Steve Ashley

Steve Frank Ashley (born 9 March 1946) is an English singer-songwriter, recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, writer and graphic designer. Ashley is best known as a songwriter and first gained public recognition for his work with his debut solo album, Stroll On (Gull, 1974). Taking his inspiration from English traditional songs, Ashley has developed a songwriting style which is contemporary in content while reflecting traditional influences in his melodies, poetry and vocal delivery.[citation needed] Ashley was born in Perivale, London, England and grew up in Northolt, Middlesex (now in the London Borough of Ealing). In his early teens, he immersed himself in rock 'n' roll, blues and American folk music. He saw Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent and Lonnie Donegan perform live during his first years at secondary school. In 1960, he learned to play the mouth organ and developed a blues style influenced by Sonny Terry and Sonny Boy Williamson I. After secondary school, he enrolled at Ealing Art College for the two-year Groundcourse under the tuition of Roy Ascott. Among Ashley's contemporaries at the college were many musicians, including (in the year ahead) Pete Townshend, Ronnie Wood and Roger Ruskin Spear.[citation needed] By 1962, Ashley was singing and playing blues harmonica in various bands. He also became seriously interested in British traditional music, performing unaccompanied songs in West London folk clubs. In 1964, he moved to Maidstone, Kent to study graphic design at Maidstone College of Art. There he met Peter Bellamy and joined him as a fellow resident singer in folk clubs in Maidstone and Rochester. Ashley led the art college blues band, The Tea Set, on vocals and blues harmonica. It was during this period however that his interest became increasingly focussed on English traditional folksong, which he heard and performed in the folk clubs, notably at the "Wig and Gown" club in Maidstone. In 1967, Ashley qualified with a BA Hons and returned to London to start his first job as a graphic designer at The Observer, working with record producer Austin John Marshall. In 1968, now as a folk songwriter, Ashley formed a duo with guitar player Dave Menday called The Tinderbox. Managed by Marshall, The Tinderbox recorded a single for Polydor and a session for John Peel on his BBC Radio 1 Nightride show. The A side, "Farewell Britannia" was about the planned removal of the image of Britannia from the British penny. Just before the release of the record the image was saved on the 50 pence piece and the single was scrapped. Shortly after, The Tinderbox disbanded. In 1971, Marshall landed a production and publishing deal for Ashley with Harbrook Music which gave Ashley free access to recording time at London's Olympic Studios, to record his first album. At this time Marshall also played the early demo tapes to the folk critic Karl Dallas, who interviewed Ashley for Melody Maker. Acting as producer for Harbrook Productions, Marshall hired Robert Kirby to create string arrangements for many of Ashley's songs. He also hired a number of musicians to back Ashley, including members of Fairport Convention and Pentangle, plus a section of the London Symphony Orchestra, directed by Kirby. By the late summer of 1971, the first version of Ashley's debut album was completed and offered to a number of major and independent labels. By the spring of 1972 however, the album was still unplaced with a label, and then Ashley was invited by Ashley Hutchings to join the first touring ensemble of The Albion Country Band. This line-up included ex-Fairport members, Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks, plus American fiddler Sue Draheim and ex-Young Tradition singer, Royston Wood. Sharing the lead vocal role with Wood, Ashley performed a few of his own songs plus a number of folk songs, including a 17-verse ballad, "Lord Bateman". The Albion Country Band was signed to Island Records but the band broke up before recording, after just nine months together. By 1973, Ashley formed his own short-lived folk-rock outfit Ragged Robin, with Richard Byers, Brian Diprose and John Thompson. They performed in clubs and colleges, and at Cambridge Folk Festival, and also held a residency at Roy Guest's Howff in London's Primrose Hill. After this band folded, Ashley initiated the formation of a contemporary folk club at The New Merlin's Cave near King's Cross, London. With help from Anthea Joseph and Heather Wood "Merlins" was host to many of the folk scene's leading players, including Sandy Denny and A L Lloyd. The club's resident performers with Ashley were Richard Thompson, Linda Peters, Simon Nicol, Robin and Barry Dransfield, Lea Nicholson, and Ragged Robin's Byers. Writing in Melody Maker in 1973, Dallas described Ashley as "one of the finest singer-songwriters in Britain, if not the entire English-speaking world". In November, Ashley signed a solo recording deal with Gull Records, and with a few track changes, his long-delayed first album was finally released in April 1974 entitled Stroll On. After a three-year wait to find a deal, Stroll On was met with widespread critical acclaim in the UK. In The Daily Telegraph, Maurice Rosenbaum declared: "Ashley's own songs are the product of an extraordinary gift for creating material of true folk quality" and in Melody Maker, Karl Dallas hailed it as "the finest album since folk became contemporary". By the year's end it was awarded "Contemporary Folk album of the Year" in the leading monthly folk magazine, Folk Review. During this period, Karl Dallas frequently linked Ashley's name with Richard Thompson, as being in the vanguard of a new approach to folk song writing. In 1975, Gull Records licensed the album to Motown in the United States and Ashley's first American tour was underwritten by that company. In spring 1975 Ashley undertook a six-week solo tour of the US and Canada, opening shows for many artists including Leon Redbone, Tracy Nelson, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Jonathan Edwards. In a review of his performance in New York's Greenwich Village, Variety magazine said: "Steve Ashley... is a delightful surprise... The performer not only sings his originals well, but has one of the funniest of dry stage raps. His voice is good. His originals are sensitive, ex-of the Albion Country Band, Ashley can hold an audience." Back in the UK he recorded the follow-up, Speedy Return, and undertook a series of solo tour supports for a variety of headline bands, including Supertramp, Planxty, Isotope, Gong and Fruup. However, by the end of 1975, Gull's deal with Motown fell through and Ashley was without a record company. His planned third album, Rare Old Men, was never released and it was not until 1979 that Fairport's Dave Pegg recorded, produced and eventually released what was his third album, Steve Ashley's Family Album, on Pegg's own Woodworm label. In 1978, Ashley formed the Steve Ashley Band, an electric folk band that performed sporadically for 12 years, including appearances at the Rotterdam Folk Festival (1978), the Glastonbury Festival (1985) and the Cambridge Folk Festival (1990). In 1978, at the Rotterdam Folk Festival, Ashley met the Australian folk-rock band, The Bushwackers, whose leader, Dobe Newton, asked Ashley to write some musical settings of poems by the deceased bush poet, Henry Lawson. As a result, The Bushwackers recorded three of Ashley's settings, and published four in their Australian Song Books. In 1981, Ashley became active in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)'s campaign to ban Trident and remove US Cruise missiles from the UK. He recorded and released two cassette albums of peace songs. Around this time he began a part-time involvement in Oxfam's publicity and campaigning work as a graphic designer and copywriter. During the CND campaign of the 1980s he performed from the main stage at the Glastonbury Festival (with Bruce Rowland and Chris Leslie) and also solo to 250,000 peace protesters in Hyde Park,