By Jill Hughes

I interviewed the entire Abigail's Ghost band after their performance at the Rites of Spring Festival on May 2, 2009. They talk about how their band came about and their new album, D_Letion (review here).  Click the link below to hear the first part of the interview via audio.

 Abigail's Ghost Interview (Part 1 - streaming audio)

Continuation of interview with Kenneth Wilson (bassist)....

USA Progressive Music: What is the significance behind the name of the band, Abigail's Ghost?

Kenneth Wilson: None whatsoever

USA Progressive Music:  Really?  There is no one named Abigail?

Kenneth: Nope.

USA Progressive Music:So how did you come up with the name?

Kenneth: I just made it up.

USA Progressive Music:  Interesting.

Kenneth: It sounded good and rolled off the tongueI'm a fan of repeated phonemes and the two Gs sounded nice together.Basically I wanted a feminine name in the band nameand something that sounded nice and dark at the same time. Sort of like marilyn manson or alice cooper but without using the two name formula.

USA Progressive Music: Cause those are people, not bands

Kenneth: Well, that's the name of the bands and the artists but that's along the lines of what I was thinking, it represented our music pretty well at the time. We had written stuff for the first album before the band actually technically existed. It was just stuff that Josh [“Bones” Theriot] and I had been working on, that we had worked on with other bands. There are a few songs that we have that never saw the light of day that I'd like to rework one day

When we started we were very much inspired by TOOL, but it was kind of a mixture of that and Radiohead. The progressive rock and metal elements came from TOOL and King Crimson originally. And I was always interested in experimenting with sounds. That was always something I had a problem with when people were saying that we were Porcupine Tree clones, but there is no such thing as bad publicity I always say so if it gets people talking, so be it.

USA Progressive Music: It is because it's what they know

Kenneth:Exactly and that is what I always said when people asked me. I grew up listening to all the 60s and 70s music. I know where the sounds originated from. When musically uneducated people make assumptions like that, there's really nothing I can tell them but to listen to more music.

USA Progressive Music: Well thanks for the follow-up answers. Click the link above to listen to the full interview with the whole band.