Ash Chester is something of an enigma…the sort of guy who’ll start a conversation out of the blue by giving you a detailed answer to a hypothetical question you may have posed three days earlier.
He’s currently ‘taking a pause from music’ – by writing, playing and recording demos at a higher rate than ever. “Well, I shouldn’t really say it’s a ‘pause’ I guess – I’m just going back to where it all started – singing, and playing acoustic guitar.”
Yes, playing acoustic guitar…in a hard-hitting style that could perhaps best be described as ‘aggressively rhythmic’; it sounds like he’s stuffed a drummer through the soundhole. “Yeah, that’s true,” he admits with a laugh. “I remember when I went into the studio for the first time with Tim (McKenzie – who produced Ash’s first EP)…I think his comment was something like: ‘Wow! You really like to beat the hell out of your guitars dontcha?’”
“I think it has a lot to do with how I learned to play – doing cover songs with Geoff (Wickstrom) at parties. I didn’t know many chords and I sure couldn’t switch between them very quickly, so I’d often find myself keeping the beat on muted strings until I could catch up…or the song got back to a chord I knew how to play…but despite all that, I was always most excited when people started moving to the rhythm, and I needed to play hard to be heard. I was never fired up by that sort of ‘interesting’ music people would sit around and discuss…don’t get me wrong, I appreciate and listen to it from time to time, I’ve just never been interested in playing it.

There’s tons of really good music that hits the brain and the spirit…or soul or whatever you want to call it, but when there’s those two AND it hits your body, that’s when you get GREAT music…I mean like shivers-down-through-the-small-of-your-back great. There’s a bunch of tunes that have done that to me – ‘Bad’ by U2, the live versions, and the first time I heard ‘Here You Me’ by Jimmy Eat World…the list goes on, but it’s still pretty exclusive. If I could ever do that with music, I’d feel blessed.”
Well, we can but wait and listen – and hope that Ash manages to keep his guitars held together long enough to get there.

Ash Chester @ MySpace

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