John Wesley Drops New Album: "A Way You'll Never Be"

Posted Oct 26, 2016

Artist

PRS artist and Porcupine Tree collaborator John Wesley recently released his latest studio album A Way You'll Never Be. / A lyric video for his track "To Outrun The Light" is also out now. Check it out below!
In a story for teamrock.com, Wesley says of this latest song, “The lyrics try and touch upon that moment when you know your life is going to change forever and there is nothing you can do about it. You begin to question your own identity. You look back on all the years invested and fear that everything you thought you knew, was wrong to begin with. You wonder if perhaps, you have outrun the light." A Way You’ll Never Be marks the eighth studio album from John Wesley. The album brings a modernized return to the classic progressive rock albums of the Seventies. Wesley is standing on the shoulders of his influences such as Rush, Pink Floyd, and Porcupine Tree with the stylings of guitarists such as Robin Trower, Jeff Beck, Alex Lifeson and Warren Haynes. “A Way You'll Never Be was a fairly big step for me”, Wesley says. “I have worked extremely hard at bringing the two sides of my writing together; the "acoustic singer songwriter" and the "electric heavy guitar" elements. This album is most certainly the set of songs that has successfully combined my introspective lyrics with the aggressive type of guitar playing and writing that I love. Mark Prator and Sean Malone brought the songs to life as an amazing rhythm section. The themes of the lyrics, the melodies, and the playing make these my favourite, most cohesive and adventurous set of tracks to date. Stylistically the songs revisit some of the guitar music of the 70's that grabbed me and made me want to be a guitarist. Sonically I combined those 70's big guitar tones with the modern sounds available to us as guitarists today." John Wesley has built a long and varied career as a songwriter, “sideman” guitarist, and recording artist. His music has been called lyrically sensitive and musically dynamic. His songwriting style incorporates emotionally-charged vocals that evoke the honesty and intimacy of Roger Waters and Patty Griffin coupled with a melodic yet intricate guitar style. John Wesley has performed as sideman, guitarist/vocalist for critically acclaimed UK based recording act Porcupine Tree, during the "In Absentia", "Deadwing", "Fear of a Blank Planet", and "The Incident" world tours. He has performed in the band for nine years, culminating in 2010 with sold out performances at Radio City Music Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. John Wesley's professional music career began in the early 1980's in the Tampa, Florida area where he founded 1991 Southwestern Music Conference's showcase act Autodrive. The following year Wesley embarked on a solo career and became the premier opening act for British progressive rockers Marillion on seven consecutive tour legs around the world — North and South America, the UK and Europe — where he played for hundreds of thousands of fans. Following this was several world tours as lead guitarist for Scottish neo-prog legend Fish. In 2001, John Wesley was the primary co-writer of Fish’s "Fellini Days" album. He began touring as guitarist and backing vocalist for Porcupine Tree in 2002, and has continued his role with the band through four album cycles and over 450 shows. In 2011 he performed guitar during Steven Wilson's North American Grace for Drowning tour. In 2013, Wesley toured as lead guitarist with Simon Collin's Sound of Contact to support the "Dimensionaut" album. In 2014, he toured as the lead guitarist for BigElf and as the support act for Flying Colours to support his Inside Out Music release “Disconnect”. Wesley is preparing to tour North America with his PRS guitars this fall supporting Marillion and Steven Wilson.