{"id":17472,"date":"2019-09-26T05:30:46","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T09:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=17472"},"modified":"2019-09-04T11:45:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:45:46","slug":"ian-mcdonald-from-prog-to-arena-rock-to-alt-country-all-in-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/26\/ian-mcdonald-from-prog-to-arena-rock-to-alt-country-all-in-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian McDonald: From Prog to Arena Rock to Alt-country, All in Style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-17473\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/honey_west.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/honey_west.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/honey_west-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/honey_west-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Most people will know the name Ian McDonald from his work with King Crimson and Foreigner. But his body of work extends well beyond pioneering progressive rock and &#8217;70s arena rock. His current project is, in fact, a far cry from both of those styles. A superb multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, McDonald lends his talents to a country-flavored band called Honey West. The group&#8217;s debut CD was release about two years ago, and a long-delayed vinyl release is just now hitting the marketplace. McDonald&#8217;s path to joining the New York City outfit was a bit unusual. I&#8217;ll let him tell the story&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>You started working with Ted Zurkowski to create music for Shakespeare plays, and that evolved into you playing in a band with him, Honey West. Tell me about that. <\/b><\/p>\n<p>I live in New York and I had some neighbors, literally, across the street: Ted and his wife, Lynnea Benson. They used to walk the dog, and I used to walk my dog; we ended up talking. I found out that they had a theatre company. Lynne directs the company. And also, at the same time, Ted had a three-piece sort of alt-country band called Honey West. So Lynnea and Ted asked me if I would write some music for some of their Shakespeare productions, which I did. And that was a very interesting experience. It was a great experience for two or three years doing that. And in the meantime, I had joined Ted&#8217;s group. We have an album out, which I\u2019m very proud of. I was heavily involved in it: I co-wrote the majority of the songs and produced the album. And I\u2019m very pleased and happy with the way that turned out, and I urge many people as I can to seek it out. It\u2019s called <i>Bad Old World.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Does Honey West play outside of New York City?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>We went out of town a couple of times recently, actually. We did a show up at Woodstock at Levon Helm\u2019s barn studio and we went to a town called New Hope in Pennsylvania. So, yeah. We\u2019re reaching out. We are playing in New York here and there, and the live band is sounding better and better. It&#8217;s a lot of fun, too.<\/p>\n<p><b>And there\u2019s going to be a vinyl release of the album as well?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, that\u2019s in the works. Well, the CD has been out for a year or so now and doing quite well. We do have a vinyl release coming up, which I\u2019m excited about. It\u2019s sounding really good. Obviously, I was involved in the mastering process of that and it sounds really good on vinyl. The album was sort of conceived in the album format, anyway, from the beginning, with a sequence of side one and side two. And the artwork looks great in a 12\u201d x 12\u201d format. We&#8217;re just waiting to approve some test pressings as we speak.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8Fk4PV82HAc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/27\/i-talk-to-the-wind-and-other-instruments-the-ian-mcdonald-interview-part-one\/\">Click here for much, much more of my conversation with Ian McDonald.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most people will know the name Ian McDonald from his work with King Crimson and Foreigner. But his body of work extends well beyond pioneering progressive rock and &#8217;70s arena [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,41,73],"tags":[3642,3641],"class_list":["post-17472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alt-country","category-interview","category-vinyl","tag-honey-west","tag-ian-mcdonald","cat-4-id","cat-41-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17474,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17472\/revisions\/17474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}