They are a four piece from Winchester and exponents of classic, in your face, guitar drenched pop. They cite influences from The Beatles to the Longpigs and have to date produced such promising tunes as the fascinating “Tuesday Morning”, “Friend Of Mine” and the full on work out “Scratch“. Describing themselves as "Bunch of Winchester Lads in Suits", they combine a strong sartorial presence with a knack for those perfect, potentially timeless, tunes. They sound very promising indeed and we recommend strongly that you can check them out at www.myspace.com/fourplayrockandroll and fourplay.uk.net . The band is: Will Taylor- Lead Guitars and Vocals Fitz- Rythm Guitar and Vocals Brendan Ashby- Bass Guitar and backing vocals Jon Supran- Drums and backing vocals Rob Massey spoke to them and asked them about their world view, influences and their plans. When did the band get together?
We've been together about two years now.
Were you mates before?
Before we were a band we were all good friends but at different schools but didn't know we all knew each other until we all met at the same time, and as soon as we did we formed a band. You might say fate brought us together, oh how the cliche stings!
You quote a number of influences on your website. Tell me a bit about which bands have influenced you especially.
We have all been influenced by a wide veriety of music but as songwriters I think we would all say Beatles and perhaps a bit of Dylan
Describe the Ashbies sound.
I think there is no one sound that we create but if I were to sum us up I would like to say pop music, but in modern times the word pop has turned into something quite tacky, I think that was ABBAs doing! The Beatles were pop.
Is there a story behind “Tuesday Morning“?
There is a lot of meaning behind that song but we'll never tell! We'd rather people worked out there own versions there was originally a whole load of other sections to Tuesday Morning which we will put on the Tuesday Morning (reprise) which is a track coming up on our new album.
Which other songs should we look out for?
Listen out for all tracks coming up on our new album. I quite like 'Teenage Fools'
Tell me about your local music scene.
Winchester has a great music scene. I think its starting to get bigger, and we're gonna be there when it does.
Which of the gigs you've played stand out as especially important to you?
We actually have our own venue in Winchester called the QEII Theatre which holds about four hundred. We always manage to fill it. Thats where we have the most fun playing.
If you had to pick one life changing record by another artist what would it be?
I'd have to say either 'Bringing it all Back Home' by Bob Dylan, or 'The sun is Often Out' by a band called the Longpigs theres a band you need to hear if you havn't already.
What next for The Ashbies?
Well we've been taking a break to make this album, and then we're gonna gig as much as humanly possible a just try and get as many people as we can to hear our stuff. But other than that we're just gonna sit around watching old movies and stroking cats. There is a possibilty of doing an independant tour of Japan at the end of the year. We all going to go for it big time.