The Auditory Adventures of Powell-Payne

The Auditory Adventures of Powell-Payne

Formed in 2022 by Mark “Penfold” Powell (ex-drummer of Psycho Kiss) and Adam Payne (former vocalist of Airrace), Powell-Payne recently presented their debut album via Frontiers Music Srl!  “Voilà” is a mixture of genuine AOR, featuring some authentic emotion-woven tracks with great hooks!  With Aydan Watkins (guitar) and Alex Anderson (bass) joining along for the auditory adventure, Powell-Payne is ready to rock an entire world with songs music fans will want to revisit time and again!  Highwire Daze recently interviewed Adam Payne to discuss the formation of Powell-Payne, his participation within the ranks of Airrace, working with the amazing Gary Hughes with Ten in the band Serpentine, and more!  Read on…

We’re here with Adam Payne from Powell-Payne and let’s go ahead and ask about the new project. How did the Powell-Payne project come about?
Okay, a couple of years back, myself and Mark Powell, the drummer, we were in separate bands. I was with Airrace at the time, he was with Psycho Kiss. We went into the pandemic and both sort of left our duties in both of the bands. They dispersed and he was nagging me to write some songs with him and I wasn’t really sort of into it at the time because I was sort of taking a little break from originals. But yeah, he sent me a piece over on piano which formed up Distance Between Us and it started from there basically.

Let’s talk about a few of the songs on the new album. Better Days, tell me about that song and the inspiration behind it.
So Better Days was actually one of the first tracks that we sort of wrote but we didn’t really accomplish it until towards the end of the album because on a personal basis I was sort of struggling with a lyric fit for it.  Better Days is basically all about, as the first opening line goes, you’re running from highs and lows in the world and sometimes you just got to face up to it and hit the head on and that’s what it does, and the track speaks for itself. It’s high energy and lots of hooks and once you’ve listened to it you should feel good about it. You should feel good about yourself and put you in a different frame of mind, so that’s what that track is about. It’s all about getting up and getting at it and just striving really to push on.

And then another song on the album is No Escape. Give me a little background on that one.
No Escape was, Aydan sort of joined us in for that one. That’s where Aydan, our guitarist, came into the band. He’s a friend of mine. He’s an exceptional player so he came up with a riff.  That one was not so deep as in thought for lyrics lyrics-wise but it’s basically – it’s about a relationship and how you can’t get away from it and it gets a little bit sour, and you know you can’t escape it. You try and fix it, and it doesn’t work out but the fact of the matter is you can never really leave that frame of mind when you’re with somebody for that length of time.  They’ll always be a part of you. It’s basically about a relationship breaking up and how you just can’t leave that particular mindset.

Is there any chance of Powell-Payne ever playing here in the States, or have you been to the States with any of your other bands?
I’ve never been to the States, personally, myself. I think our drummer, Mark, has been there. We’d be more than happy to go over there. If Powell-Payne gets up the sort of notches on the ladder and someone invites us out there, we’d be there. If all things align, we’d definitely come out. It’s not a problem at all. I’ve done a few interviews sort of over across the pond and they’ve all said the same. They just love us to come over and we would. But unfortunately, I think it just comes down to the big word, money.

Money is always a big factor in this. Yeah, as long as we wouldn’t be looking to earn money, as long as we could break even, we’d be happy to come over there. I think we need to work on getting in with agencies and some business deals, getting some good slots and stuff with good bands. If the opportunity arises, we’ll take it every time.

How did you end up doing Airrace and what was it like working on the Untold Stories album?
Long story short, I got a few friends I’ve hooked up with over the years and I think one of the boys I know put up a video of me singing, I think it was AC/DC, Shoot to Thrill actually, because I do like the harder edge stuff as well. And Laurie Mansworth, the founding member of Airrace, saw that video on socials. I don’t think he was doing much with Airrace at the time. I think he was looking to do something. And yeah, I was actually on holidays in Spain and an email came through. And he’s like, hi dude, do you fancy coming down to sort of do a little rehearsal and with a possibility of joining us? So I came back on the holidays on the Friday, I learned, I think it was four tracks that day. I did have a couple of listens while I was away. And then Saturday morning, I was six hours down the country in a rehearsal studio with Laurie Mansworth and the friends and family there. So yeah, it was cool.

Untold Stories is a cool album and Laurie’s a gifted writer. I learned a lot from him. He’s a bit more seasoned than I am. And he’s got a lot more albums under his belt. So watching him craft songs, I didn’t get too much time to watch that sort of thing, how he did it. But what I did look at was the way that he could drive hooks and melodies into tracks. And yeah, he’s inspiring to be around as well. He knows how to write a song. And anyone who knows Mr. Mansworth will know he’s written many tracks and all of them have got hooks and big choruses. Big, big productions on them. Like he really does know what he’s doing. So yeah, I really enjoyed my experience with Airrace. We went to Italy and we went up and down the country a few times here. Yeah, it was really cool. It’s just one of those things that we sort of hit the pandemic and, he sort of wanted to carry on doing stuff. But as people may know locally here, that I don’t live too close to Laurie. So, it’s difficult to get rehearsals to him and sort of rub each other with ideas and stuff for what we want to do. So yeah, he just rang me and said, look, we’ll have to call it a day. And, you know, it’s all been good.  And, you know, enjoy the moment, so that’s what we did.

And I guess there was a final show you guys were going to do, but then the pandemic pretty much killed that.
Yep.

Do you think there may be a rescheduling of that final show or do you think it’s really over?
Yeah, I’d probably say it’s over. Laurie’s got his own band now, Mansworth. It’s actually called Mansworth. He’s sort of doing stuff with that. Dhani, his son, is in The Treatment, as you may be aware, but also is the drummer for any project. I believe Laurie does. Again, I won’t put words in his mouth, but I do believe he uses Dhani for everything. Dhani ‘s an incredible drummer. So yeah, I’d probably have to say, probably not maybe now with what I’ve got going on here as well. I need to push on with this. He’s pushing on with that. Rocky Newton, who was with us on bass, he’s doing his thing now. I haven’t heard from Linda for a while, who was our keyboard player. I’d imagine she’s probably doing something. So yeah, probably not. If it arises, I’ll look at it. It’s not, there’s no issues there. It’s all being left good. We phone each other rarely and have a good chat and stuff. So yeah, if we wanted to do something for the final show, we could probably pull it off. I wouldn’t see it taking too long to get together.

Let’s talk about another project you did back in the day.  The band was Serpentine and the album was Circle of Knives. I believe when you joined, you took over for Tony Mills out of all people. What was that experience like?
Yeah. Well, that was a weird one.  I think Gareth Noon sort of messaged me, the keyboard player and co-founder of Serpentine. That was a really cool experience. I’m not going to say too much about it because we didn’t really have a lot of time together, but we spent a lot of time doing the songs. We were working with Gary Hughes from Ten. I have, again, big respect for Gary and, again, another feather in my cap who I got to work with
who really knows how to write a song. So, absolutely extraordinary, pleasant and polite guy. Couldn’t do enough for me and the band. I think it probably came around that Gareth moved to Germany full-time, whereas before that he was only just down the road from me. So, it was easier to do rehearsals and set up meets and stuff, which you do need to do really when you’re in a band. You need to be in a close facility. It won’t really work unless you’re all together in an area where you can just meet up within the half an hour to discuss things. So, I think that kind of didn’t help.

It was a cool experience. We did a couple of shows and then we did Rockingham, which is a big AOR festival in Nottingham here in the UK, which was great. We got to see some really cool bands. I believe Tom Keifer was headlining that one from Cinderella. So, I was really privileged to be on the same stage a couple of notches down from him. One of my favorite singers of all time. So, yeah, it was good. It was a good experience. It was good to work with sort of co-writing with Gary. Yeah, it came out all right. It was all good. But, again, we just didn’t have the motion to travel and tour, really, with that one. So, it was a little bit gutting, really. But that’s how it goes. That’s bands for you.

Are you currently involved with any other bands or projects outside of Powell-Payne that you can discuss?
I’m not, no. I am solely focusing on Powell-Payne. I put a lot of work into it, as have the other boys, including my sort of partner in crime, Mark Powell.

Do you have any messages for your fans who’ve been following you here in the States?
To all the people out there who are sort of listening to us and Powell-Payne and Voilà, just enjoy the music. Don’t take it too seriously. If you want to read into it, you read into it. We wrote the tracks with the ability of, you can really dig in them in your head and let them take over, or you can just enjoy them and enjoy the ride. There’s some really cool tracks there and they should make you feel good. Big hooks, you should be able to sing along in the car. The kids should be able to sing along. I got kids here and they know all my tracks. They love it. They’re humming the things around the house, and I’m probably sick of them a little bit now, but yeah, just enjoy the tracks and just don’t take everything too seriously. Just enjoy it. And hopefully there’ll be more to come. I’m pretty sure they will. So, yeah, within time, we’ll have a couple of albums under our belt and hopefully we can come over and see you guys over there.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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