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Steve Howe tells us what ‘Love Is’ all about – 442

Produced by Jeffrey Crecelius, Wayne Hall, Preston Frazier and Bill Govier

After a few technical hitches, we managed to speak to legendary Yes guitarist, Steve Howe, about his brand new solo album, ‘Love Is’. It features his son and recent YMP interviewee, Dylan Howe, on drums and Steve’s fellow Yes member, Jon Davison, on backing vocals and bass guitar.

If you like Steve’s solo work, you’ll absolutely love this new album, which is packed full of his trademark multi-guitar work and contains half instrumental tracks and half songs. Steve is pleased with his lead vocals and we can see why!

  • Does Steve enjoy writing, producing, engineering and performing?
  • How does Steve choose from his incredible collection of guitars?
  • Are there any clues to future Yes happenings?
(Photo by Will Ireland/Prog Magazine)
Portrait of English progressive rock musician Steve Howe, taken on February 3, 2020. (Photo by Will Ireland/Prog Magazine)

Here’s the Press Release:

Legendary Yes guitarist Steve Howe has announced he is to release Love Is on 31st July through BMG Records. Love Is is Howe’s first solo album since the all-instrumental Time in 2011 and has a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs. 

The album will be available as CD – gatefold digi-sleeve with 12 page booklet and LP – Black vinyl 180gm with gatefold sleeve, liner notes and lyrics. 

Link to Steve Howe Official store pre-orders:  https://SteveHowe.lnk.to/D2CPR

Link to Amazon pre-orders: https://SteveHowe.lnk.to/LoveIsPR

Steve Howe sings lead vocals and plays electric, acoustic and steel guitars, keyboards, percussion and bass guitar on the instrumentals while Yes vocalist Jon Davison provides vocal harmonies and plays bass guitar on the vocal tracks. The album also features Dylan Howe on drums.

Many years in the making, Love Is brings together a consistently strong and polished listening experience, forging the very best from the writing and playing throughout the album. This may well be considered the real ‘stand out’ album of Howe’s solo career. The instrumentals keep a highly progressive rock guitar style to the fore, with songs that explore stories of lives lived and lives only just begun. Love Is A River is the central longer song with several textural shifts, featuring a theme played on 12 string and steel guitars.

I called the album Love Is because it hints at the central idea that that love is important but also love of the universe and the ecology of the world is very important,” says Steve Howe. Alexander Humboldt went around the world and recognised we are destroying the planet but that was 200 years ago! We are still destroying the planet and, I suppose, my songs show the yearning I have for the love of nature and how beauty, art and music all stem from nature. There is a theme about those things, love, beauty, ecology, nature and wonderful people.

Love Is A River just seemed a very important track to me, a sort of quintessential track with lots of moods, lots of interesting things going on with steel guitars and acoustic guitars.  Further tracks grew from time spent writing in my studio.

See Me Through looks at the idea that we get through life by not driving ourselves that hard but attempting to achieve things with people who help you along the way and Imagination is dedicated to my granddaughter Zuni. It’s about how I see some of the things she’s experienced in her short seven years.”

I invited Jon Davison to sing harmonies with me and add bass on the songs. If he was singing on the songs I thought why doesn’t he play bass as well and it turned out nice. He’s been with Yes for seven or eight years and he’s a great guy, great performer and a great interpreter of Yes songs.

I’ve been singing for years, mainly in harmony but I’ve sung lead on lots of my own albums before and I feel that, as I’ve got older, I’ve got a grip on that and, hopefully, it’s improved over the years.

The album includes many distinctive Steve Howe signatures among the instrumental tracks from the delicate beauty of Fulcrum, Beyond The Call and Pause For Thought to upbeat rock, The Headlands, and the jazz-tinged Sound Picture.

The instrumentals are like a mood, a place I went to one day, thought this is nice and then I develop that to a point where it’s a finished track. There might be key ingredients that I thought about using musically that I like, that I’m drawn to, and then developing them into something.

Love Is was written, engineered and produced by Steve Howe with further engineering and mixing by Curtis Schwartz. “I write in my own studio and then go to see Curtis in his studio,” Howe explains. “We expand the tracks and put them on Pro Tools and everything starts to be possible. At some point, probably around 2 years ago, Dylan came down to Curtis’s studio and we recorded the drums on some of the tracks. I could see a balance of five instrumental tracks and five songs and there was a feeling that it was an album, sitting there, looking at me.”

The track listing for Steve Howe’s Love Is album is:

1 Fulcrum (instrumental)

2 See Me Through

3 Beyond The Call (instrumental)

4 Love Is A River

5 Sound Picture (instrumental)

6 It Ain’t Easy

7 Pause For Thought (instrumental)

8 Imagination

9 The Headlands (instrumental)

10 On The Balcony

Listen to the episode and let us know what you think!

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Show notes and links:

YMP Patrons:

Producers:

  • Jeffrey Crecelius
  • Preston Frazier
  • Bill Govier and
  • Wayne Hall

Patrons:

Aaron Steelman

Dave Owen

Mark James Lang

Paul Tomei

Joost Maglev

David Heyden

Martin Kjellberg

Paul Wilson

Bob Martilotta

Lind

Michael O’Connor

William Hayes
Brian Sullivan

David Pannell

Miguel Falcão

Lobate Scarp

Chris Bandini

David Watkinson

Neal Kaforey

Rachel Hadaway

Craig Estenes

Dem

Paul Hailes

Mark ‘Zarkol’ Baggs

Doug Curran

Robert Nasir

Fergus Cubbage

Scott Colombo

Fred Barringer

Scott Smith
Geoff Bailie

Simon Barrow
Geoffrey Mason

Stephen Lambe

Guy R DeRome

Steve Dill

Henrik Antonsson

Steve Perry

Hogne Bø Pettersen

Steve Rode

IanNB

Steve Scott

Jamie McQuinn

Steven Roehr

Ken Fuller

Terence Sadler

Michael Handerhan

Tim Stannard

Jim

Todd Dudley

John Cowan

Tony Handley

John Holden

Joseph Cottrell

John Parry

Keith Hoisington

John Thomson

Barry Gorsky


Robert and David

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Theme music

The music I use is the last movement of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. This has been used as introduction music at many Yes concerts. My theme music is not take from a live concert – I put it together from the following two creative commons sources: thanvannispen and archive.org

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Episodes YMP Classic Feed

Yes singles part 7 – Solo Album singles – 320

Solo Albums
Solo albums – yes I know there’s one missing.

Produced by Robert Nasir, Jeffrey Crecelius, Wayne Hall, Preston Frazier and Bill Govier.

In a detour, we talk about the singles from the Solo albums Yes members produced after Relayer. I couldn’t speak live to Mark this week due to work and family commitments but we still recorded our own thoughts.

  • Did all the solo albums produce a single?
  • Are all of them equally as effective?
  • Does Mark sing in this episode?

Listen to the episode then let us know what you think!

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The iOS and Android YMP apps are no longer available unless you have an old version still on your device.


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Episodes YMP Classic Feed

Fish Out Of Water by Chris Squire – 255 – Yes Music Podcast

Fish Out Of Water Deluxe Expanded Edition
Fish Out Of Water Deluxe Expanded Edition

Produced by Preston Frazier, David Gordon and Bill Govier.

We’ve reached the final record in our solo album survey and in some people’s view it’s the best, Fish Out Of Water by Chris Squire. There’s also a 2 pence about 90125 and another ARW review!

  • Is this prog?
  • Does it feel like a solo album?
  • Is there a concept?

Listen to the episode then let us know what you think!

Become a YMP Patron!

If you would like to support the Yes Music Podcast, there is a new Patreon page where you can sign up.

YMP patrons:

Preston Frazier
David Gordon
Bill Govier

Joseph Cottrell
Jeffrey Crecelius
Michael O’Connor
Paul Tomei
Julio Scissors

Paul Wilson
Jamie McQuinn
Miguel Falcão
Ken Fuller
David Pannell
Brian Sullivan
Joost Doesburg
Jeremy North

Robert

Dave Watkinson’s Olias items:

Mark’s copies of Fish Out Of Water

Categories
Episodes YMP Classic Feed

Episode 50 – Change We Must

CD purchased circa. 1994 (Click to enlarge)

The fiftieth episode of the Yes Music Podcast featuring the Jon Anderson solo album, ‘Change We Must’.

  • As a solo artist, does Jon Anderson sound like Yes?
  • Does this solo album compare favourably with Yes albums?
  • Do the many collaborators produce a worthwhile album or is it a bit of an uninspiring jumble?

Listen and see if you agree with me. Then let us know by using any of the different routes on the right hand side or by leaving a comment below!