Episode 67: Ash Soan

Speaking of the Arts

My live experience includes performing at Woodstock ‘94, supporting The Rolling Stones, REM, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Oasis and Bryan Adams at Wembley with my first band Del Amitri throughout 1994-97, followed by touring and playing with Marianne Faithfull, Sinead O’Connor, Sheryl Crow, Robbie Williams, James Morrison, Will Young, Squeeze, Lewis Taylor, Hamish Stuart, The Waterboys, Jeff Lorber, Trevor Horn and Seal, Rumer, Terry Reid, Ronnie Wood, Dionne Warwick and many more. View my Live credits. Other experiences I’ve had include playing the 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony with Mike Oldfield, being the house drummer on the BBC/ITV TV show The Voice for 7 years and playing on the Terminator Genisys and Mission Impossible Fall Out (Bongos) soundtracks for composer Lorne Balfe also Kung Fu Panda 3 and The Lion King 2019 for Hans Zimmer. The main part of my career has been within the recording industry, and over the past 20 years or so I have recorded 58 Top 10 albums for artists including Cher, Seal, Robbie Williams, Billy Idol, Adele, Enrique Iglesias, Dionne Warwick and Rumer, James Morrison, Cee Lo, Celine Dion and Ronan Keating. My discography also includes 18 Top 10 singles and to date, I’ve recorded 29 No. 1 albums and 10 No. 1 singles which have featured on various pop and rock charts around the world. View my full Discography. Spoiler alert! This is not the bio for myself, Mike Epstein which I’m sure you’ve realized by now. I’ve just read the bio of Ash Soan, one of the top session drummers in the world. Over the course of almost 70 episodes for SpeakingoftheArts, I can honestly say I was both more nervous and excited in preparing for this one than probably any other. Sometimes we are lucky enough to meet our own personal heroes and people who have a strong influence on us and how cool is it that when you finally meet them, they turn out to be even more generous and kind than you’d hoped for. That was exactly my experience in speaking with Ash for this episode. We talk about his trajectory as a musician, how technology has changed both the way Ash records music and listens to it, how he prepares for sessions with major pop stars, what his process is for saying No and Yes to projects, and much more.