John Wesley from Porcupine Tree
March 13, 2011
By Shawn Marazine
In this cookie cutter world of music, it is rare to find a cutting edge band that can carve out a unique space in the music industry. Even though Porcupine Tree is not new to the music scene, they always manage to expand their sound from album to album and inject cleaver twists musically, vocally and feature some of my favorite production to date. Not only did Steve Wilson and the rest of the band inspire me artistically but they also managed to lead me to many other fantastic bands like Blackfield, Opeth, Amplifier and Porcupine Tree’s guitar player John Wesley.
John Wesley’s vocal performance on “Half Light” helped sparked my curiosity and drew me to check out his solo material. After watching numerous live videos online of John singing and playing the acoustic guitar; I searched his music section and found that I could download his music for free. I downloaded “Shiver” John’s last release from 2005 and it reminded me of the first time I heard Paul Mc Cartney’s guitar player, Brian Ray’s ”Mondo Magneto” album. They were well written heartfelt songs with cleaver guitar licks fusing rock, blues, alternative rock and John’s vocal characteristics remind me of John Waite’s voice, which is very cool in my book.
We spoke with John Wesley from Porcupine Tree and we talked about his solo career, some of the secret weapons used to get those legendary Porcupine Tree guitar sounds, the release of his two EP’s and his full length album “Disconnect” due out before the end of the summer.
Shawn: Can you give a brief history of your career and how you developed into a musician and perhaps talk about you first gig until now?
JW: I started playing guitar when I was about 12 and I did many other things like sports, but guitar was always my main focus. I continued through school and managed to get a scholarship to a community college for guitar and after I graduated from college, I had a band together for a couple of years and we and hit the circuit down here in Tampa, Florida. Back in the 80’s we were trying to get the big record deal thing and we continued that all the way through the 80’s. I finally finished up with that band in the early 90’s and started focusing on my own songwriting in 1991.
In 1992 I was kind of broke, was out of work and I was supporting my daughter. A friend of mine called up and asked me if I wanted to take a guitar tech gig for Marillion. He said we were going out for 6 weeks and I could make some cash. So I went out and I met with the guys, hung out with them and about after the first three shows through some weird turn of events I became their opening act. Therefore, I would go out and play acoustic guitar for half hour to 45-minute set playing my own material and I would go back and do the guitar tech thing. That way I got all of my expenses paid and I opened most of the shows on the North American tour.
This led me into collaborating with Mark Kelly, keyboard player for Marillion on my first solo album. The Marillion guys released my first record on their label which was their very first artist release on the label. We sold thousands of copies on the Brave tour in 1994 in Europe, which led to me getting a deal with a French record label called CNR Arcade. They put the album out in the Benelux territories that is France, Beltone and Luxemburg. It did very well and that led to another album with a different label in 1997 called Dream Catcher Records and another album in 2000.
During that time my solo career wasn’t going as well as I had hoped and I was raising my daughter on my own and didn’t have the ability to get away from home and promote it really heavily. I ended up taking a job playing guitar for the 80’s artist Mike Tramp who was the singer from White Lion. He started his own a solo project and I went out and played guitar for him for a while.
After that I ended playing guitar for three years with Fish and also made a record with them and through that Fish connection I met Steve Wilson. I actually saw Porcupine Tree in 1995 when they were on tour with Marillion, when I met them it was so brief that the guys didn’t really remember it, but I walked away with a copy of their album from their management.
When I left Fish I gave Steve a call to see what he was up to and luckily he was looking for a guitarist. So I ended up doing the last eight years and 450 gigs as Porcupine Tree’s live guitarist, all while still working on my solo material.
Shawn: You have put out five solo albums and numerous live albums in the past eight years?
John Wesley: It still matters to put out my solo work even though over the past few years I’ve been a little behind with that and I got a bunch ready for this year.
Shawn: It’s been five years since your last album “Shiver” and it seems Porcupine Tree has kept you busy with making albums and touring.
John Wesley: It rather shifted my focus a little bit, but I have been writing the whole time and have almost a full album written and two EP’s that will be released first. Hopefully the full length album will come out sometime near the end of the summer. I’m planning to have one of the EP’s out by the first week of April called the “Lilypad Suite” and it has a kind of thematic theme. After that I have a set of acoustic tracks that were originally written with the album in mind, but they gel together better with just guitar and voice. I’m going to release an acoustic EP and hopefully shortly after that “Disconnect” will come out.
Shawn: You just sitting down with an acoustic guitar and singing seem to come very naturally to you. Does the writing process usually begin with your acoustic?
John Wesley: I start so many different ways and even right now I’m sitting with an electric guitar in my hand. The reason why I leaned towards the acoustic guitar in my solo career is because it was easy to jump on a tour with my guitar and play in front of a crowd anywhere from fifteen to 15,000. It has led me down that acoustic path, so to speak, but really it was a means to an end to get in front of people. It was easy for the Marillion guys to let me have a bunk on the bus and go out and do shows.
Shawn: Will there be any guest appearances on the new album?
John Wesley: I got partnered up with a British guitar player named Dean Tidey and he played for the last 10 years with the UK act Feeder, who sold millions of records in Europe. He’s done a lot of session work for guys like Giles Martin who is Sir Geoge Martin’s son and a bunch of well known artists. Dean is part of my solo project on guitar; Mark Prator on drums and Andy Irvine on bass.
Shawn: Is it mostly the same musicians that worked on the “Shiver” album?
John Wesly: Yeah, mostly the same except for the bass player. Andy has done previous work on “The Emperor Falls” and has done a lot of live work with me in the past and Mark and I have been partnered up for years.
Shawn: Did you and Mark handle most of the recording and production duties on the new records?
John Wesley: It’s a co-production thing between Dean, Mark and myself. As far as who’s going to mix it, that will depend on Steve Wilson’s availability. I always lean towards Steve, but we’ll see because Steve is a real busy guy.
Shawn: When I first saw Porcupine Tree’s “Anesthetize” live DVD, one of the things that really impressed me was your voice in “Half Light”. It complimented Steve Wilson’s voice and drew me to check out your solo material. Is singing natural for you?
John Wesly: No, it isn’t at all. In the 80’s when I was in Autodrive all I did was play guitar and only picked up couple songs to give the singer a break because we did 4-5 hour sets. I wrote many of the vocals for the songs and the singer would sing them, but I considered myself a guitarist. After Autodrive broke up and I was unemployed, I bought an acoustic guitar, a couple of speakers and started doing pub gigs. Playing acoustic guitar in the corner, that is when I became a singer. I had no choice because I had to sing to eat. Luckily for me, when you do those 5-7 shifts a week, 4 hour shift average, year after year I worked at it and developed some chops.
Shawn: After hearing your acoustic live tracks on your site, your voice sounds very natural to me. Those performances are definitely very naked and revealing and I like the tone of your voice.
John Wesley: Thank you very much. I suppose it was something that was always there but I focused so much on being a guitar player, that I really did not pay attention to the vocals until I had to.
Shawn: It seems like you Paul Reed Smith guitars have been your choice for electric guitars. Do you experiment in the studio with different guitars?
John Wesley: I definitely do. I have a favorite early Les Paul, several old Tele’s and those appear on records. My 1971 Fender Telecaster that I modified and stuck some pickups in and my Gibson Les Paul, you can hear in the last 3 albums I did with Porcupine Tree. In the studio I go for sounds and for live there’s something about Paul Reed Smith guitars because they sound great, stay in tune and play fantastic. So that’s why we kind of lean towards them live because they are just real workhorses. In the studio you obviously want some different flavors so use as many tones from a PRS as you can get and then you lean to the standard. Like a couple great Tele’s and a beautiful Lumisonic Telecaster.
Shawn: The Paul Reed Smith live can mimic Les Paul and Fender tones but in the studio you can use the real deal.
John Wesley: Believe it or not, the majority of guitars on the last record “The Incident” was the burgundy colored PRS that I play live. Steve recorded most of that record with that guitar. When I recorded the “Shiver“ record I did not have that guitar yet, so a lot of that was my Les Paul. On the last record the Burgundy PRS guitar saw 85% of the duties and the rest of it was maybe the Tele.
Shawn: What about your choice of amps for live and studio?
John Wesley: Again, that is kind of a weird thing. I started using Bad Cat’s live with Porcupine Tree because we were on a budget and could not tour with big rigs. So Steve and I were touring with combos and two of the most ripping combo rigs you can buy are Hot Cat’s. Steve and I for many years, all the way through the “Arriving Somewhere Tour” were touring with Hot Cat combos. On the “Fear of a Blank Planet” tour Steve decided to bump up to a 4X12 cabinet and bought the Bad Cat Lynx rig, which is a more aggressive kind of rig than even the Hot Cat is. It’s a big 4X12 so the sound got bigger, then I decided I wanted to go back to a 4X12 as well. I grew up playing Marshalls, so I started looking around and found a Cameron Modded Marshall and that was like a dream amp for me. It just showed up on the gear page and sight unseen I bought it.
Actually that amp is the main outfit used to record the last three, well two of the last three I did with Steve and his solo record was mostly done on that amp. The album before that I have another Marshall 6100 head I keep in the studio that I do not tour with anymore. Even though the Bad Cats sound fantastic live they actual seen very little studio use. 95% of the records that I’ve done with Steve have been with my Marshall heads.
Shawn: I believe most of the fans thought that Porcupine Tree’s album where recorded with the Bad Cat’s and Steve’s use of the Line 6 POD.
John Wesley: There is something about how the Marshalls track in the studio. When Steve gets in the studio he’s not brand oriented at all, he is sound oriented. I would setup a group of heads and he would just pick through them. The POD thing comes from the fact that Steve is not afraid to use a POD. What people don’t realize is that there are sounds on the records that do not sound like guitars, but they are guitar parts that are just wacked out sounds. A lot of that stuff was the POD, but your real meaty guitars on the records are amped guitars and mostly through my Marshall’s.
Shawn: You and Mark opened Red Room Studio in 2003 as a project studio and over the years, it has grown into something larger with a big commercial client list. Did you ever expect it to grow as big as it is today?
John Wesley: That was never our mission, it just grew that way and Mark is able to make a full time living off it. I’ve taking myself out of the loop as far as engineering goes. In this break with Porcupine Tree I wanted to focus on my solo career, so hired a couple really capable engineers. That is where I do my entire drum and bass tracking and I have a similar Pro Tools HD rig in my house and that’s where I do all my guitar and vocal tracking.
Shawn: Most of Porcupine Tree’s guitars were tracked at Red Room and do you use room mics to capture some of those large Porcupine Tree guitar sounds?
John Wesley: No, That’s the way Steve mixes it and more than like any ambience or room sound will be a reverb. We close mic everything and we use little to no room ambience because it is too messy. It’s really messy and hard to use so if anything sounds ambient Steve created that ambience.
Make sure to check out John Wesley’s website for updates on his upcoming albums and tour.
http://www.john-wesley.com
http://www.porcupinetree.com
http://www.redroomrecorders.com/
