When Ash announced they were quitting making albums, people started stroking their chins in interest. Hugh Platt caught up with Ash frontman, Tim Wheeler, to see how it’s working out for them.

Ash are currently two-thirds of the way through their ‘A-Z’ tour, a roadtrip taking in 26 off-the-beaten track UK towns, each corresponding with a letter of the alphabet. And why exactly have they adpoted such a ridiculously convoluted tour itinery?

It’s because while the band might’ve mugged off making albums, they’ve instead decided to release a single every two weeks for the next 52 weeks. That’s 26 singles. 26 singles, 26 letters in the alphabet – you can see where this is going, right? Anyway, that’s all you’re getting from this intro – we’ll let Tim Wheeler explain the rest.

So how’s the A-Z tour been going?
“It’s been going great. We’re surviving, which is the main thing. The support bands have been calling it the A-to-Dead tour – they’ve renamed it as it’s been pretty full-on. It’s been our most extensive tour of the UK for quite some time. It’s very unpredictable – you don’t know what you’re going to get each day. Some of the venues could be the back room of a pub, and others could be a really nice little town hall. It’s been all over the place.”

Obviously a lot of the venues are smaller than the past
“Even in the beginning we did a lot of small venues. Pretty much before every album release we’ve done a tour of smaller venue, places off the beaten track. It’s really worked well for us. It’s the same kind of fans that would usually have to travel to see us in the bigger cities, but this time it’s the other way around – we’re going to see them.”

Obviously the tour is also going hand in hand with the A-Z singles releases. It’s still at the start now – is it going to be tough to keep up the enthusiasm after an entire year?
“It’s a really weird feeling, putting out a single two weeks ago, and another one coming out now, with another one coming in two weeks….it’s really cool. That was why we spent so long working on it actually. We thought if it didn’t have the quality then people would lose interest, so we made sure that the music is exciting enough, and diverse enough, that people will continue to be surprised along the way. It’s something that will hopefully gain in momentum, as some of our best stuff is still yet to come out.”

“Not doing an album…is really refreshing. The songs don’t have to be tied together – it can go anywhere. To rigidly tie ourselves to song titles…we didn’t think it was that important, which is why we wnet with A-Z.”

Watch the trailer to Ash’s A-Z singles series

You’ve parted ways with Infectious Records – was it a daunting prospect to go out on your own?
“It was a bit daunting, but it’s the way things are these days – it’s the only way to get things done, especially if you want to try a new idea. It’s harder to do it in a record company structure. We didn’t have a very good experience with Warner Bros putting out the new record; they pretty much fucked it up for us. Just before the release, they pulled the whole marketing budget on it. It all came from the accounts department. They were sacking most of their staff at the same time. It was a frustrating situation for everybody.

“Now we’ve got a lot of responsibility on our shoulders, but we’ve also got complete freedom. It doesn’t feel that uncomfortable, as we’re back exactly how we started out in the beginning. It’s kinda fun!”

You’ve got a rep as a singles band – but also you’ve got strong B-side catalogue. With downloading (and A-Z), what do you think that will mean for B-sides in the future?
“They’ll probably go out the window. People are shedding themselves of album tracks, people are more inclined to just cherry pick tracks from albums. We’ve decided to put these singles out without B-sides, we’re doing etchings on the b-side as we just want pure high-quality for the music. I think it’s just gonna be another one of those things that gets sadly lost.”

You mentioned earlier that you’ve got more scope to be more experimental now though.
“I think that’s the beauty of putting out music just constantly and not worring about it being part of an album. There doesn’t have to be this continuity so we can satisfy our urges to experiment and try different sounds and styles. It’s all back to the freedom.”

In previous interviews you mentioned including a couple of cover songs, but didn’t want to say what they were.
“We’ve actually decided that doing covers would be too much of a cop-out. We’ve got some brilliant covers that maybe we’ll release afterwards, as bonus content or something. We’ve got a few killer ones….but they’re still secret!”

Going back to the song-writing arrangements – how has living in New York affected you as a musician?
“There’s an attiude in New York that everyone has seen everything, but there’s still this can-do mentality – it feels like anyone can do anything. That’s what New York’s all about. We set up our studio here, but that felt like something that was really difficult to do in London. I tried to do it during the last few years I lived there but it was just too much of a nightmare. In New York, thing just fell together really quickly.”

Watch the video to ‘Joy Kicks Darkness’ by Ash

The three of you have been Ash your entire adult lives. Does that ever freak you out?
“Not really. It seems really normal! It’s what we love doing. And it keeps us young. I know when we started this band it was a long time ago, but it doesn’t feel like that to me.”

You played the entire of 1977 last year – was it strange to go back and re-visit it wholesale?
“A little bit. I think it would’ve felt a little sad doing it if I didn’t know we had all this new material going forward. It was fun to look back on though. And I was just surprising how easy it was. We played those songs so much back in the day, they’re just mentally in there, like muscle memory – effortless.”

Do you ever fear that you’ll get stuck playing the older material?
“I don’t care. We’ve had enough strong moments in our career. We’re not a Britpop nostlgia band. I don’t mind that people like the big songs from our history – it makes them a buzz to play, y’know? There are certain songs from the last album that are the most…epic…moments of our show so at least we don’t feel trapped by our past.”

It’s the end of the year, the end of the decade – what’s been the most influential thing to happen to music in the last decade?
“The invention of the iPod. It’s completely changed the way people listen to music. Having that portability completely changed the way I listened to music – before that, I would only listen to albums, you’d put it on and have 45 minutes of music, whereas with singles you had to get up and change it every three minutes – and it was annoying. I remember getting that first 5Gb iPod – got one of the first ones that came out. I remember loading all my CDs into it. But I stopped listening to albums as much as I used to – they used to be the be all and end all. It’s gone on to change the industry entirely.”

Plans for next year?
“Hopefully some more sensible touring arrangements! We’re doing this tour as we know we’ve got music coming out for the next year, so wanted to start really small. In the springtime we’re going to start touring around the world. We’re doing more recording in January and February, to get the final songs of A-Z done. We’re 3 or 4 songs away from having a really…incredible collection. We’ve actually recorded 46 songs so far, but we’re being really, really picky.”

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If you’re quick, you can still catch Ash on one of the remaining dates on their A-Z tour. That’s so long as you live near one of the shows that hasn’t sold out yet.

Ash A-Z tourdates
08 Plymouth Hippo
10 Queens Park Corrib Rest – SOLD OUT
11 Rotherham The Vault
12 Swansea Sin City
14 Tunbridge Wells Forum – SOLD OUT
16 Upper Norwood Gipsy Hill Tavern – SOLD OUT
17 Ventnor Winter Gardens
19 Worcester Dive Bar
21 Exmouth Pavilion
22 Yeovil Orange Box - SOLD OUT
23 Zennor Village Hall – SOLD OUT
25 Dublin Button Factory
26 Belfast Spring and Airbrake