Dukes of Orient are back with their new album, Freakshow, a compelling concoction of melodic rock tracks that ably bridges the prog and AOR genres with masterful melodies, compelling, literate lyrics and musical chops to impress even the most jaded of aficionados.
Released in August on Frontiers Records, the album is the next step in the evolution of the band’s principal creative partnership, between vocalist/bassist John Payne and keyboardist/songwriter/producer Erik Norlander.
This is the second album under the banner Dukes of the Orient. As readers may or may not know, the band’s primary creative duo, Norlander and Payne were part of Asia Featuring John Payne. It’s a complicated provenance in that for a time, from about 2007 to 2017, there were two versions of the prog-rock legends Asia. The so-called original act, which featuring founding members John Wetton (King Crimson), Steve Howe (Yes), Geoff Downes (The Buggles/Yes) and Carl Palmer (ELP), had reunited and began touring and putting out new music.
Payne had taken over for Wetton in 1993 while Downes, Palmer and to a lesser degree Howe were still in the band. Over the next few years, the core of the band whittled down to Payne and Downes and they released a string of albums well into the 2000s before the reunion of the original Asia happened. In complicated, but not rancorous, legal preceding’s, Payne was allowed to perform and record under the banner Asia Featuring John Payne, which he did, bringing Norlander into the band in 2007.
When Wetton passed away in January 2017, Payne and Norlander thought it was time for a clean break and chose to discontinue using Asia as part of their moniker as an original recording act, settling instead for Dukes of the Orient. The group’s critically acclaimed debut album came out in 2018.
“Universally, we were endorsed by the fans. It’s always tough when there’s two versions of a band out in the world. And even though John had every legal right to use the Asia name, it was right after John Wetton had passed away when we finished the first album and we thought it wasn’t right to do this as Asia. We thought we might come off as opportunistic, or people might think that we were trying to reclaim the name Asia now that John was gone. We never thought that way,” Norlander asserted.
“I knew John Wetton and worked with him a bit and he was a super good guy. The last thing we would want to do is show any disrespect to him, or any of the other guys in the original version of Asia. John Payne and I, along with the people at the label, unanimously agreed that it was the right thing to do. I honestly haven’t had anyone say to me, ‘oh, I wish you had kept calling it Asia.’ So, the response to the new band has been really good and really positive.”
While the first Dukes of the Orient album was not a huge tonal and sonic deviation from the Payne version of Asia, Freakshow is a bit of a departure, leaning more into the melodic, AOR side of the musical ledger. Norlander believes having their identity now completely separate from Asia has given them a sense of freedom they may not otherwise have enjoyed if they retained that brand.
“I completely agree with you that it has been a benefit. Geoff Downes is an awesome keyboard player and obviously he has written some great songs and made some amazing albums – some of my favourite albums, in fact. But I am not him. I am my own musician. In fact, when I was asked to join Asia Featuring John Payne back in 2007, I had lunch with Keith Emerson [ELP’s keyboard stalwart] in Santa Monica, because I wanted to talk to him about it. I figured who would be a better counsel than someone like that,” he said.
“And I asked if it was wise for me to join a parallel version of this famous band. He said it’s absolutely wise that I should definitely do it. But he told me to make sure I was being my own man and not try to copy what anyone else has done. I needed to be my own artist, and I have taken that really to heart. Especially on the Freakshow album, you’re hearing even more of my own style come through and less of the Asia references that were on the first album.”
Norlander believes that one of the reasons why he and Payne connected personally and especially musically is they have a unique relationship with the music of the other one’s home nation. Norlander is American, while Payne is British.
“I grew up in southern California listening to British prog and John grew up just outside London listening to American AOR. If you went back in time to when we were in high school, I would be listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer, Procol Harum, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and the Moody Blues and John would have been listening to Foreigner, Styx, Journey and bands like that. So, obviously there is crossover, but it’s just a really interesting combination – we’re fans of much in each other’s country,” he said, adding that the two actually met backstage at a festival in Germany in the fall of 1997 when Norlander’s band Rocket Scientists was opening for the Payne-led Asia. They didn’t really reconnect until he was asked to join Payne in Asia almost exactly 10 years later.
“When we do collaborate, it’s just a really nice combination of influences. I think we have a similar sense of humour. We are both liberal in our politics. We both like to go out for a curry and a good drink, or a good drink and then a curry depending on which country you’re in. And, of course, there’s the similar musical tastes, but apart from all that there’s just that X factor where you can’t quite put your finger on why you click with somebody. I do enjoy his company and I think he feels the same way about me. We have spent a lot of time in airports and on buses and on the road and that’s a time where, if you don’t like somebody, you’re really not going to like them after being on tour. I am happy to say that it was exactly the opposite with John. That’s not to say we haven’t had rough patches. I mean, in any relationship you’re going to have tough times, but we’re still here doing it 13 years later, so there you go.”
Interestingly, Freakshow ended up being less collaborative in terms of the songwriting approach, that the band’s debut – although even the keenest of listeners could never tell, such is the simpatico nature of Norlander and Payne’s creative ESP.
“For the first album we took a little more of an old-school approach where I would basically write the music and John would write all the lyrics and melodies, although there was some crossover in those roles, but essentially we co-wrote everything. On Freakshow, we had planned to get together and do some writing sessions but there were a bunch of scheduling conflicts and things that came up. And this is well before the virus and all that nonsense. So, we ended up just writing on our own. We actually didn’t co-write anything on this album,” he said. The rest of the band appearing on Freakshow includes drummer Frank Klepacki, guitarist Alex Garcia and sax player Eric Tewalt.
“I wrote five songs myself and John wrote five of the songs himself, which was a total departure. I think it was successful because we have worked together for so long that we really know what the other one is all about. When I would go to write a vocal melody or a lyric for John, I know what he sounds good singing and the kinds of lyrical subjects he enjoys. When I wrote The Monitors, I thought, okay I need to write something using some mystical imagery like the watchful eye and that sort of thing that he likes. On the other side, with the material that John wrote, he wrote a lot of keyboard parts and chord progressions that really suit my style so when I sat down to play them on piano or on the Hammond organ or whatever, it all felt natural and it worked.
“We did leave each other room, of course, to put our own personalities into it. I was certainly not militant about saying that John had to phrase or emphasize a word a certain way – I let him be a little loose with the phrasing so he could sing it like himself. Similarly, with the keyboard parts, there were some instances where I completely re-invented the feel. And I can give you a great example with the song The Ice Is Thin. He wrote that as more of a straight up and down, almost Foreigner-like song. As I was playing through it, and kind of getting into it, I said, ‘what if we did a shuffle like a Supertramp sort of feel?’ I started playing the song with that tweak, with the Wurlitzer and clavinet, and I didn’t really change his vocal or the melody, but it changed the feel of the rest of the song. I think it’s cool that we could leave enough room for the other guy to put his spin on things.”
The title track is another Norlander composition, and could be said to be inspired by much of what has happened politically, especially in the U.S. over the past few years. But it was one specific incident of madness that inspired the song.
“It’s funny, I actually wrote that in 2018 when we had the [Trump and GOP-sponsored] Brett Kavanaugh supreme court hearings here in the United States and you just say things going on in the Congress and in our government that were … well, there’s always a little bit of wackiness going on, but this was on a whole new level of craziness. I just remember seeing senators coming in and they were not going to change their mind one bit, they had their agenda and whoever was pulling their strings, had pretty tight reins on them,” he said
“And then you have this judge candidate for the highest court in the land and you hear the things he was accused of and then the way he responded to it; it was just a total freakshow. So, that was kind of the motivation for the song. With the lyrics, I tried to make it a little more surreal and take it a little farther than just one thing, but the world just kept getting more and more surreal on its own.”
The first song on the album, The Dukes Return, has a double meaning, and again is one of Norlander’s compositions. It refers to the band coming back strong with new music, but it’s also a story song that fits in with Payne’s deep love of history and mysticism.
“I mentioned how when we were writing we were trying to write for the other partner in the band. The other thing that John loves writing about is the Crusades. He loves history and especially that era of history and British history in particular. If you go through his catalogue this is a theme that comes up a lot. I wrote The Dukes Return with two meanings, or course. One is obvious: here’s our second album so we’re not a ‘one and done’ project, we’re a band. And against that I wrote the story of this band of warriors coming back from years fighting distant wars and battles to save their homeland. Now they’re finally home and claiming the honours and the feast they had earned,” Norlander said.
“As a recording artist, while you can’t compare it to someone who has gone off to war and suffered like that, but we go through our struggles of trying to keep a band alive and keeping musicians together through all the challenges of being on the road for long stretches of time. Especially with bands like this with so much history between us and such a legacy, it’s a triumph when you can get another album.”
For more information on Dukes of the Orient, Freakshow, and any post-Covid tour dates, visit https://dukesoftheorient.net/home, or the band’s social media channels.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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