Advance Base - A shelter against the cold

Writing songs: perhaps the most immediate way to connect with others. A loner like Owen Ashworth learned that as a kid. Songs can build stories, exorcise nightmares, save you from holiday-season depression. They can even protect you from the cold gripping your heart, as suggested by the new moniker Ashworth has chosen. We asked him to walk us through his trajectory, from Casiotone For The Painfully Alone to Advance Base, on the occasion of the release of the new live album "In Bloomington".

Could you tell us something about the beginnings of your musical journey? When and how did you realize you wanted to become a musician?

I don't remember when it started, but even as a kid I had a strong desire to connect with people through art. I think it was simply a natural extension of my solitary, melancholic, shy, narcissistic, etc. character. I wasn't always great at talking to people, but I desperately wanted to feel understood. I tried a number of different means of expression (writing, drawing, acting, film, just to name a few) before I got around to approaching music in any serious way. I think it was in my late teens that writing and recording my own songs really started to seem possible. I was drawn to the immediacy of pop music. It's like a feeling of electricity. Boom! Instant feelings, instant connection.

The Advance Base project was born after the end of the one under the name Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Was it hard starting over from scratch with a new incarnation?

It was hard, but I felt like I needed a change and a challenge. I started the Casiotone project when I was twenty, and thirteen years later that music no longer meant the same thing to me. I don't feel comfortable continuing to sing the same old songs, carrying forward a version of myself that no longer speaks to me. I was proud of what I'd done, but I wanted to try doing something new, something that would be an honest representation of who I was at that moment. Advance Base is nowhere near as popular as Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, but I think it's pretty normal for people to prefer the old songs, the songs made by a younger person, the songs they listened to when they were younger and had a stronger connection to the music. But I have to move forward. Hitting "reset" on a game you played as a teenager isn't easy at 33, but it's exciting too.

Advance Base was the name of a weather station in Antarctica. Could you tell us the story behind the name you chose for your new project?

In 1938, Richard E. Byrd published an autobiography titled "Alone", in which he recounts a terrible winter he spent by himself at the Advance Base weather station in 1934. He nearly froze to death, and for him that experience became a kind of spiritual awakening. It's a brutal, beautiful, deeply inspiring book, maybe my favorite one. I've reread it countless times over the years. When I moved to Chicago in January 2006, it was the coldest weather I'd ever lived in. The tiny office where I'd set up my four-track recording studio didn't have much insulation, so I jokingly nicknamed it Advance Base. A compilation of singles credited to Casiotone For The Painfully Alone took its title from that little frozen studio, where I'd recorded most of the songs. After the Casiotone project ended, Advance Base was the name that stuck with me. I like the idea that music is a place. I find it comforting to think of my songs as a kind of shelter from the cold.

What difference do you see between "A Shut-In's Prayer" and "Nephew In The Wild"? How do you think the Advance Base sound has evolved?

Most of "A Shut-In's Prayer" was recorded live in a room with other musicians, which gives the recordings a warm, friendly atmosphere. There's an airiness that I love in some of those recordings.

I recorded "Nephew In The Wild" mostly by myself, one instrument at a time, in my basement. It was a method partly dictated by necessity, but it also turned out to suit the kind of songs I was writing at the time. Some friends overdubbed parts here and there, whenever the songs seemed to call for something beyond what I felt capable of doing myself. But overall "Nephew In The Wild" has a solitary, claustrophobic quality. There's also an abrasive lo-fi edge that makes the album feel a bit more Casiotone-like than "A Shut-In's Prayer", even though I used more live instrumentation than I had in the past.

I don't know if I can trace any kind of linear progression from one album to the next, beyond the sense that I always seem to be improving a little. Despite all the shared elements, every record I make feels like its own separate obsession.

"In Bloomington" documents a very special show, alongside a full band. How did that come about, and why did you decide to turn it into a live album?

Since "Nephew In The Wild" was recorded piece by piece, and at my shows I'd mostly performed solo versions of the songs, I was really curious to hear how they'd sound with a proper band behind them. I usually try to put together a special show around Christmastime, so last December I gathered a group of good friends (including some of the people who'd contributed to "Nephew In The Wild") to form a temporary "Nephew In The Wild Band". It was really exciting for me. We ended up playing two shows, and the second one in particular was simply incredible. I hadn't planned on making a live album out of it, but we found out the sound engineer had recorded it, and as soon as I heard the recording I knew I wanted to share it with as many people as possible. I'm really proud of that performance.

As a listener, do you enjoy live recordings? What are your favorite live albums?

I used to prefer studio records, but over the years I've developed a real passion for live albums. There's a rawness in live recordings that really draws me in. In recent years I've grown more and more interested in stand-up comedy, so maybe that's the same quality of spontaneous performance I connect with most.

Among my favorite live albums, a few that come to mind are James Brown's "Live At The Apollo", Bill Withers' "Live At Carnegie Hall", Neil Young's "Live At Massey Hall 1971", John Prine's "Live", MF Doom's "Live From Planet X", The Raincoats' "The Kitchen Tapes", Harmonia's "Live 1974", and the live material on Jerry Jeff Walker's "Viva Terlingua". I also have about half a dozen live Nina Simone albums, and they're all wonderful.

What's your relationship with live performance like?

Performing live gives me a tremendous amount. I'm very grateful to be able to play my songs for people. I even like talking into a microphone. I like not knowing what's going to happen. There are so many things that could go wrong! It's exciting. By now I feel like it's an important part of my emotional life. I start going a little crazy if too much time passes between shows.

Your songs are populated by a real gallery of characters. Is there one you've grown particularly attached to?

Interesting question! Sometimes the characters are based on real people, and it's hard for me to separate invention from inspiration. Other times the characters are simply made up, and it's impossible to pin down exactly where they came from. Those are probably the characters I feel the most special connection to. I often think about the young girl at the center of "Pamela", about her family and the people in her town. I also think about the people in "Northfield, MN" and "White Jetta".

How did you come to write a series of songs set around Christmastime?

I've loved Christmas and Christmas songs ever since I was little. Maybe it's the sleigh bells? Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is one of my all-time favorite albums. There's an inherent solemnity and melancholy in Christmas songs that just hypnotizes me. Christmas is glorious and depressing! There are so many different ways to have a disappointing Christmas. I want to sing about all of them.

Songs like “Pamela” and “Summon Satan” have a horror-movie atmosphere. In your opinion, what's the secret to a good horror film?

I think the secret is not showing most of the truly scary stuff, so the viewer can fill in the blanks with their own personal horrible ideas. It also helps if the music is good.

Do you have a favorite place or moment for writing a song?

At any moment or place I can manage to write a song, I feel electrified! I'm not at all picky about that.

Have you ever felt the need to express yourself in a broader literary form than the song, like a novel, for instance?

I think so, but not seriously. At least not right now. Writing my little songs still gives me quite a bit of satisfaction.

Over the course of your career you've covered songs by very different artists, from When You Were Mine” by Prince to “Streets Of Philadelphia” by Springsteen. For you, what's the key to truly making someone else's song your own?

Sometimes it's simply that I love a song so much that I catch myself thinking about it all the time, so it keeps echoing in my head. But then, when I listen to the original again, I realize it's different from how I remembered it. Sometimes I'm compelled to make my own version of a track precisely because I want to try to capture that strange way it sounded in my head. And sometimes it's just that it's nice to sing a beautiful melody or well-written lyrics, nothing more.

You founded the record label Orindal Records with your brother Gordon. In your opinion, how has the music market changed in recent years? What do you think about artists' ability to promote their own music in the age of streaming services?

I don't have much hope for the future of the music market. It's becoming harder and harder for me to scrape together a living from my music and my record label. The revenue I get from streaming is scant, and fewer and fewer people are buying physical formats. Still, I'll keep making and releasing albums for as long as I can afford to, because I can't help but do it.

If your label could release the next album by any artist whatsoever, who would you choose (and why)?

I'd love to release an album by Bill Fox, a songwriter from Cleveland, Ohio. "Shelter From The Smoke" and "Transit Byzantium" are two of my all-time favorite records, and even just getting to hear a new Bill Fox album would be an incredible thrill.

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