Billy Sherwood

Born William Wyman Sherwood in 1965, Billy Sherwood took to music early and naturally as he came from a very musical family. His father was a big bandleader, his mother a drummer. Sherwood formed his first band, Lodgic, with his brother in their native Las Vegas. The group relocated to Los Angeles in 1980. It was there where they recorded and released one album, entitled Nomadic Sands, which came out in 1986. Eventually, Sherwood had moved onto his next musical project, this time without brother Michael. The project was dubbed World Trade, as was their 1989 debut album. Among the musicians in this group was Lodgic bandmate Guy Allison. Throughout much of the 1990s Sherwood was doing a considerable amount of work as a producer/engineer. He worked on a large number of tribute albums (to artists as diverse as AC/DC and John Wetton). He also began an association with prog rock supergroup Yes. That association started in 1992 when Sherwood served as producer, engineer, mixer, songwriter, and musician on the track "The More We Live/Let Go" on their Union album. World Trade released a second album, Euphoria, in 1995. By 1996, he had again hooked up with Yes, this time as producer/engineer for the two Keys to Ascension albums. One of those would be released that year, the other the following year. 1997 saw Sherwood working in the group the Key on their album The World Is Watching. It also saw him joining Yes as a member with the recording of their album Open Your Eyes. He joined them on tour that year, coming in as a full-fledged member of the band. In 1999, although still a member of Yes, Sherwood also found the time to work with his brother again. This time the collaboration was on Michael's solo album Tangletown. The second Yes album to feature Sherwood, The Ladder, came out that same year. 1999 also saw Sherwood's solo debut with the album The Big Peace. He would also continue with Yes during the tour for that release, but he left them shortly thereafter. However, one performance from that tour was immortalized in the House of Yes: Live from the House of Blues CD and video. The year 2000 saw Sherwood again collaborating with Yes bassist Chris Squire on the album Conspiracy. By 2003, his project with Squire had become known as Conspiracy and they delivered a follow-up album called The Unknown. That same year saw the arrivial of Sherwood's second solo outing, No Comment. In 2007, he helped found the Yes-related prog supergroup, Circa, along with Alan White (drums), Tony Kaye (keys), and a guitarist named Jimmy Haun who had played with Yes on their Union album. Following Circa's debut album, Sherwood released another solo effort, At the Speed of Life in 2008. 2009 saw the release of two more Circa albums, HQ and Overflow, and saw Sherwood adding yet another new collaborative project to his résumé. A spin-off from Circa, Yoso was a quartet that featured Sherwood, Kaye, Haun, and former Toto singer Bobby Kimball. The band was short-lived, however, and after releasing just one album in 2010, Sherwood shifted his focus back to Circa and his ongoing solo career. His fourth solo album, Oneirology, arrived in late 2010, followed a year later by another Circa release called And So On. The Prog Collective, a large collaborative recording project spearheaded by Sherwood, released a pair of albums in 2012 and 2013 after which Sherwood served as producer and composer on actor William Shatner's fourth LP, Ponder the Mystery. In the summer of 2015, following Chris Squire's diagnosis and subsequent death from leukemia, Sherwood replaced him as Yes's full-time bassist. In November of that year, he released his eigth solo album, Citizen, a concept album featuring an impressive array of guests including the late Chris Squire, Geoff Downes (Asia), Alan Parsons, Steve Hackett (Genesis), and Colin Moulding (XTC). ~ Gary Hill & Timothy Monger