Ashkon Stone

Ashkon is the son of a music minister and a stay at home mother. He went to private school until 3rd grade and was home schooled through high school graduation. Attended Fullerton Community College at the age of 16 and then entered Pacific Christian College (now Hope International University) with a double major of Social Science and Theology, graduating the month before his 21st birthday. Ash started taking classical piano lessons at 4 years of age. By the age of 10 he was considered an accomplished musician and played publicly at both churches and recitals. He started singing at the age of 6 and performed in many church musicals. At the age of 15 Ash took up the bass guitar and after a couple of months decided he would like to play the guitar as well. He taught himself how to play both instruments that year based on recordings by Black Sabbath, Metallica, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Ozzy Osborne and others. In community college he received an extra credit assignment to create some form of art that was historically minded. This was the catalyst for the birth of Purple Fish his first band. The songs were hokey at first, but soon the lyrics and music matured. During this time Ash started playing music with Nathan Bonell. For their first song Nathan played the bass line on a keyboard which, incidentally, was recorded at the church that both boys went to and that Ash was the sound man for. Ash felt it was necessary for Nathan to play an actual bass guitar and showed him a couple of techniques; after which Nathan self taught on the bass. Ash learned how to run a sound board from his father at the age of 9 and his interest in mixing has continued to grow since. Ash has done all of the mixing and mastering for all the groups he has been a member of. Ash stopped taking piano lessons at the age of 16 because he felt strongly that training that hard to play someone else's compositions was stifling his creativity. He found that writing original music on the guitar, an instrument on which he never had lessons, came more naturally. These beginnings would lead to a myriad of different styles and different bands, everyone of which Nathan was part of. Purple Fish was the first, but only lasted a year after some creative differences with the backup guitarist David Casey. Although they enjoyed playing with David and loved his creativity, they started getting into newer music and he would have rather stuck to the punk type music they were performing at the time. Steve Tooth was the drummer for Purple Fish and would stick with Ash and Nathan when they switched to the name PSI. PSI was more alternative in nature and tended to be more experimental with the overall sound. Ash and Nathan both dropped their guitars to B tuning and started writing complicated and dark music. Some of the punk was left over from Purple Fish, but most of that sound would fall to the way side as time went on. Steve was a fantastic drummer and will always be missed from the band, but the time came when he could no longer make practices because the band lost their space to practice in. At that point practices were moved to Ash's garage. Steve still attempted to make it as much as possible, but it was becoming apparent that it wasn't going to work out in the end. After a long search no drummer was to be found. They went through a few and either they didn't have the same vision or they were unreliable. One day Nathan walked into the church and Ash was playing his guitar along with a fully sequenced song playing on a keyboard. The song was simple but the concept stuck and Red Tear Shed was born. Originally intended as a solo project by Ash, Red Tear Shed shortly took over the practices alleviating the need for a drummer. After only a short time RTS had a number of songs written and they were practicing them often, but there was a problem. It was nearly impossible to press play on the sequencer get to a Mic and play the guitar or bass all at once. Shawn Skerston joined RTS at that point. Original job description "button pusher"; Shawn became a big part of the writing process on a number of songs and soon learned to play back up parts on the keyboard. Ash and Nathan were once again a power trio; just a little different than most people had seen. Driving, loud, heavy music with complicated classical inspired themes became the trade mark of Red Tear Shed. After a year of hard work and dedication they started looking to play shows. Their very first show was with White Eagle at 2 am at the Whiskey A Go-Go in Hollywood, CA. They were well received by a very confused crowd. The lack of a drummer would continue to be a source of bizarre looks, but the looks would generally turn to amazement as a wall of sound crushed their disbelief. RTS would continue to play small shows all over Southern California. They picked up a drummer, Roy, who was good but failed to mesh with the sound and style of RTS. Nathan and Ash had become accustomed to playing without a drummer and the experience tore RTS apart. All four were too close to let their differences hurt each other so they parted ways and RTS was no more. Ash would continue to write music, a little at a time using all new equipment. He was operating under no group name at the time, but Nathan continued to assist by singing back up vocals. It was at this time that Ivey's Song, Leper, Drowning in the Dreary and Sith Killer were recorded. Ash came up with the name Edible Clowns after realizing what the scariest thing in the world could ever be - a vampire clown. Ash wrote nearly an album worth of songs under the name Edible Clowns with Nathan singing back up parts from time to time. Nathan was working on the solo project Nailed Down Backwards for which Ash would record guitar parts. After nearly a year of producing like this Ash and Nathan decided it was time to throw their lot back in together, but they would re-join under the name Gentle Fracture. Nathan immediately started concentrating on writing for Gentle Fracture while Ash was still primarily focused on getting Edible Clowns up and running. It quickly became apparent that the music was just better when they worked together and the focus began to shift to Gentle Fracture. Ash couldn't let the Edible Clowns name go and Nathan couldn't let the Gentle Fracture name go so in the spirit of working together Edible Clowns and the Gentle Fracture was born. This has often led to Ash being referred to as Edible Clowns and Nathan being referred to as Gentle Fracture. Around the same time they released their first independently produced album "Missing the Vein" Silver Storm Productions contacted them about using their music on a soundtrack for the movie "Awaken the Dead". Ash offered and they were picked up to compose the original score as well.