‘I suppose I should be thinking about mortality, but I’m more focused on living ... music keeps you young’

Ash frontman Tim Wheeler tells Una Brankin how the late Bap Kennedy inspired his song Moondust, turning 40, talking to David Bowie about quitting smoking and his pride that Belfast’s Oh Yeah Centre was named after a song he penned in his teens

Bap was an amazing guy, really creative. It was a shock to hear he had died. So tragic

Back home from New York recently, Tim Wheeler sat for a while in his old bedroom, where, as a teenager, he wrote the hit song, Oh Yeah.

Later that evening, he performed the track at the Belfast music centre named after it, as part of their 10th anniversary celebrations. The acknowledgement is not lost on the Downpatrick-born Wheeler, a softly-spoken, unassuming and friendly person who shows no signs of a rock star ego.

“I never imagined when I was writing Oh Yeah in my bedroom — I was 18 — that it would become the name of a music centre,” he says. “I’m very proud of that. It was an amazing honour, and then to get their Legend Award last year. I still feel a bit young for that, even though I’m 40 now. It’s just really cool to have survived this long in music.”

Based in New York for the last 12 years, Tim flies home as often as he can to visit his mother Rosalind — “83 and fit as a fiddle” — and his siblings (an older brother and sister, and a younger brother). He lost his father, Dublin-born George Bomfforde Wheeler, to a severe form of Alzheimer’s Disease, at 78, in January 2011. The former High Court Judge would recognise his middle son only fleetingly in the dementia ward, and Tim was heartbroken to see him in distress.

In 2014, he released a poignant debut solo album, Lost Domain, which charts the progression of his father’s condition, from becoming forgetful in 2008, to coming to terms with his death. A highlight of the album is the ballad, Vigil, with its soulful refrain, ‘You are not alone’. “I do find it easier to talk about now, with the passing of time,” he says quietly, down the line from Brooklyn. “Dad had faith. Me, no. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again but every now and again I have very vivid dreams. It feels like he’s there. “Making Lost Domain helped me express the grief. It was painful to make but cathartic. Talking helps and being able to do something for the Alzheimer’s Society helps.”

He also has a new girlfriend to talk to, an Italian who works in the film industry, in costumes. The relationship is in its early days, and he can’t say if she’s ‘the one’, but given his history of writing about his ex’s (Oh Yeah, Shining Light and The Girl From Mars, to name a few), there’s a chance the new romance could work its way into his lyrics for the next Ash album, due for release next year.

The fact the band is still making albums is something Tim didn’t envisage, back in 2007, when the Oh Yeah centre was opened. To the dismay of some of their old-school followers, the band announced that, with the advent of the download and music piracy, they would no longer be releasing albums.

After eight years of collaborations and touring, they made a U-turn in 2015 with the release of Kablammo!, their seventh studio album.

“It was tricky to navigate our way back then (in 2007),” says Tim. “It was a turning point in the music industry; the way people listened to music was changing and the emphasis was on single tracks.

“We said Twilight Of The Innocents would be our last album and we’d only release singles from then on. So, it’s amazing to be here, 10 years later, recording a new album and playing the Oh Yeah centre’s 10th anniversary party. And I got to do Teenage Kicks with the band at the Stendhal festival in Derry in August. That was a dream come true.”

Looking back over the last 10 years, the loss of music icons