, UK. Since one of our engineer producers was German, some mixes were also done in Nuremburg. Other final mixes took place in New York.

Q: What is your favorite song that you’ve written and why?

Andy: “Ballad of the Beacon” is a song I wrote, which really sums up the ethos of a traveling band. I like it very much these days, and also “Sometime World” and any of the tracks on the Argus album, which I co-wrote with other original band members.

Q: How do you feel about Martin’s version of Wishbone Ash?

Andy: It sucks. It’s devalued the brand name, confused the market, and done him and me no favors. He came to me after 18 years away from the business and the band, and asked if I’d mind him using the name Wishbone Featuring Martin Turner. I said that was fine. The next thing we saw was this name grab thing – Martin Turner’s Wishbone Ash. It’s wrong and it’s cheesy. The fans are turned off.

Q: You are considered to be one of the greatest progressive rock bands of all time. What are your views of progressive rock music now compared to then?

Andy: The early 70′s was a golden age for experimentation, so it’s kinda hard to beat that vibe. Every band had its own distinctive sound, and don’t forget, we’d all been listening to a wonderful palette of music up to that point, and it all came out in this flowering of ideas, but in a rock format. I don’t listen to many current progressive rock bands these days, but I do like Swedish prog rockers, Plankton.

Q: Did you come from a musical family?

Andy: Not especially, although my father could get a tune out of most things. I had an aunt who was a great pianist, and would lead the family in what we called sing-songs at Christmas and so on.

Q: Many consider the album Argus to be your most popular album. How did that album come to be, and what was the songwriting process for that album?

Andy: Argus came to be, I believe, because we started to play bigger rooms, the town hall circuit in the UK, and auditoriums and festivals in the states. We needed bigger themes and simpler arrangements. These venues were crying out for that. We saw this when we opened for The Who in the USA on the Tommy tour. They wrote the book on stadium rock after all. Big statements and, in a way, this inspired the Argus album. Although, the songs were written largely on acoustic guitars, the idea was to give the music more color, more atmosphere.

Q: What does the future look like for Wishbone Ash?

Andy: A full date sheet, solid musical projects, a wonderful fan community. It’s all good. The good ship Wishbone has been a real success story and I’m very proud of that. It’s come through a lot of hard work, faith, hope and love. It’s a hell of a legacy. All the members, past and present can be proud of that.   Be sure to catch Wishbone Ash performing TWO shows at Fitzgeralds on May 4th. Their  appearance at FitzGerald’s is a CD Release for their new album, Elegant Stealth, and will be two completely  different shows with different sets — one set beginning at 7:30 and the second one at 10:00. Or, you  can buy tickets for both sets: here

From the South Bend Tribune

May 02, 2012
by Joe Crabtree

From the South Bend Tribune 
Wishbone Ash returns with ‘Elegant Stealth’ 
By Andrew S. Hughes
South Bend Tribune Sunday, April 29, 2012


When Wishbone Ash played Mishawaka’s Midway Tavern last May, the band was in the process of finishing its new studio album, then with the working title of “Searching for Satellites.” But sometime between then and its release on Nov. 25, it became “Elegant Stealth.”

“We often like puns for album titles,” guitarist Andy Powell says by telephone from his home in Connecticut. “We had one album called ‘Clan Destiny.’ ” Puns aside, he says, “Elegant Stealth” also speaks to Wishbone Ash’s identity.

“There’s a feeling that what we do now — the gig in Mishawaka kind of sums it up — is we have a global brand name, but we operate a bit under the radar,” Powell says. “We know how to make records and we believe we do it elegantly. … We just do what we do really well with quiet confidence.” That’s true of both “Elegant Stealth” and last year’s concert at the Midway, where the band plays again Thursday.

The album and last year’s concert prove that the current lineup — which has been together since 2007, when drummer Joseph Crabtree joined Powell, Manninen and bass player Bob Skeat, who had been together since 2004 — has the creativity, musicianship and tightness of the band’s original, early-’70s lineup that produced the classic 1972 album “Argus.”

“At its very basic form, we get together and make music,” Powell says about the current lineup. “It’ll touch on many different genres because as musicians we can do all things. … To be in Wishbone Ash, you have to have a broad palette.” The album kicks off with “Reason to Believe,” a forceful rocker that features Wishbone Ash’s signature twin-lead guitar approach by Powell and Jyrki “Muddy” Manninen, dynamic instrumental breaks, a catchy pop melody and fine harmony singing.

Other highlights include “Warm Tears” and its driving bass groove; the dynamic “Can’t Go It Alone” as it shifts from an almost-Celtic opening to hard rocker to a long but focused guitar solo with some Celtic fiddle fills sprinkled throughout the song; the harmony vocals and contrast between the acoustic rhythm guitar and electric lead guitar on “Give It Up”; and the early-’70s progressive rock groove that Deep Purple Hammond B-3 player Don Airey’s heavy organ washes and melodic solo provide to the instrumental “Mud-Slick.”

Lyrically, the album’s as varied as its music, hitting on such themes as the dissolved love affair of “Warm Tears,” the sympathetic portrait of the titular “Migrant Worker,” and the philosophical investigations of “Man With No Name” and “Searching for Satellites.” “Love and relationships get mined quite heavily in pop songs, and there’s a good amount of that,” Powell says. “But if you travel around, you can’t help but touch on social issues. ‘Heavy Weather’ was sparked by the number of tornadoes that were happening, but it’s really a metaphor for how to weather the stresses in a relationship.”

While the band wrote the songs for “Elegant Stealth,” a documentary film crew made “This Is Wishbone Ash: A Rockumentary,” a behind-the-scenes DVD released in early 2011. “On this album, the brief was, ‘Let’s rely on what comes out,’ ” Powell says. “That was the cornerstone for the whole project, us going into a room and seeing what popped up. … We might do another album later on this year, and it might start with a few songs being submitted to the group (instead of improvised as a foursome). There are no rules anymore.”

The band also plans to meet soon with a conductor to discuss a possible orchestral project, and Powell and Manninen have “chucked” around the idea of doing a blues album next. “We are nothing if not blues oriented,” Powell says. “Our music is all about the emotion. … There is a feeling in the band that we want to experiment.” But the band isn’t in a rush to “just put out another album” after spending two years on “Elegant Stealth.”

“We’re still in the midst of the release of ‘Elegant Stealth,’ so we’re breathing a sigh of relief that we completed it and we’re in the sales part of it,” Powell says. “I see that album as having a shelf life of a year, so there’s no reason we can’t really enjoy playing those new songs, as well as the older classic songs.”

Besides, there already is another new album available: Along with “Elegant Stealth,” Wishbone Ash concurrently released “Road Works Volume 2: Live in Hamburg,” taken from a February 2011 concert. “I think we wanted to put out a bunch of different material that showed all the facets of this band in a short period of time,” Powell says about the double release and adds that he thinks the band will continue the live series. “We really wanted to lay out what the band is and how it’s developed.”

That’s always been the case with Wishbone Ash, which formed in 1969 when guitarists Powell and Ted Turner both answered an ad that bass player Martin Turner — no relation to Ted Turner — and drummer Steve Upton had placed in Melody Maker. As part of Britain’s early-’70s progressive rock movement, Wishbone Ash’s sound favored the genre’s harder-edged sound that was an outgrowth of the British blues boom of the ’60s. Minus the Hammond organ, the band’s early albums fit into the same end of the progressive rock spectrum as those of Uriah Heep, Deep Purple and — among many other unfairly almost-forgotten bands of the period — Atomic Rooster and Captain Beyond.

Departures, however, began early, with Ted Turner’s surprise exit in 1974. Laurie Wisefield replaced Ted Turner through 1985, and the band released such well-regarded albums as “There’s the Rub,” “New England” and “No Smoke Without Fire.” But after Martin Turner left the band in 1980, Wishbone Ash entered more than a decade of instability: Since 1969, 19 people have played in the band, not counting second and third stints for some members. In 1988, the band’s four founding members reunited for the instrumental album “Nouveau Calls” and a successful tour followed by 1989’s “Here to Hear” album and another successful tour. As the band prepared to record a new album, however, Upton, who had been with the band since its founding, quit as Wishbone Ash’s drummer and retired from music. Martin Turner was replaced in 1991, and Ted Turner left the band in 1994, leaving Powell the only remaining original member since then.

Despite all those lineup shifts, however, the band’s core fans have remained faithful, and Wishbone Ash rewards them with a touring schedule of 150 to 200 dates a year and a taper-friendly policy that allows the fans to trade recordings of their shows. “My feeling is that we’ve created a fan community and they’re fans and friends and they’re not going to rip us off,” Powell says about bootleg recordings. “You could say all or nothing, and if you say nothing, then you spend all your time being a policeman. By being fan-friendly, I think it engenders enthusiasm for the band. … My experience is that those fans will support you.”

They seem to: Last year’s show at the Midway drew fans from Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Such traveling to follow the band is common among the band’s fans, Powell says, and he already knows of some fans from the U.K. who will be at the Midway on Thursday.

“It might be a tad smaller than some of the places we play in, but we know some people in the area that are organizing it,” Powell says, referring to a local fan who was also the promoter for the 2011 show. “It’s a different kind of place for us, but it has some personal connection for some fans. As you can imagine, we’ve made some connections with fans, and some are in the area.”

The guitarist also remembers the Midway from Wishbone Ash’s visit last year. “It’s an interesting old place,” Powell says. “It’s got some history to it. … It’s fun in the middle of a tour to do that small of a gig and stay locally. It’s like getting off the treadmill. We get to chill out and hang out with some friends. When we do those kinds of shows, we often play our best shows because it’s low-key and we get to hang out as if with family.”

Wishbone Ash performs at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Midway Tavern, 810 W. Fourth St., Mishawaka. Admission is $20. For more information, call 574-255-0458 or visit the website themidwaytavern.com.

Interviews with Andy

April 18, 2012
by Joe Crabtree

Check out the excellent interview Andy did with Cleveland DJ Ray Carr: http://raycarram.com (go to the Archives page; it's the 4/17 show; the interview is about 3/4 of the way in).

Also, there's an audio interview with Andy online at www.themusiciansvoice.com. It's first on the page

Ashcon 2012 Update

April 18, 2012
by Guy Roberts

Plans are now well underway for Ashcon 2012 which will be held on Saturday November 3rd at the Winding Wheel in Chesterfield.

As always Wishbone Ash will make this the complete Wishbone Experience and showpiece of the year.

The afternoon convention starts at noon and will follow the traditional format with Wishbone Ash presenting an intimate matinee performance (content to be finalised). Other afternoon events are planned and will be confirmed shortly.

We are pleased to be able to confirm that former Ash guitarist Ben Granfelt will be bringing along his band to act as evening support. As a Bona Fide ex member of the band he will no doubt join Wishbone Ash for a few numbers and I know that Andy and Muddy are looking forward to a triple axe attack.

This show will bring to a close the autumn tour and another fantastic year in the history of the band. Come along and celebrate the show that is put together by the fans for the fans.

Tickets are now on sale in the store