Circa | |
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Origin | California, U.S. |
Genres | Progressive rock |
Years active | 2006–2022 |
Labels | Cleopatra, Glassville |
Spinoffs | Yes, World Trade, Conspiracy, Yoso, Lodgic, Asia |
Past members | Tony Kaye Billy Sherwood Rick Tierney Scott Connor Jimmy Haun Alan White Jay Schellen Ronnie Ciago Johnny Bruhns |
Website | www |
Circa (stylized as CIRCA:) was an American progressive rock supergroup [1] founded by four musicians associated with Yes: former Yes members Alan White (drums), and Tony Kaye (Hammond, keyboards), current Yes member Billy Sherwood (vocals, bass guitar), and guitarist Jimmy Haun, who played on the Yes album Union .
Since 2012, the lineup has consisted of Sherwood (vocals, guitar), Kaye (keyboards), Rick Tierney (bass guitar), and Scott Connor (drums) until December 2022. [2]
Jimmy Haun and Michael Sherwood (Billy's elder brother) were childhood friends and went on to form the band Lodgic, which Billy joined in 1981. A few years after Lodgic split up, Billy Sherwood was introduced to Yes bassist Chris Squire and other members of Yes, including Kaye and White. Sherwood worked with the band on material for their next album. Meanwhile, both Haun and Michael Sherwood came to do session work on the second album from the Yes spinoff band, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe. Material from both projects was combined for the 1991 album Union , which thus features Billy Sherwood on the track "The More We Live—Let Go" and Haun and Michael Sherwood on further tracks. Squire and Billy Sherwood had written a body of material not used on Union; subsequently, they briefly toured this under the name of The Chris Squire Experiment in 1992, with a line-up including White and Haun. (The Chris Squire Experiment later evolved into Conspiracy.)
Billy Sherwood continued an on/off association with Yes over the next few years, touring as a live musician for the Talk tour in 1994, with Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Chris Squire, Alan White, and Tony Kaye. After this, in 1995, Sherwood and Rabin did some writing together, and two tracks on the Circa 2007 album are based on this material.
Billy Sherwood eventually joined Yes for a few years and two albums before leaving again. In the mid-2000s, he organised two Pink Floyd tribute albums, Back Against The Wall and Return To The Dark Side Of The Moon , and some further projects which featured an array of former and current Yes members as guests, including Kaye, White, Geoff Downes, Peter Banks, Bill Bruford, Steve Howe, and Rick Wakeman. Coming out of the second of these projects, Sherwood suggested to Kaye that they put together a project using former and current members of Yes. Going under a working title of Family or Family Project, various names were floated, and White and Banks were approached.
However, in 2006, as the project developed, Sherwood and Kaye decided to change tack and focus on creating a unitary band. They recruited Alan White on drums and Jimmy Haun on guitar and recorded their debut album. Circa was formally announced in March 2007.
On 30 July 2007, the band self-released their nine-song debut album, Circa 2007 , with guest appearances by Michael Sherwood and Cole Coleman. The album includes two tracks based on material Billy Sherwood co-wrote with Trevor Rabin in 1995. A two-track download-only EP was previously available for a short period in the United States.
The band's debut live show was on August 23, 2007 in San Juan Capistrano, with a set including an extended instrumental medley of Yes tunes. A DVD of this show was released as Circa Live in February 2008. A few North American dates followed in early 2008, with Jay Schellen, a past collaborator of Sherwood's and Kaye's, filling in for White on one date.
In July 2008, Jay Schellen permanently replaced Alan White, who chose to focus on his work in Yes. The new line-up recorded an album, Circa HQ , in the latter half of 2008. The album was released on 14 January 2009. A short Italian tour with former Toto singer, Bobby Kimball, was announced for February 2009, playing a set consisting of music by Circa, Yes, and Toto. Kimball and Circa then joined to create a new band, Yoso (originally to be called AKA), although the Yoso line-up changed further until only Sherwood and Kaye from Circa were still members, joined by Johnny Bruhns on guitar and Scott Connor on drums.
Yoso disbanded in early 2011,[ citation needed ] and guitarist Bruhns moved to replace Haun in Circa. Haun had withdrawn to focus on his work providing music for commercials. Jay Schellen also departed, wanting to focus on work with Asia Featuring John Payne and Unruly Child. Connor was originally to take over on drums, but withdrew and Ronnie Ciago joined the band. On March 7, 2011, Michi Sherwood (Billy's wife) revealed the band's next album will be called And So On.
However, with western North American tour dates, Ciago left the band and Connor joined.
By 2012, Bruhns had departed from the band, leaving the group without a guitarist. Sherwood took this opportunity to switch to guitar and hired Rick Tierney (previously a touring musician with Alice Cooper and The Monkees) to take over on bass after hearing Tierney flawlessly perform basslines from Sherwood's solo discography. [3] [4] [5]
In 2013, all of Circa's studio material and first live album was re-issued through Cleopatra Records. Circa also released a new live album, Live From Here There & Everywhere, on Glassville Records.
Circa's fourth album Valley of the Windmill, [6] was released July 8, 2016 [7] on Frontiers records. [8] It includes several extended-length songs, and Sherwood describes it as "super proggy". [9]
On April 15, 2019, Sherwood announced on his Facebook page that he and Tony Kaye are currently "chipping away at various musical ideas" for a fifth album. [10]
2006-2008 | 2008-2010 | 2010 | 2010 |
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2011 | 2011-2012 | 2012–2022 | |
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Yes are an English progressive rock band formed in London in 1968 by lead singer and frontman Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, guitarist Peter Banks, keyboardist Tony Kaye and drummer Bill Bruford. The band has undergone numerous line-up changes throughout their history, during which 19 musicians have been full-time members. Since May 2022, the band has consisted of guitarist Steve Howe, keyboardist Geoff Downes, singer Jon Davison, and bassist Billy Sherwood, as well as touring drummer Jay Schellen. Yes have explored several musical styles over the years and are most notably regarded as progressive rock pioneers.
Anthony John Selvidge, known professionally as Tony Kaye, is an English keyboardist, best known as a founding member of the progressive rock band Yes. Born into a musical family, Kaye was classically trained and intended to become a concert pianist before he developed an interest in jazz and contemporary rock and pop music. He joined several groups through the 1960s, including the Federals, Johnny Taylor's Star Combo, Jimmy Winston & His Reflections, and Bittersweet.
Union is the thirteenth studio album by English progressive rock band Yes, released on 30 April 1991 by Arista Records. Production began following the amalgamation of two bands that featured previous and then current members of Yes: Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (ABWH), consisting of vocalist Jon Anderson, drummer Bill Bruford, keyboardist Rick Wakeman and guitarist Steve Howe, and Yes, comprised at that time of bassist and vocalist Chris Squire, guitarist and vocalist Trevor Rabin, keyboardist Tony Kaye and drummer Alan White. The eight musicians signed with Arista and a combination of unfinished tracks by both groups were selected for Union. The album's sessions were problematic from the start, including disagreements between some of the musicians regarding the "merger" of the two bands, strained relations during the recording process, and decisions by the production team of Anderson and producer Jonathan Elias to bring in session musicians to re-record parts that Wakeman and Howe had originally completed.
William Wyman Sherwood is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer, record producer and mixing engineer. He is best known for his tenures in the English progressive rock band Yes as guitarist and keyboardist from 1997 to 2000 and as bassist since 2015, following the death of original bassist Chris Squire. He is known for working with former and current Yes members on other projects as well.
Jay Schellen is an American drummer who is best known as a member of the hard rock band Hurricane. Schellen has also worked and currently working with a number of other heavy rock and progressive rock bands, including with Asia, World Trade, Circa, Unruly Child, and Yes.
Talk is the fourteenth studio album by the English progressive rock band Yes. It was released on 21 March 1994 by Victory Music, and is their last studio album to feature guitarist Trevor Rabin and keyboardist Tony Kaye.
The Ultimate Yes: 35th Anniversary Collection is a compilation album by the English progressive rock band Yes. It was originally released on 2 CDs on 28 July 2003 by Warner Music in the United Kingdom. A 3 CD edition with additional material, including new recordings from October 2003, was released in the US on 27 January 2004 by Rhino Records.
Back Against the Wall is an album released in 2005 by Billy Sherwood in collaboration with a number of (mostly) progressive rock artists as a tribute to Pink Floyd's album The Wall. A year later, Sherwood followed it with the release of Return to the Dark Side of the Moon, a tribute to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.
Conspiracy was a progressive rock band founded by Chris Squire and Billy Sherwood. The band released two albums: Conspiracy (2000) and The Unknown (2003), and a live DVD (2006).
This is a discography of the English progressive rock band Yes. Over the years they have released 22 studio albums, 18 live albums, 37 compilation albums, 39 singles, and 22 videos.
Jimmy Cary Haun is an American guitarist and composer, known for his work with the bands Yes, Air Supply, and Circa.
World Trade is a U.S. progressive rock band that features Billy Sherwood on bass and vocals and Bruce Gowdy on guitar. Yes's Chris Squire performed as a guest on their second album, Euphoria.
Circa 2007 is the debut album by Circa, a progressive rock band consisting of then former Yes members Billy Sherwood, Tony Kaye (keyboards) and Alan White (drums), as well as Jimmy Haun (guitar), who had worked with Yes as a session musician. Billy's elder brother Michael Sherwood also appears. Two tracks are based on material Billy Sherwood and Trevor Rabin were developing in the mid-1990s.
Yoso was a short-lived American rock supergroup combining former members of Yes and Toto. It was a spin-off from the group Circa.
House of Yes: Live from House of Blues is a live album and video by the English progressive rock band Yes, released on 25 September 2000 by Eagle Records in the United Kingdom and by Beyond Music in the United States. It is a recording of the band's performance at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on 31 October 1999 during their world tour supporting their eighteenth studio album The Ladder. By the time of the album's release, guitarist Billy Sherwood and keyboardist Igor Khoroshev were already out of the band, reducing Yes to a four-piece.
Jon Davison is an American singer, musician and songwriter who has been the lead vocalist of progressive rock band Yes since 2012.
Christopher “Scott” Connor is a professional percussionist and vocalist.
Topographic Drama – Live Across America is a double live album by English progressive rock band Yes, released on 24 November 2017 by Rhino Records.
Yes 50 Live is a double live album by English progressive rock band Yes, released on 2 August 2019 by Rhino Records.
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