Playing Ridgefield Sunday—

Steve Howe Is Enjoying His Trip To ASIA

By John Voket

If you knew nothing about playing the guitar; if your interests tend towards things like sports, bingo or model trains; even if you don’t particularly enjoy listening to music, I defy anyone to check out one of guitarist Steve Howe’s masterful recordings and not recognize you are experiencing something extremely special. If recognition of true art and artistry is truly universal, this virtuoso whose credits include progressive rock acts including Yes, GTR and Asia, as well as a prolific body of solo work and collaborations, has to appeal in some way to virtually anybody.

If you don’t have a clue who Steve Howe is and he bumped up against you in the airport, you might form the impression that he is some sort of academic – a professor, or perhaps a scientist. His bookish, almost owlish features camouflage a sprightly stage presence and extreme adeptness at moving significant, almost orchestral passages in his performances from extreme intensity to lulling smoothness and back again, all in the space of a few seconds, or repeatedly over the course of longer bodies of work that may stretch to 20 minutes of more.

Musicians universally pay him due tribute, although he is seldom copied, and many say they aspire to approach his level of proficiency, especially on guitar, but also on a raft of other contemporary and traditional string instruments. The self-taught Mr Howe, who as a child reportedly spent hours listening and marching about his house to the recordings of brass bands, was given his first axe as a Christmas present when he was 12 years old.

Today, the guitarist’s instrument of choice — the Gibson ES175 — is the sophisticated version of that very first f-hole electric knock-off his parents presented to him that holiday morning.

Since 1959, Steve Howe has known little more than a music career, tightly wrapped around that six-string instrument, and has apparently come to tolerate all other aspects of the business to see his end goal each time he steps onto a stage or into a recording studio. He spent a generous amount of time earlier this week speaking to The Newtown Bee from a tour stop in Florida about the new ASIA tour, the glimmer of promise for a new ASIA album by next year, hopes for a Yes reunion soon, and even a collaboration with his son Dylan on a tasty jazz project called The Steve Howe Trio.

On Sunday, June 24, Mr Howe and original ASIA collaborators Carl Palmer (ELP), John Wetton (King Crimson, Uriah Heep) and Geoff Downes (The Buggles, Yes) hit the relatively intimate stage of the Ridgefield Playhouse at 8 pm. Tickets are still available at press time. For details go to RidgefieldPlayhouse.org or call 203-438-5795.

Newtown Bee: Exciting news at this early stage of the new ASIA tour. I hear there’s a new album in the works for possible release later this year?

Steve Howe: Since we’re on three or four weeks of touring we’ve put the project on hold for a bit, but we’ve been exchanging material, looking at a few songs, and in the gaps between touring and bits of time off we’re going to get a record going this year to come out next year. It’s nice to get back and share some music and see where that leads us. It should lead us to a pretty interesting record.

NB: Are there any finished products you’ll roll out for a try on this tour?

SH: No, we’re not at that stage. We’re still just sharing material and talking about a few things.

NB: Has any new material that has come to the process to date come entirely from a new member, or is everybody sort of sharing the contributions?

SH: A bit of both. We’re sharing construction in the writing that we may collaborate on – one or two songs we may collaborate on. As I said it’s in the early stages, but our projection is to spend more time on this after this tour and the follow-up tour we’re doing this summer. September, October… that should wrap it up. There’s not much more to it as of now, other than we’re really excited to be doing it.

NB: I understand over the last break ASIA has decided to switch a few songs in the set list?

SH: We basically looked at the Alpha album and pulled out a couple more songs from there that we think are good and deserve a hearing. We’re doing “Midnight Sun” and “Open Your Eyes.” We’ve changed arrangements on a couple of songs, and we have another King Crimson song that we play that we won’t be doing all the time. Basically we’re readjusting our set, mixed it around a bit and added those songs from Alpha. As long as we keep our fan base happy, we’re really happy with that.

NB: There days, I hear there are two sides to ASIA. There’s the two hours on stage and then there is the rest of the time that everybody is hanging out together and getting along very well. Can you contrast the way you interact with your bandmates today, versus the way the personalities diverged back during ASIA’s first few years together?

SH: Look, let’s tidy it up. We screwed up for a time because the crew didn’t hold together. There were problems with individuals and fractured the whole. When you ask me how it’s different, we’re all bloody sensible, we’re older, we all appreciate working together much more … have a lot more respect for each other. So that’s really the long and short of it. We screwed up immensely because we didn’t hang together and we didn’t keep tight. We don’t find ourselves having to force the issue, we’re all infused to do it. And it makes it all worth while. A reviewer commented that we look comfortable on stage together, and that’s about the way it is.

NB: I understand you are also recording and touring a bit with your son, Dylan. Was that part of a greater plan, or did the decision just sort of come about over a dinner table conversation?

SH: Well Dylan has been playing with me since 1993 on all my solo albums. And a few years ago we thought of doing a trio with guitar, drums and organ, and we’ve just done five shows in England. We’re going to record in October ad then more shows during the winter. I consider it a new extension of my Steve Howe solo career. The trio is a more exploratory improvisational thing showing tribute to guitarists like Kenny Burrell and organist Jimmy Smith who had some great things going in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. We’re drawing from their material and drawing from my solo material and sort of coloring it for this jazzy, bluesy guitar trio. That’s really one of my favorite projects right now outside of my group work. We’ve got a couple of songs up on the Steve Howe Trio page at MySpace.

NB: My understanding is into and trough 2008, you will be straddling ASIA and Yes projects?

SH: I think the year is going to start doing more work with ASIA, and hopefully if there is a firm agreement there will be another Yes run. Hopefully that will please everybody in the band and the audience, because it’s been a long and slightly arduous four years since finishing the tour in 2004. I wouldn’t have stopped if I had my wish, there wouldn’t have been much time for an ASIA reunion because we would have been busy with Yes. But that was other people’s call and I’ve compensated quite well giving my time to ASIA and moving along. Like ASIA is doing now, we are an independent unit we can formulate ideas and achieve goals – that’s what Yes will do – formulate ideas and agree who will represent us. We’ll keep it simple, I think.

NB: While fans await a new album, there is the interim excitement of a new DVD and CD, FantASIA: Live in Tokyo. Did the band members target this particular show, or was this one among many live recordings that you all thought was the best?

SH: Well we recorded every show in England last December, but this was the only show we multi-tracked and video taped was the Tokyo show. So we’ve put out the audio first, and the DVD will have that same audio. That was the show we had in mind to make the DVD. We’ll refinish and remix the audio to our liking, and you can expect to see that DVD FantASIA, I think in September.