Then for our show, Ben joined Mud and me on the songs Faith, Hope and Love, Almighty Blues as well as encores, Blind Eye and Jailbait. As Muddy said to me after the show; “Ben really ramps up the energy level on stage, doesn’t he?” Indeed he does and the crowd loved it, including a diehard contingent of British fans who’d made it over specially, to lend their support. I really must thank Ben and our friend, and Ben’s drummer, Miri Mietinnen for organizing backline equipment for our show. This was to be the last of a 35 tour through 10 countries and it did not disappoint. We’d decided to fly in and do this one while our crew and the two vehicles travelled back to Hamburg and on to London.

It feels pretty good to have completed such an ambitious tour and it’s only the beginning of the year. Hearfelt thanks to our brilliant crew Daniel Vetter, Andy Clark, Pete Knuttinen, Olaf Broders, Kai Gessler and the best tour manager in the business, Holger Brandes.

The trick will be to keep highly organized and to pace ourselves as we work through some 90 dates during the next 6 months. There will be time changes, different seasons, different cultures and ways of working to deal with but I’m confident this little team of ours can handle it all with style and grace plus some serious rock and roll chutzpah.

~ A.P.

Curiously, it was for a section in the mag called "Welcome Back" I believe.....like I've been away or something. I agreed to do the thing anyway so we'll see how they treat me. It's sometimes unfathomable how the machinations of the new 'classic' rock establishment in the UK work. There seems to be a link between certain promoters, Classic Rock Magazine and also Planet Rock Radio who many of you know have sponsored previous UK tours of ours. They all call the shots on how the hierarchy of bands is perceived in the media and so on, which often bears little relationship to the amount shows performed over there or the level of profile achieved by a UK band for example, overseas.

Hey Ho - here we go. Could be good for us. We'll see.

~ A.P.

Now sometimes you get a nice lady who asks whether you’ve got everything you need “because I’ll be clearing away now”. Not this morning: A young person of the female persuasion merely started to remove stuff while Bob and I were in mid serve. I was suffering from a nasty cold and feeling rough. We protested (me very aggressively, I must admit, muttering stuff about which union she belonged to and worse) but she stood her ground. Apparently it was all about her and not the 9 paying guests for two days in her half empty tourist hotel. Whatever happened to service?

This culture takes a little getting used to up here anyway. For the most part the Norwegians seem quite affable in a troll - like sense, but they have this disconcerting way of invading your personal comfort zone/ body space, as in being ‘in yer face’. This usually arises in tandem with vast quantities of alko. I’m probably being unjust since I’m sure not ALL Norwegians drink like fish. And the economy is something else. They are awash in oil money it seems. I worked out that the ticket price to see WA in a really basic little club up here translates to about $65 (USA) or 40 Euros! No wonder our relatively cheaply priced DVDs were being snapped up like there was no tomorrow.

Well, it’s back to bed for me. With a couple of hours shut eye I may be able to feel like doing a gig later. Before that I have to do a serious repack. One bag for the USA and France (one day in between) and then a separate bag of stuff for the upcoming UK tour which follows on, after the actual USA tour. There’s no sense in taking guitars and clothes on planes anymore I’ve decided. Just too many different weight restrictions and rules and regulations. Getting work permits for the USA is no walk in the park either, these days. Seems they don’t want to make it easy for Euro folk to go there to work legally, I guess. If you are Guatamalan or Mexican and turn up at my local train station looking for yard work, then you’ll have no problemo with doing the illegal thing. Anyway we did finally get approval for the very expensive work permits, thankfully so we can visit our patient USA fans and earn back some of those rapidly shrinking $$$.

We are flying to Helsinki tomorrow for dinner in Finland with the Manninens’ and the crew drives back to Blighty and various points en route to drop off our German guys, Kai and Holger. Then we’ll meet up in Helsinki with our old compadre and former band member, Ben Granfelt, who will join us at the club, On the Rocks. He’ll be showing me his newly aquired ’58 Strat so that should be interesting. Also, he’ll be very kindly supplying the equipment for our show. I’ll finally be using an Engl amp, which I managed to avoid for years heh, heh!

~ A.P.

P.S. I just read this on our forum from Georgiegirl; “Apparently it is National Beer Day in Norway today, a celebration of the end of Beer prohibition that lasted 75 years came to an end on his day in 1989, so I can see the tour has been very well planned – enjoy the day guys!!”

Oh boy, we’re in for it tonight! ~ A.P.

Actually, on two nights we visited the famous Anchor Bar just at the end of the street, as well as various other bars, where one featured great live music supplied by a trio. There was the bar made famous by one of the St. Pauli district's most famous residents the actor and singer, Hans Albers. My guides were Heike and Jack from the island of Juist in the North Sea. I was amazed to visit the Anchor once more having first been there as a lad not much older than Simon, some 40 years ago. It has not changed one bit. We listened to some old German Schlager (folk songs) songs on the ancient juke box including of course, Lily Marlene by Marlene Dietrich. As a point of interest our stalwart German tour manager Holger Brandes, had also worked as a young bouncer in the clubs around this area where he received one of the best educations in human nature. Sandra Wienberg from our German concert agency, also joined us for the evening.

The next day before our show, saw a return there for a visit to the Beatlemania museum - 5 floors dedicated to the career of the four mop tops who, as everyone knows, played the Star Club back in the early 6o’s where they cut their musical teeth, so to speak. I really enjoyed this and even learned some things I didn’t know. On a previous Ash tour, I’d met the club’s famous manager, Horst Fascher in Worpswede near Bremen, where he’d shown us an amazing photo album full of early Beatles photos. It was therefore fascinating to see him on camera in the museum, recounting his experiences with the Beatles. Also, on film was Klaus Voorman, designer of the Revolver album cover and Germany’s most famous session musician. He’d played with the Beatles individually on many recordings. I’d met and played music with him as well, back in the early 70’s.

Later, with Heike, I took a walk through the frozen Hamburg docks, stopping for a Lebanese lunch on the way, after which, we said goodbye and I made my way back to the band’s hotel, the Renaissance, where they serve the best selection of teas I’ve had anywhere. The show that night at Fabrik was excellent. As others have said, this is a great venue for rock and the crowd was the biggest of the tour. The clothing code for the band was tartan (or as the Canadians call it; plaid) - it was veritable ‘plaid attack’ if you will.

The next day we headed up to Flensburg on the Danish border, to play a show and then the day after it was on to one of our favorite venues, Amager Bio, in Copenhagen. We stayed at the aptly named Phoenix Copenhagen, full of old world charm. This was to be the Jimmy Bowskill Band’s last show. The guys had made great touring buddies and bought their own special Canadian charm and humor to the proceedings. Jimmy himself, as a fresh 19 year old, did an amazing job of being a band leader. I really think that he made some converts to his music here in Europe.

Last night we played Oslo in a tiny club. The Norwegians seem to be very warm people and their hospitality and enthusiasm was something else. Food on hand in the dressing room included horse meat salami and a kind of sweet goat cheese. The next morning breakfast was ‘served’ in little bags hanging outside our rooms on the door handles. Today as I write this, we are on what promises to be possibly a 10 hour drive through the snowiest landscape of the whole tour (and that’s saying something). Our faithful multinational crew now consisting of 1 Brit, a German and a Finn, left at 6.00am after only 4 hours sleep. We have not heard anything bad has happened to them so far so we are assuming they are making it through in their vehicle, ahead of us. The strangely named Sandnes, is our destination.

Signing off ~ A.P.

So, whose idea was that? Every hotel in Germany leaves you a pack of Haribo on your pillow so the brand was no surprise. I admit, sometimes it's nice to find something to eat in your room that doesn't cost more a tenner and I always eat them despite the fact that I don't even like them. The thing is I would expect the posher hotels, ones that presumably cater for business men in suits with briefcases, to opt for something a bit more impressive; "Perhaps sir would care for a Ferrero Rocher with his room key?"

I can see why a sealed pack of Haribo might be safer than, say, an After Eight mint, which is liable to look like something else if you forget it's there and spend a night melting it into the sheets with your thigh (right Simon?) I just can't get my head around why this impressive hotel would hand you the Haribo with your keys - therefore making a statement of the fact that they're giving you a pack of Haribo as a gift. Am I supposed to be impressed? Would you turn up at a dinner party with a pack of Haribo? And we're not even talking a big pack; I would probably have been quite impressed if they'd handed me a key and one of those bags the size of my head).

Anyway, I'm sure Hamburg was nice. I walked around for about 20 minutes, checked out the jewelry shops in memory of Jamal Fixit (is he still alive?), then returned to my room and browsed the internet as I do in every other city that we visit. They're all the same when you look at it that way. Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo (where I'm writing this) - when it's cold, snowy and grey they're all just places to add to my "visit when it's not so bloody cold" list before I see what mundane things are going on in the world of Facebook.

So, there you go. See Andy's post to learn about the history and culture of the places we've visited. I'll just tell you that they were 250,000 Euros!

Incredibly with the release still almost three months away the single has been added to the BFBS radio playlist and is also rubbing shoulders with the likes of Paramore, Bowling for Soup and The Courteeners around the world on the European Klassic Rock radio playlist www.ekr.net

Wishbone Ash back in the charts? You bet.

If you want to support the band you can pre-order the single (available 17th May) by texting ‘track 5026’ to 83262. Texts cost £1, which includes operator revenue share. UK only. You will receive a text confirming your purchase and a text on the release day informing you that the song is available for download. Feel free to spread the word!

I used to associate 60 with grandparents, bus passes and sitting in a comfy chair watching countdown (perhaps wearing one big slipper). It's great to witness Andy shunning all of these things in favour of travelling the world rocking out every night, skiing and surfing. And there's no sign of him slowing down. In fact, as our gig in Berlin didn't kick off until 23:45, he did the better part of TWO whole gigs on his 60th Birthday! That's pretty impressive if you ask me.

In the dressing room after the Barby gig we were tucking into some cake (yummmm) and discussing getting older. Andy said 40 and 50 had passed him by without a thought but 60 had been on his mind for some time. He was feeling that it was a bigger deal for some reason. On hearing this Jimmy Bowskill (our 19 year old guitar-slinging support act) felt a connection and offered his support - "yeah, I remember what it was like turning 10, double figures and all that." I suppose with only one decade under his belt that's all he had to go off. I'd like to say we all pondered this and felt a warm connection and an appreciation of the fact that music can bond people of all generations. In fact, we all burst out laughing.

So, I guess 60 is the new 10. Happy Birthday Andy. Here's to another 60....

• Bob

This morning at the hotel, I got chatting to the hotelier, one Rolf Sigel. This humble dude, in addition to running his spotless hotel, virtually single handedly, is a champion at running marathons. Now everyone knows a marathon is typically 26 miles or thereabouts. That’s a walk in the park for this man. He regularly runs 246 kilometres non stop! Rolf has performed this feat on several occasions in the heat of the desert in Morocco and in Greece via Corinth to Sparta where he received the Spartathalon award.

Iron Man - Rolf; much respect and as the photos in your hotel lobby attest, you are a man amongst men. Saluté.

~ A.P.