Bill Wyman, “What & How & If & When & Why” (2015): Something Else! sneak peek

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This certainly doesn’t sound much like a doting retiree. More than two decades past his departure from the Rolling Stones, and more than three since his last solo project, co-founding bassist Bill Wyman has reemerged amid a driving jangle on “What & How & If & When & Why.”

The vocal approach sounds something like Mark Knopfler, fitting since Wyman is working with Knopfler sideman Guy Fletcher, but there is also a bit of the Blockheads’ edgy darkness in the subject matter and some of the barking poeticism of Tom Waits in the lyric. Bill Wyman has also mentioned Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” as an inspirational jumping off point. Saloon-rattling horns and a gaggle of sensuous female backing singers complete things.

The thing that “What & How & If & When & Why” (lead single from Bill Wyman’s forthcoming Back to Basics, due on June 22, 2015 via Proper Records) doesn’t sound anything like is his earlier laid-back rootsy fare — to say nothing of the Rolling Stones. “I set about working on different sets of rhymes, sixes and fours, and it just came into being,” Wyman says in the advance media material. “It’s not the sort of song I usually write.”

Bill Wyman’s group also includes by long-time collaborator Terry Taylor, Graham Broad and Robbie McIntosh. Back to Basics, just Wyman’s fourth-ever UK solo effort, was co-produced by Andy Wright. The album features 12 tracks, plus one bonus song for the digital version. Three of them are reworked older demos, while the others are newly written.

Nick DeRiso