Luke Webster

When I first came here in 2020, I started a band with a guy called Net, and that became The Langurs. We picked up a drummer, Nicholas, and then met Richard at an open mic in Đà Nẵng, and that four piece Langurs band was formed. I played with them until I left to go back to England.

When I came back, I told the guys, I don't want to rejoin The Langurs, but I'll keep Ashtray Heart going. If we've got a specific event, like a full moon party at Soul Kitchen where they want the four piece Langurs lineup, we'll do that. But if they're playing anywhere else, it's essentially Net, Nick and Rich. While I was away they wrote their own original music, recorded a whole album. It's just not something I'm part of anymore, unless it's a four piece thing or a wedding where I'll jump in and noodle along.

Ashtray Heart I started around 2022. Me and the drummer were chatting about heavy music, Deftones, that kind of thing, and thought it'd be cool to start a band doing music we weren't seeing anyone else do here. We started with a bass player called Rommel, did a lot of shows in An Bàng, and these metalheads started coming out of the woodwork, people who'd been craving this kind of music and hadn't been able to find it. There were maybe one or two venues that were into it, others not so much, which is fair enough.

When Rommel left, the bass player from The Langurs was a natural fit, so now Ashtray Heart is essentially the bass player and drummer from The Langurs, plus me. I've been writing for it properly over the last two or three years.

We're releasing an EP on the 17th of July, playing the release party at Namduro's. That'll be fun, especially because the drummer, Nick, is actually moving back to England for six months in August, so it felt important to get something out before he goes. We'll probably do some kind of farewell show too.

Soul Kitchen has been brilliant for us, one of the oldest live venues, probably has the most live music on of anywhere. You look at their schedule and they've got thirty acts, everyone gets a slot. Namduro's too, they had us play their opener, their King's Day event when riders go off biking around Vietnam for a few days and come back to a set from us.

Yeah, definitely, there's a specific crowd. I see familiar faces coming back, properly into it, headbanging, starting mosh pits. But there's also a chunk of people who just regularly go to Namduro's and like the place, and we happen to be playing.

We haven't fully worked it out yet. Thankfully Richard is an absurdly talented musician, plays drums, bass, guitar, so in the past when Nick's been away, Richard's taken the drums, I've gone on bass, Net's on guitar. That'll probably be the plan for now.

Beyond that, who knows. I keep bumping into people who say they want to start a band. There's no shortage of musicians here who've been coming to open mics for years and might want to start something, they just haven't met the right people yet. We used to host an open mic on Sundays at Barefoot Beach Club, it's not open anymore, and the whole community would show up, certain people every week, and you could just see a band forming in front of you.

I got stuck here in 2021, and there was this German guy, Norton, an old musician living here at the time, we were going to open mics together. One night at this place called Lockout Bar in the old town, which isn't there anymore, I played one of my originals and he said, that's a good song, do you want to record it? I said sure, went to his house, had a few beers, recorded it. It came out great, and I realized it was a lot easier than I thought.

So I asked if he had any plans, because I had a whole album I wanted to record. He was technically based in Pai, Thailand, but stuck here too, so we just spent seven months over COVID, me turning up with crates of Huda beer, him asking for nothing in return, just having an amazing time recording. A local violinist, Sabine, came and played on one of the songs. The Langurs guys helped with harmonies.

He mentored me without really trying to, taught me about leaving space in songs, that the notes you don't play matter as much as the ones you do. My grandparents had both passed away around that time, and I think he filled some of that gap.

That album, The Road Less Traveled, is a real mix, because it's basically six or seven years of me learning how to write songs. One about my brother and playing tag as kids, one about my Welsh roots through my grandmother, some about travelling Vietnam alone for the first time. It's me cutting my teeth, basically.

It's called The Heart of a Dying Star. I wrote most of it after going back to Britain for a year post COVID, and it was a strange year. I'd worked at a summer camp for three years prior, went back that summer, and ended up waking up every single morning crying. It became this routine, at home before I went, exactly the same. I had no idea where it was coming from, but a lot came up, and I wrote a lot of songs about growing pains, depression, loneliness. It became my mental health album, essentially, very introspective. Good to listen to in a dark room for an hour, lying down, eyes closed.

People here sometimes ask if I can play something happier, and I get it, not everyone wants sad songs at a bar all the time. But as an artist, the moments I actually need to write are usually when I'm upset, or stuck, or can't resolve something. The first album has songs about travelling and family and good things too, but the second one I noticed, they were all introspective, about things I felt people needed to talk about more. Whether anyone else was feeling them too, whether people had room to talk about it.

When I play those songs live, the room usually goes quiet. I'd like to think it gives people space to be introspective, to feel something, even cry if they need to. I don't just want to play happy songs. My objective as a musician has always been to get people to actually feel something, whatever that is, and give them room for it.

I knew I wanted to be in the same room with him, to be able to do an album launch together, have him play on it. He's an incredible musician and producer in his own right, Ben Webster, and we'd have these long nights where I'd be working on a song, playing piano, and he'd jump in and suddenly there's this orchestral thing happening and the track's gone from four minutes to eight, sounding like a Hans Zimmer piece.

By the time it was finished, it had become this thing that was both of ours. He took it somewhere I couldn't have taken it alone. Two weeks after we finished, I flew back out here.

Hội An's got an amazing music scene, genuinely. It's up and coming more than ever, bars having music two or three nights a week now, where before it might be once. There's this huge melting pot, not just of musicians but cultures, and with that comes completely different styles. You can go out in An Bàng, hear Stewart playing lovely blues at Red Lantern, then go to Soul Kitchen and hear Nico doing pirate rock. So many genres in one small place.

As a musician, the open mics and jam nights are the best part. You end up playing with someone, it's fun, you introduce yourself, ask if they want to jam, and suddenly a band's formed out of nowhere. When I was back in the UK for that year recording the album, that's what I missed most. Not that the UK scene isn't good, I went to plenty of open mics there too, but it's the fact that Hội An's such a travel hotspot that it attracts such a range of people.

Honestly, a year ago I'd have said more nights, more demand for it. But in the last year that's actually happened. There are bars now where you've got three different things to choose from on the same night. It feels like venues are realizing what live music actually brings to a place.

I do worry sometimes that the DJ scene could overflood the live music side. There'll always be a place for DJs, that's fine, but I think there's a balance to protect for the musicians actually trying to start bands.

It's basically what Green Day said in an interview once, and they're my favourite band of all time. They said, we were just guys who liked hanging out. So start there. Find people you actually like spending time with. Get a cajon if you don't have drums, two guitars or a guitar and bass, and just start playing the simplest songs you like, covers you're genuinely into.

When I started on guitar, I didn't want to learn tab properly, I just wanted someone to tell me where to put my fingers. Found this guy on YouTube, Marty Schwartz, who'd literally say, this finger here, this finger there. I got obsessed with AC/DC. And the moment it starts sounding like the actual song, you get hooked.

That's the sign you're having fun with it, honestly. When something good happens while you're playing, you laugh, you smile, it's involuntary. Figure out what you actually want from it, but at the start, it really is just: have fun, play what you want to play, try switching instruments. If you think you're the guitarist, get on the drums for a bit, you might surprise yourself. The drummer might turn out to be a great guitarist.

Just, thank you for doing this and bringing the community together in one place. People have talked about that idea for a long time. There's such a concentration of venues in the old town, and a fair few here too, and a lot of it comes down to getting people out to places like Soul Kitchen that have live music on consistently. Hopefully this helps with that.