Asia co-founder says still-prolific rock band might ‘take off again’

Where does Geoff Downes live?

“On an airplane or in a bus,” he says.

The British keyboardist played in Yes when the band visited the Hard Rock Hotel in August. Now he’s back on the road again with his other band, Asia, which returns to Las Vegas for a Friday show at Red Rock Resort.

The Rocks Lounge is a big step down in venue size from The Joint. But Downes is the connecting thread in Asia, while only one of several keyboard maestros to have circled through Yes.

“Asia obviously is very close to my heart, because I was there at the beginning,” he says of the band of prog-rockers who allied in 1982 for a “supergroup” that crossed into the Top 40 mainstream with “Heat of the Moment.”

After two albums with bassist-guitarist John Wetton (King Crimson), guitarist Steve Howe (Yes) and Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake &Palmer), Downes became the only constant in a revolving lineup whose leaner-years alumni include two current Las Vegas area residents, guitarist Pat Thrall and singer-bassist John Payne.

But the original lineup reunited in 2006. For several years Howe accompanied Downes from one tour to the next. But Howe, 67, recently stepped down from Asia — “Something had to give” with his schedule, Downes said — and the band recruited younger guitarist Sam Coulson.

“I think it’s still got a good value. We’ve still got a lot of fans out there and I think there’s still a lot of mileage in it,” he says. “I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve kept it going as long as we have. I think everyone believes in it. Who knows, it might all of a sudden take off again. … You never know, do you?”

This year’s album “Gravitas” is the band’s fourth since 2008. “We can’t stop it. You can’t hold us back,” Downes says.

“I think it’s very important to maintain, to keep new music coming out. I think it’s a bit of a false road just to think you can play the stuff from yesteryear. I think the fans appreciate the fact that you’re challenging yourself again and coming up with new material. I think that’s important, not just for our own sanity but also to excite the fans and keep them interested in the band.”

Although album sales are “quite a shrinking market,” the new reality is somewhat offset by cheaper recording costs and a lack of interference from the band’s Italian label, Frontiers Records.

“At this stage in our career I don’t think we feel that we’ve got to answer to anybody and we’re fortunate not to have a record label (with the) dictators they used to be back in the early days, when you had an A&R guy breathing down your neck who said he didn’t like one song or another song,” he says. “They’re not so much like that anymore. They commission you to do the album and we’ve got pretty much free rein in it.”

Downes has one co-writing credit on the new Yes album “Heaven and Earth.” But his long songwriting partnership with Wetton is less complicated and more efficient.

“Writing for Yes, you have to be conscious of all the elements in there and the collaborations are very, very important,” he says. “With Asia, because John and myself are the primary writers, we’ve got a very clear-cut direction for how we see each album.

“We’re not after world domination, we’re quite happy to do it in a fashion when we’re required to do it. We’re not in the pressure cooker. … We just take it in our own time.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.