In the Studio with Ash

© Ash

Tim Wheeler, lead singer and guitar player of Ash, the Northern Irish Brit-Pop trio who came on the scene in the mid 90s with their platinum album, Nu-Clear and the hit single, “Girl From Mars,” walked up the old wooden hallway to his studio in midtown Manhattan with a bag thrown over his shoulder, looking like he was in a hurry. It had been three months since we started emailing back and forth and had finally found the time to meet face to face.

With a quick hello, Wheeler opened the heavy metal door to the studio, the former Firehouse Studios where Wu Tang recorded their first album and Ash had been recording their A-Z project, a mega endeavor where the band set out to release a new single every two weeks over the course of the year, adding up to 26 individual tracks, one for every letter of the alphabet.

By the end of September, Ash will have released all 26 singles, an incredible fête reminiscent of last year's creative crunch orchestrated by The Rentals. When we spoke, they were six weeks away from THE END and still on a high.

You’re in the home stretch of A-Z. How tired are you?

Yeah that’s crazy; it’s something like six weeks away now. I’m actually not too bad. I should be a lot worse.

So, is everything already cut and ready to go for the final release dates?

Yeah. Wow! This is wild. I haven’t really talked about this yet.

It’s been a full year of your life.

Yeah, I’m kinda sad it’s coming to an end. It’s been so constant and it’s been such a buzz, I’m actually kinda sad. (Laughs)

You know you could just go from A squared to Z squared.

Yeah, I think there’s a few more alphabets out there that are a bit longer. I think the Japanese one’s like 126, so it’ll add like 100 more.

In respects to this project, what’s the big song to come out of the project?

Arcadia. That’s a track, universally, that everyone loved and the week it came out I got a text from Chris Martin (Coldplay) and he was like, you gotta get this song to the radios straight away. He just freaked out about that one. It wasn’t one that we really expected to take off, but that’s one of the cool things about the Internet, you can get the feedback from your fans right away.

So, what gave you the initial spark to start this project?

I think it was me trying to find something new, keeping things fresh. That’s always what we’ve tried to do as a band, find new ways to keep it exciting. We’ve been doing it a long time now and you don’t wanna keep repeating yourself. Also seeing how much the music industry had changed and people’s relationships with albums, that kinda freaked me out. When we started, we stepped into a really established way of doing things and seeing it change so drastically made me think, ‘we have to evolve with this, otherwise we’re just going to disappear.’ It’s just a scary time to be in a band these days. There’s just no security in it anymore, so there’s no more slacking.

What were the goals of this project originally?

I wanted a challenge, doing another album didn’t feel challenging after doing five or six.

What was the reason for song A being song A and not song B or C? Was it a spear of the moment decision?

Yeah, well I guess there were things that impacted the decisions, like for example, the first song “True Love 1980,” we thought, ‘okay we want, right of the bat, to surprise people.’ So, we wanted a really strong song that felt like it had a completely new style to it. That one’s very electro, you know, 80s synth? There are hardly any guitars on it at all. That was why it was number one, and then there was certain things, like there’s a track , “Summer Snow,” which came out about a month ago, but that was one of the songs we had quite early on, but I knew I wanted it to come out in the summer time. So, we held that back for ages.

So, there was a little planning involved?

Yeah, there was a bit. The final track is called, “There Is Hope Again,” which just felt like a really cool one to finish up with. It seemed like an optimistic one to end on.

I like that.

So, yeah there’s certain ones that like “Pripyat” that came out around Christmas, and even though it’s a pretty depressing song it was the one that had the most, musically it just had the best feel for that time of the year. So, yeah there was a bit of seasonal thoughts going into it.

So, for example, A didn’t have to mean anything to the title of the song?

No, a lot of it was winging it; part of doing this was breaking away from the whole album format and worrying about what tracks fit together. The whole point of this was to keep surprising people on a constant basis, so often there was a song that came out and we would think, ‘How far away from this can we go?’ We just wanted it to be a steady stream of surprises.

When did the idea of A-Z come to you?

I guess it was 2007 when we actually said, ‘Okay, we’re going to break away from doing albums.’ I had this idea at the time but I couldn’t really talk about it, cause I didn’t want anyone to steal it. Then by the time we were really ready to start it, it was a few years later, but yeah it’s cool we actually fulfilled what we said we were going to do.

And with the come back of vinyl, this kind of project works beautifully.

Yeah, and the digital downloads played a big part of it also. That was really one of the major reasons we started it to begin with. We had a subscription, where you got all the tracks plus eleven bonus tracks, so 37 tracks altogether. That was the other reason; every two weeks fans would get a new track.

It’s like following you through a whole year.

Yeah, it’s been really cool.

How do you think this project has turned out?

It’s just given me massive confidence, musically I can do anything, cause in the past there were times I would have writers block, but now I think I’ve gotten over that.

What do you think it’s done for the band?

It’s brought us together much more and given us strength, cause we’ve done it all ourselves. It’s brought us back to almost where we first started before we had any labels, you know, when we used to make our demo-tapes and sell them in Belfast. I don’t know; it’s been a nice thing. We’re feeling just really strong and that we’ve achieved something. I just really can’t wait till the end. I want to have a huge party and listen to this whole thing.

What do you think it’s done for the fans?

It’s galvanized our fans. The people who have gotten really into it have had something constant for the past year, and I think they’ll feel a bit of emptiness when it’s all over, too.

So what else has the project brought you?

It’s definitely brightened things up. People, after being around for so long, can perceive you as being locked in a certain time. We just got a lot of attention for doing things differently, like we got an alphabetical tour of the UK, that was insane. We did that to launch the whole project back in last October or November.

How do you do an Alphabetical tour?

We had to be zigzagging all over the country.

Was this all over Europe?

Just in England, Scotland and Wales. It was bonkers. Sometimes we’d be struggling to find a venue to just play in. We’d play nightclub, village halls, farms, a stripe club. It was 26 days and the last one was in this place called Zennor, Wales in this little village hall that held 70 people, in South-west England.

What did you find for the X?

That was cheating, that was Exmouth. I guess there’s no city in the UK that starts with an X. You have to go to China or something like that. It was cool, cause it was the first tour I could really remember everywhere we were going.

Did the band do anything else A-Z like that?

No, but if you think of anything else, let me know.

So, anything on the plate for Ash in the near future?

Just a break, (laughs) I think just to chill is in order. I don’t know, I think it will be quite tempting, cause we got this space and I’ll just be kicking around, to start again. I got a few friends I’d like to work with, so I might do a few side things. Maybe hit festivals next summer.