Billy Sherwood, who worked with Yes as a touring musician, studio mixer, producer and then as a full-time member across the 1990s, has returned to the fold as a second engineer on their on-going new studio project.
Sherwood says he “got a phone call from the Yes camp tonight, asking me to engineer the backing vocal sessions for their new record.”
Yes has been collaborating with producer Roy Thomas Baker on this as-yet-unnamed follow up to 2011’s Fly From Here. Beginning on Thursday, Sherwood reports, he’ll meet up with Jon Davison — the Yes frontman who took over in 2012. Yes stalwart Chris “Squire comes in later in the day to sing, Steve Howe after that and so on for the next week or so.”
Sherwood came into the Yes orbit during the period just before 1991’s Union, first as a writing partner with Squire. Those songs, including the now-prescient “The More We Live,” would find their way into a series of projects over the years — some under the Yes banner, others as the stand-alone band Conspiracy into the 2000s. Sherwood appeared with Yes on 1994’s Talk tour, co-produced and then mixed the successive Keys to Ascension albums in 1996-1997, then was a principal collaborator on both 1997’s Open Your Eyes and 1999’s The Ladder. He’s gone on to front the band Circa, which features Tony Kaye, another ex-Yes man.
Sherwood and Squire, who once toured briefly together as the Chris Squire Experiment (with Yes’ Alan White and Steve Porcaro, of Toto fame), reunited for a Sherwood studio project in 2012 for the first time, something that apparently led to this opportunity to work together again.
Sherwood jokes: “As Pacino said in Godfather 3 — ‘they keep pulling me back in!,'” before adding: “Looking forward to seeing the lads tomorrow. Viva la Yes!” His most recent high-profile collaboration was with William Shatner, of Star Trek fame.
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