The new line up of John Payne\u2019s version of Asia hasn\u2019t lasted long with guitarist\/singer Francis Dunnery bailing after just one gig. <\/p>\n
All was looking rosy for the band \u2013 who contractually cannot just call themselves Asia but \u2018Asia featuring John Payne\u2019- just a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Payne announced that Dunnery \u2013 the It Bites mainman and all round prog magus \u2013 had joined the group, saying \u201cI can\u2019t think of a more apt musician to join the band, he\u2019s a musical genius!<\/p>\n
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“Frank and I have a great musical chemistry that has awoken a fire within me. We are currently in the studio writing the new album, AVIANA, at Loco Studios in Las Vegas, and hitting the road in August.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alas, that fire seems to have spluttered out after just one gig, in New Platz, New York last Saturday. On Monday Dunnery put out a lengthy social media post in which he outlined the reasons behind his sudden departure.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn needs a guitar player who can come in and play all the styles and all the sounds that are on the records and unfortunately that’s not what I do,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are much better people at doing that than me. It is impossible for me to adapt to that role, I don’t have the personality or the playing style to fulfill what he needs. And I understand fully because it’s what I ask my band to do with It Bites.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cAlthough John and I are very good mates, I’m afraid I can’t fulfil what he needs musically and he can’t afford to carry someone who isn’t 100% at this stage of the game.<\/p>\n
“I love old John. He’s a good lad. There are absolutely no weird or hard feelings and I wish him and the band all the success in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s back to the drawing board for Payne, who now has to find a new guitarist before the band\u2019s next gig at Tomball, Texas on August 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new line up of John Payne\u2019s version of Asia hasn\u2019t lasted long with guitarist\/singer Francis Dunnery bailing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-46407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}