For those of you who are unfamiliar with today’s guest, and his band, firstly shame on you, but secondly, let me introduce him to you.
In 2016 Al Winter formed the award winning This Winter Machine and captured people’s attention when they supported Magnum on their national tour. Since that time they have toured and performed steadily, releasing four albums, with a fifth in progress and gathered a veritable army of fans along the way.
Like many prog rock bands there have been numerous line-up and label changes along the way but the same quality and enjoyable music has remained, ensuring that whether live or on album they are well worth listening to.
DARREN (Darren Walker): Hello Al, on behalf of The Progressive Aspect and myself, I’d like to say thank you for your time today. Firstly, please tell me about your musical journey? What were your musical influences and what was the catalyst that made you form the band?
AL (Al Winter): I’ve always sung. I started in choirs and then I graduated to singing in musicals when I was in my early to mid-teens.
DARREN: Were they professional things or was it just amateur?
AL: Semi-pro and pro. But I mean, the thing is, it wasn’t rock music but a great stepping stone to better things.
DARREN: And what about your musical tastes?
AL: My musical taste was very much classic heavy rock. It wasn’t really prog, so I grew up on a diet of things like Ozzy Osbourne, Meatloaf and Black Sabbath, stuff like that. And I sort of sidled into Prog diagonally via Rush. They were my first big experience with Prog because there weren’t a particularly proggy band. I connected with them because they were more rock than prog. I was probably about 14 years old and from there I got into musicians like Peter Gabriel and I definitely liked that. And, of course, Genesis. But I kind of stopped with Genesis after Wind & Wuthering. I had a couple of albums after that, but my tastes were kind of the first four albums, with Peter Gabriel, up until the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. But I never really got into bands like Yes. I appreciate them. I got the two Trevor Rabin albums, the 90125 and Big Generator, and I absolutely love them but by the time I came to be aware of them, they seemed very intimidating. You know, because all the Yes fans seem to know everything about them. The line-ups, songs and every detail. I suppose it’s same for Rush fans, but they don’t seem to be many casual Yes fans. Going for the One, Drama and Tormato were discovered when I was in my teens and it was just too much for me. I mean, I admire the band, I think they’re fantastic and maybe one day I’ll put a bit of time into them. But the older you get, the less time you have. Although I’d not complain if there are any This Winter Machine fans like that 😉 But there are other Prog bands that I do love, for example It Bites. I saw them support Robert Plant on his Now and Zen tour and was blown away by them. They were absolutely phenomenal. Brilliant band. When I saw them live there wasn’t anything poppy about them. They were very much a bona fide prog rock band. Big extended solos and everything, and were probably better than Robert Plant.
DARREN: You have performed many concerts with other bands so, other than This Winter Machine, who are your favourites amongst the current batch of prog bands?
AL: There are some fantastic bands out there, some really, really good bands and I wish that the older prog audience would give them more of a chance. It does seem to be that a lot of the die in the wool prog audience just want to listen to the same stuff from 1974 and it does seem a little bit of a shame because they are missing out was so much good stuff. I think last year my favourite album last year was Stuckfish 4. An absolutely fantastic album and Ade Fisher produced our last album. Not only that, they are such a good band to play with, I’ve played with them a few times. Kyros are another band I like, their last album was brilliant. Then there is Peter Jones, I love his voice and everything he touches turns to gold. He’s played with us a few times and he’s such a lovely guy. For somebody who’s so talented, who’s done so much, he’s so down to Earth. He was on our Kites album and did a fantastic job.
DARREN: Due to the shallowness of the current music market and audience, I think a lot of the current crop of smaller prog rock bands will never hit the big time or capture the zeitgeist. But if they’d have been around a few decades earlier, around the same time as Marillion and Pallas, or even the 70s, they would have been massive, wouldn’t they?
AL: Absolutely. It’s a bit tricky and I think it probably, certainly in the last, maybe 10 or 15 years, it has become this kind of weird. I can’t remember the last time a band broke through the way that Marillion did. Maybe the exception is Big Big Train, who have gone from strength to strength in the last few years, but they are the exception to the rule. I mean, that’s are not like a Rolling Stones sized band, but they’re certainly doing better than 99% of the bands out there.
DARREN: Very true. You’re going to agree with me for obvious reasons, but your albums should sell by the bucket loads and be in the charts, but it’s just prog doesn’t get people’s attention these days. They’d much rather listen to Ed Sheeran or other flash in the pan acts.
AL: It’s appalling because I’ve even had to cancel the order for the helicopter 😂 But we don’t do it for the money. The thing is, as long as the expenses are covered we carry on because we love what we do.
DARREN: And you obviously enjoy the music, have your own fans and following and you will keep doing well. Breaking even, at least. All your albums are well crafted and full of great music, but which one is your favourite and why?
AL: I like them all for different reasons. I worked on the first album, The Man Who Never Was, for a lot of years and I wrote probably 70% of it on my own. So that is a special kind of album to me. And also I’ve never done that kind of prog before, just going in, put a band together very, very quickly and recorded it all within six months. It was very kind of a seat your pants thing. The follow up, A Tower of Clocks, was another tricky one, while Kites, the third album was difficult as well due to some of the members leaving to form Ghost of the Machine, so I had to assemble a new band, and Kites was very much an attempt to write shorter songs. So there’s no song on that album that’s over seven minutes and is out by far our best-selling album, by far. But I don’t know why. It came out during lockdown when there wasn’t much coming out at that time so I probably found a hungry audience. Finally there was The Clockwork Man which I also love as it is my first true concept album we’ve done. But, to answer your question, if I had to pick a favourite, I’d probably pick the last one, The Clockwork Man.
DARREN: When you’re performing, what song or songs do you like doing most? And are there any songs that you’ve grown weary of, but still perform because the fans expect to hear it?
AL: To be honest with you, every now and again you do sort of switch the set up. For example, recently, we did two gigs back-to-back in Scotland and we played different sets because some people came to both gigs. There are some songs that work better than others live, but still we like to rotate, and some have been part of every gig we have done so we can now give them a rest. And if I am getting tired of it, I’m sure the audience must be getting tired of it too. But we have a song called Fractured and we usually end on that as it always goes down well and it’s always fun to play.
DARREN: For the release of The Clockwork Man album, you created a limited edition comic to go with it. How did that come about? Was it your plot and did the artist Andrew Richmond just come up with the images based on your ideas, or perhaps a joint venture?
AL: Believe it or not, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do, write a comic. I had pages and pages or ideas, I’m talking probably 20-30 where I visualised it as a mini graphic novel and I spoke to all the artists I could and I found this guy, Andrew Richmond, I liked his artwork and he wanted to do it because he’d never done a band before. But the cost was per panel and the full concept worked out to be far too expensive so we I had to do some drastic pruning. It’s not entirely what I originally envisioned it to be, but I’m still glad I did it. Wonderful artwork and story. Plus it is great having the graphic novel to accompany the story of the album.
DARREN: Tell me about the forthcoming album. How’s it progressing and when can we expect it to be released?
AL: It’s progressing well. It’s sounding good so far and is going to sound very different to everything else we’ve done so far, which is not a bad thing. It is not necessarily a concept album, but its got a theme if that makes any sense and we’re nearly close to being able to play some of it live, to road test it.
DARREN: When you’re recording, is it like a group process or are you definitely the leader of the pack who ensures that it’s basically your vision or do the others contribute and, if so, what’s the sort of percentage?
AL: To be honest with you, it’s not as binary as that. I don’t think it is my vision, and I don’t tell the band what they should be playing and what they shouldn’t play. I’ll let them get on with it, as long as it fits the song, that’s all that matters. I don’t dictate and since the debut album, all the stuff’s been co-written.
DARREN: You seem to have created a mini prog rock festival day with the Highway events starting with Highway to Hull concert in 2022. It now seems to have become an annual event, with Highway 25 coming up in September. How did that first one happen? And what surprises can we expect from this year’s show in September?
AL: Originally it was never intended to become anything more than a one off show. We had played O’Reilly’s in Hull before and it has a fantastic stage, really good lights and it is a great space. And I said why don’t we do an all-day gig? Literally as soon as the gig was announced and we started selling tickets, people were asking if they could play the next year and it went on from there. I should put a subtitle a sub header on the out on the posters that says the unintentional festival as it was never planned to be that. It seems to be self-perpetuating as it keeps running under its own steam with the last one we did being absolutely packed out. It was in Leeds but we will be back in Hull this year.
DARREN: What was your first musical love?
AL: So anything… I don’t mind musicals and the first album I adored was War of the Worlds, Jeff Wayne’s album. I absolutely love that album, even today. But I will always love Peter Gabriel’s albums as well, he still has so much to offer and keeps delivering great music. His last two albums were pretty good.
DARREN: That is all we have time. Once again, on behalf of The Progressive Aspect, and myself, thanks for your time.
LINKS
This Winter Machine – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | YouTube | Instagram
