Thursday, 28 June 2012

LINK: The voice of Yes

Whether he’s singing “Owner of a Lonely Heart” to a 40,000-seat stadium or “Big Buddha Song” off his newest solo album Survival & Other Stories to an audience of 500 lucky souls at a winery, there’s no mistaking Jon Anderson’s voice. It’s the voice that propelled Yes to superstardom, and Anderson’s impressionistic and mystically themed lyrics are behind his band’s biggest hits.


YES MAN!
Jon Anderson, front man for the iconic progressive rock act Yes, will present an intimate solo acoustic concert on June 30 at Castoro Cellars.
PHOTO COURTESY OF JON ANDERSON

Anderson still crisscrosses the globe, playing music for audiences big and small, but for the past decade, he’s called SLO County home, always returning to his house just south of Arroyo Grande. He discovered the area years ago because his wife Jane’s sister lives here.

“On a visit, I remember seeing a police car trying to push an old Volkswagen hippie van that had stalled, and I thought, I want to live in a place like this. It has good energy,” Anderson said during a recent phone interview.

In 1997, when Yes reformed after a 10-year hiatus to record the album Keys to Ascension, he recorded it here, in what is now Heritage Oaks Bank on the corner of Marsh and Santa Rosa streets. For the past eight years, he’s concentrated on performing intimate solo shows.

“I’ve been traveling the world doing these solo acoustic shows where I’ll perform pockets of Yes and Vangelis songs, new songs which have been very well received, and in between telling stories about my life, my crazy, wonderful life I have lived and am living. It’s sort of like theater for me, and I really enjoy sharing this music and these memories.”

Read on...

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