In the summer of this year, Corvus Stone received a wave of praise from critics and also reviewers on Prog Archives for their download only release, Corvus Stone Unscrewed. The album was made available for free to people who had previously purchased the band’s albums (Corvus Stone, Corvus Stone II) and it included a menu of remixed songs and new material. Corvus Stone had already attracted much attention for their 2012 debut and won even more fans with last year’s sophomore album.
A multi-national band, Corvus Stone is comprised of Colin Tench – guitars, Pasi Koivu – keyboards, Petri “Lemmy” Lindstrom – bass, and Robert Wolff – drums and percussion, and is based in Sweden. Each member has his background and involvement with projects past and present, but of the four, one member’s history stands out as rather unexpected for a recording musician, one who jests that he’s not a professional even though he bloody well works like one.
The Long Road to London
Colin Tench had been an avid listener to music since a very young age; however, the thought of becoming a professional musician was not something he dwelled on with any degree of seriousness. Originally from England, Colin went to live in Sydney for three years and spent 11 months backpacking across Asia. During his stay in Sydney he began learning to play the guitar. He joined a band alongside some other blokes who were either from England or who had English parents, and they called themselves The Pommie Gentlemen. This humorous appellation would presage Colin’s approach to music in the distant future. The band played parties and joined Battle of the Bands, but by Colin’s own admission they were not particularly good. (An interesting footnote is that the drummer ended up playing on two tracks of Corvus Stone’s debut three decades later!) His band did, however, discover AC/DC’s original vocalist, Bon Scott in the audience one night.
Eventually, Colin made his way back to London via a six and a half month journey across Asia. The guitar was temporarily forgotten until Colin decided to audition for a new band called Odin of London. Both he and another guitarist, John Culley, passed the audition. It was only after the band got going that Culley revealed to the other members that he had been a member of Black Widow and Cressida – a professional with some serious seventies cred. Thus Odin was born there in London in 1981.
Odin of London performed in pubs but gradually grew tired of playing for small audiences. They hoped that by recording some of their material they might release a record and move up to bigger crowds. Unfortunately for them, every record company door they entered became a swift exit. The band folded, but not without three of the members putting their musical heads together to come up with a cunning plan for a new band project.
The end of Odin and the beginning of…
It was 1985 and Colin Tench, Gary Derrick and Cliff Deighton decided to put together an album of songs that would have absolutely no popularity whatsoever in the mid-eighties. With the discovery of the elusive fourth chord, they deigned to record an album of crossover prog (as those in the know might call it), something that they wanted to create for themselves – a notion that seems decades ahead of its time. Songs they could come up with, but money for studio time was another problem. A game of poker led the lads to the fortuitous encounter with a gentleman who was planning to build a recording studio. Before the evening was out, the three musicians had agreed to help build the studio in exchange for recording time (one wonders if any bets were lost). Thus began the music of Bun Chakeze and what was to be the seed from which would sprout the trunk bearing all of Colin’s musical projects 25 years later.
As the band’s music came together, lyrics were written for some songs. But who would sing them? At last, the band got a hold of a singer, Joey Lugassy, from California. The music had a strong progressive rock sway to it, and Joey did his best to deliver vocals for the songs. The resulting product was rather bold for the year of 1985 – a melange of styles including Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, and other classic sounds of the 70’s – but as one could expect, no record companies were interested. Bun Chakeze packed up their instruments, and Colin packed his travel bags and went off in search of adventure in foreign lands… for 24 years!
The album that would change the world!
In 2010, Colin came in to roost and had John Culley on his mind (remember him from Odin of London?). They had been out of touch since 1985, and Colin decided to search for him on the Internet. As Culley had once been a member of Black Widow, Colin tried to get a hold of the fellow in charge of running the Black Widow web site, Pasi Koivu (this guy is instrumental, so to speak). The contact between these two men led to some important things happening in Colin’s life. First, Pasi got to hear some of Colin’s recordings from the 80’s and encouraged him to release the music. Odin of London became available as a download only but BunChakeze was released on CD. Colin began connecting with musicians and other interesting people on Facebook and came in contact with several who liked what they heard. Among them were artist Sonia Mota, singer Blake Carpenter, and musicians Stef and Yolanda Flaming. Then Pasi asked Colin to contribute some guitar to a piece he was working on. And that was where it started.
Over the next two years, remarkable things began happening for Colin and he found himself hauled fret board first into the world of a professional musician. Between 2011 and 2012, Colin formed Corvus Stone with Pasi Koivu, Petri Lindstrom, and Robert Wolff with Sonia Mota contributing artwork and opinions, and Blake Carpenter doing a bit of vocals. They released their debut album in 2012. Colin was also asked to play guitar for Blake Carpenter’s band The Minstrel’s Ghost and his album “The Road to Avalon”. Colin became an integral part of Andy John Bradford’s Oceans 5 and helped create the music for and played guitar on the album “Return to Mingulay”. In addition, Colin re-formed BunChakeze and also began working with other musicians and singers on his own Colin Tench Project. And as if playing in bands was not enough, Colin learned about mixing and mastering and mixed and mastered the debut album “Time Doesn’t Matter” by Stef and Yolanda Flaming’s band Murky Red. Not bad for a guy who hadn’t played guitar since Culture Club was popular!
A Modern Minstrel
Over the last few years, Colin has found himself keeping very busy. Aside from recording Corvus Stone II and the special follow up “Unscrewed”, Colin has been working on a few other projects such as the bands Coalition and Transmission Rails. As well, CTP is coming together, soon to be ready to release a full first album. Colin also played guitar for Andres E. Guazzelli’s symphonic rock peace “Wish You Could Hear” and mixed Murky Red’s second album “No Pocus Without Hocus” and squeezed in some lead guitar on one track. Finally, the project United Progressive Fraternity featuring many musicians and including legends Jon Anderson and Steve Hackett, includes Colin and his music.
It’s hard to imagine a musician with more irons in the fire than Colin. In addition to playing guitar and writing music, Colin also mixes, something he learned to do after he was not happy with the engineer’s job on an Oceans 5 recording, and has learned web page design. Once there was a time when bands had money and hired people to do these things. Now Colin, along with support from his trusted musician friends in Murky Red and painter Sonia, does a lot of different things for maintaining his band projects.
Colin’s playing style is at once easily identifiable with Corvus Stone and impressively diverse in his other projects. Often playing staccato notes reminiscent of Ritchie Blackmore, Colin has a chameleonic ability to adapt his playing suitably to different styles of music. He can adopt an almost flamenco style to his playing and add folk influences or go with a seventies rock groove or switch to symphonic prog guitar. One has to wonder though, after not having played for a quarter century, how does he do it? Colin admits that it is not easy – fingers and memory don’t work like they used to – though he says he can avoid making the same mistakes he did in the 80’s. Some other important points are that:
– He doesn’t take himself seriously though he certainly takes playing and recording seriously.
– He tries to make the most out of each note because he doesn’t play that many in a minute.
– He believes that more than shredding, making a guitar solo work with the melody of the music makes for a good guitar solo.
– He thinks of how to add a different twist to his music, go the opposite way from what might be expected..
– He has fun playing.
– His band Corvus Stone don’t try to sound like anybody and they don’t try NOT to sound like anybody.
Connections
Colin Tench has worked regularly with quite a few people. Here are some.
Blake Carpenter – Colin plays guitar on the album The Road to Avalon by Blake Carpenter’s band project The Minstrel’s Ghost. Blake sings on the Corvus Stone albums and is part of the band project, Coalition.
Sonia Mota – The painter who provides Corvus Stone with stunning artwork, she is also an ideas person who came up with the name for the band. She did the artwork for Oceans 5 and for Progeland, a band that includes Corvus Stone bassist Petri Lindstrom.
Stef Flaming – Colin’s good friend, Stef is involved in Transmission Rails with Colin, played bass in Oceans 5, and appears on Corvus Stone’s cover of Murky Red’s song “Boots for Hire”. Stef is the song-writer, artist, and vocalist for Murky Red and plays guitar as well. Colin mixed and mastered both Murky Red albums and plays lead on one song.
Phil Naro – Phil can be heard singing on some Corvus Stone songs, contributed vocals to the Coalition band project and sings on some tracks of the Colin Tench Project. Phil’s career goes back to the eighties when he played in TALLAS with Billy Sheehan. He currently sings with Unified Past.
Andres Guazzelli – Andres wrote and arranged some of the music on the Oceans 5 album and wrote his own 12-minute symphonic prog piece called “Wish You Could Hear” with Colin playing guitar.
With several band projects on the go at once, it’s difficult to guess where Colin’s machine heads will turn up next. His most recently released appearances are on the forthcoming United Progressive Fraternity album and a CTP release for Christmas called, “Natal”.
In just a few short years, Colin Tench is branching tendril-like into the prog scene. It must be all thanks to him discovering that fourth chord!
The Pommie who? No, I don’t ever remember seeing them.
Music is a Journey 