iNTERViEWED
BY BRiAN LUSH
Forget the bleak economic forecast that creeps its way into
the already depressing nightly news. It’s time to pop the E.P. ‘THIS
COULD BE A
WILD NIGHT’ into your car stereo, crank it up and slam into fifth gear
(provided
you drive stick). This smashing debut from ASH GRAY AND THE GIRLS is
all sun,
fun and kitsch marked by some of the most epic melodies and vocal
arrangements
this side of MEATLOAF. While singer-songwriter ASH GRAY is front and
center,
his four girl singers - KG, HELEN, MARY and ABBI - are hardly what
anyone would
think of as “backup”. In a pop age where everyone is going goo-goo for
GAGA and
showing dismay over
sickeningly-earnest
asshole songwriter using the n-word in a PLAYBOY interview, ASH GRAY
AND THE
GIRLS are here to prove just how powerful simple things like melody and
harmony
can be. If only the CD was more than seven songs!
ROCKWIRED
spoke with ASH GRAY over the phone. Here is how it
went.
How do you feel about
the finished CD?
I’m very proud of it. It’s not one of those situations like
in the past where I’d finish a recording and be like “I wish I could’ve
done
this” or “I wish I had done that”. This time around, I’m really happy
with it.
I like it.
Describe what the
reaction has been like to ASH GRAY AND THE GIRLS.
I think people get it right away as far as it being sort of
a retro project. When they see it, they think that it’s catchy and that
it’s something
that they wouldn’t have thought of themselves and that it’s a really
cool idea.
It’s the kind of thing that people would’ve thought that they have
already
heard somewhere but it’s not. It’s something that is trying to sound
familiar.
What this thing is striving for is that classic pop sound.
I’m assuming that
this seventies rock sound was something that you grew up with and are
inspired
by. Am I right or am I wrong?
I was really big on listening to a bunch of oldies radio. I
still am. I listen to a lot of new stuff as well but it’s a lot harder
to
listen for new stuff because there is so much classic rock being thrown
at you.
I teach guitar lessons to these kids who are like fourteen and sixteen
who are
really into a lot of classic rock. I’m always like ‘How do you know
about STYX?’ I
think all of the radio right now has just gotten
so overblown with classic rock worship. It seems to be in vogue in a
way to be
into this whole retro thing especially with all of these magazines like
MOJO
and CLASSIC ROCK. For the past few years this whole thing has gotten a
bigger
audience because the radio isn’t playing newer stuff and that’s strange
because
radio always used to play new bands and when the nineties came, it sort
of
drifted away from that.
Talk about how music
started for you.
It was all around my house when I was growing up. My parents
influenced me. They were always listening to THE BEATLES – those albums
were
always spinning. Music definitely struck me at a very early age. It was
a great
form of recreation to listen to music. My brothers and I all took piano
lessons
when were around the ages of eight or nine. I stuck with piano for a
while and
eventually I segued into being a teenager and visualizing being some
kind of a
performer but I didn’t really know what that meant at the time until I
picked
up the guitar and started visualizing myself as some kind of rock
person. Music
was all fantasy land and escapism for me. I wanted to get better and
better at
guitar and that lead to being a better songwriter.
Talk about the
genesis of this project with THE GIRLS.
I’m a huge fan of having harmony in rock bands. I was in all
of these rock bands when I was in Austin Texas and it seemed as if
harmony was
always the last thought. When I moved to New York, I
was on a similar tangent. I was in a band
there with this drummer and bass player and none of them really sang.
Even
though their playing was tight, I was going to try to find anybody to
sing with
me. I went karaoke-ing and I met this girl and I invited her to this
acoustic
night so she could sing with me. That turned into me meeting another
guitar
player – a girl who was a singer as well. At that point I had a bass
player and
a drum player, a girl who sang but didn’t play anything and a girl who
played
and sang. The bass player and the drummer in that combo became more and
more
unavailable so me and the girls would practice in my apartment with just
my
guitar and us singing. In order to make what we were doing sound more
fuller
and more sixties and seventies sounding, I added another girl on vocals
and
just build everything up from there. It started as a trio but then I
started to
think of the whole thing as this big retro thing with three girls
backing me at
least as well as adding more instrumentation such as percussion, bass
and
keyboards.
Talk about each of
the girls that you have singing with you and what it is you think each
of them
brings to the table that makes it work.
HELEN was the first singer. She is a quirky, kind of hippy
theater New
York
girl that has a background in theater and wanting to be in front of
people. I
get along with her very easily because she doesn’t take herself to
seriously in
terms of performance. Her presence on stage is a little more
happy-go-lucky. It
was very natural to do some singing with her. She likes to sing
eighties heavy
metal stuff when she is at karaoke. It was really easy to start doing
stuff
with her. Then KG was already kind of a fully realized musician. She
played
guitar and sang in country bands a little bit. She has her own band
called
LILY SPARKS and is the least available right now just because her own
band is
kind of flowering and she is spending a lot of time on that. She has
got good
intonation and a fully realized stage presence of her own. MARY is a
great singer with a very powerful set of vocals and comes from more of
a
bluesy
rock n roll kind of thing. Her ear is very sharp in terms of what to
do. She
shares a similarity with HELEN. They are both from the Bronx.
They grew up here and they share that New York
experience. It’s kind of cool. Despite that,
their backgrounds are very different. HELEN is half Greek and half
Puerto Rican
and MARY is half Irish and half Korean so they have very exotic
backgrounds. New York
is really big melting pot so I think that they
perfectly represent New York.
ABBI is from Virginia
and she was already performing in
all-female QUEEN tribute band with MARY called DAIRY QWEEN. She is very much in
the
BLONDIE, new wave-style of singing. She has a really smooth, round kind
of
voice that has this certain kind of character. She’s more of a new
waver – a dance
music girl. She brings a different element to the band.
How does songwriting
happen for you?
Songwriting happens in all different ways and I encourage
that for myself because I like to start with a melody or a song title
or a
riff. Sometimes it starts from something directly derivative of
something that
I listen to. For example I’ll be thinking that I want to write a song
for the
girls that sounds like an ABBA song or feels like a PARTRIDGE FAMILY
song or a
SLADE song. I’m always juggling retro influences in my mind to create
stuff. It
happens in a lot of different ways. Melodies are the strongest thing
for me. I
think those are the things that make me want to finish a song. If I
have a
really great melody that feels like a great chorus idea then that may
come
first. A lot of times I’m more a melody man and that has always kind of
resonated
for me more than lyrics. Overtime, I’ve really come to value lyrics. I
feel
like the melody pulls people in a lot more rapidly than reciting
poetry.
With that being said,
do you do all of the vocal arranging yourself or is it a collaborative
thing
between you and THE GIRLS?
I take the most responsibility for it. I’ve played a lot of these
songs on my own and because of that I’ve got a good rough idea of where
the vocals
should be. A lot of times I will see vocals ideas via my guitar and
sing them
to the girls and a lot of times after a lot of rehearsal, the girls
will have
an idea. I think it becomes more collaborative on the finishing end of
it. A
lot of experimentation goes into the final realization.
What songs off of the
CD resonate for you the most and why?
‘THIS COULD BE A WILD NIGHT’ – the title track – was a big achievement
because it was a song that I wrote several years ago and I pictured it
being
produced exactly the way it is now. I heard big huge vocals on it and
saw the
song going in the direction of someone like MEATLOAF or SLADE. I wanted
this
huge epic chorus. Because of the bands I was in at the time, I could
never get
that song to sound the way I wanted it to so I put it on the back
burner for a
while. ‘SUNNY DAY’ is the single that I pushed because I wrote it when
I was
living up here in New York City and the melody grabbed me so strongly.
I really
like the sophistication of the chords going by. Once the melody came to
me, I
thought this was something special and a little more off the beaten
path of
songwriting for me. I really wanted to push this song into the MAMAS
AND THE
PAPAS territory. The other song one there that resonates for me came
from
having worked with this bluegrass band from the U.K.
called THE HIGH CLASS FAMILY
BUTCHERS. One of the guys had written this song on his computer and
that song stayed
in my head. I thought about doing it with a kind of LOU REED delivery.
That
song is called ‘RULES’. That song is written by JOHN GRISWELL but I
came up
with the arrangement with the girls.
What
would you like a
person to come away with after they’ve heard this CD?
I would definitely like for them to come away wondering what
we sound like live and wanting to know where they can catch us and feel
like
the music is something that they can sing along to and that it will
resonate
with them in a way that it rings familiar to them and that should be
part of
their classic music collection.
FEBRUARY
24, 2010
BRiAN
LUSH (FOUNDER,
EDiTOR-iN-CHiEF)
