Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette John Ashton on helping the Pittsburgh band: "We've done really well, considering the amount of time we've spent." Click photo for larger image.

It's early Wednesday evening in McKeesport, and John Ashton of the Psychedelic Furs is supposed to be mixing a four-song session he cut last month with Pittsburgh's Seven Color Sky.

But Ashton can't stop hearing new ideas for the song, instructing Seven Color Sky guitarist Scott Bedillion to try on a bottleneck slide and run it slowly up the neck of his guitar going into the chorus.

And then slowly down again.

It's a small change.

But it's exactly what the record needs, the icing that in many ways defines the cake.

And that's how the mixing continues for the two days Ashton has to spend at Soundscape Studios, where he and Seven Color Sky recorded all the basic tracks in three days.

Speaking by phone on his way to the studio for a second day of "mixing," Ashton says, "I wish we had more time, you know? But that's kind of always the way. It's very difficult to get everything that you want done, especially when you're working in not the ideal situation, working at night. It's the end of the day. You're tired. But we've done really well, considering the amount of time we've spent."

There is no final mix for now, but no one seems to mind. If anything, the guys are happier with all the cool new parts than they could possibly have been with just a finished product.

"We thought we would actually have the mixing done by now," Bedillion says, "but he kept coming up with all this stuff that was just really interesting so we were like, 'Well, you know, we can always come back later and do the levels.' "

That could take some work with all the textures Ashton had them adding to arrive at what Bedillion accurately sums up as a thicker, lusher sound than their previous studio work.

And much of Ashton's extra texture comes from layering guitars and pushing Bedillion to try approaches he'd have never tried without Ashton's encouragement.

Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Scott Bedillion, left, talks to John Ashton in the studio. With them are band members Marc Turina and Terry Divelbliss. Click photo for larger image.

"He'd keep trying to get me to play uglier, basically, than I'm used to playing," Bedillion says. "He'd be like 'No, no, no, just bang on it. Just act [upset] or something."

Of course, not everything new idea Ashton had them try out worked, but in the end, Bedillion says, they got "exactly" what they were hoping to get out of working with a guy like Ashton.

"It just sounds so ... I guess professional would be a good way to put it," says Bedillion, who laughs when asked if any of Ashton's ideas sounded too much like the Psychedelic Furs.

"Well," he says, "I think we sound enough like the Furs in the first place, so it isn't that much of an issue."

Sounding enough like the Furs in the first place is, as fate would have it, what brought them to Ashton's attention, having helped them land the opening slot on two straight Furs appearances in Pittsburgh.

The idea of Ashton producing some tracks for the band was raised the second time they shared a stage, at this summer's Three Rivers Arts Festival.

"I was walking around and sort of listening to these guys play," recalls Ashton. "They'd just come on and I was way, way, way in the back. I was actually out on the road and listening. And I thought, 'This sounds really cool.' So after the show. I said 'Hey, you guys sound really great' and the rest is history."

The band had been looking to bring in an outside producer of some note, says bassist Marc Turina.

"A lot of our friends in different bands go out and play shows in different towns," Turina says, "but not to large crowds and we didn't really feel like we wanted to take that path. So we were like 'OK, the material's good. Why don't we hook up with somebody who could bump it up to the next level?' "

There had been discussions with New Order's Peter Hook, but as Turina says, "there wasn't really a personal connection there."

With Ashton, though, there was.

And as Bedillion notes, he was "used to our general sound."

So when Tim Butler of the Furs suggested backstage that Ashton was looking to do some producing, it all just fell together -- "serendipitously," as Bedillion would put it.

No one's even sure who first suggested what to whom, but by the time they went their separate ways that August night, it was clear that it wasn't the last these guys would be seeing of Ashton, who isn't a bit surprised, he says, at how well everything turned out.

"The material, I thought, was good material right from the onset," he says.

In fact, if Seven Color Sky can use these songs to get some label interest, Ashton says he'd love to do a full-length album with the band.

He wouldn't have to twist their arms.

The guys are thrilled with Ashton's work.

"I'm so excited," says Turina. "John was amazing. His strength is his creativity. The ideas he had for different guitar lines and vocal tracks he had us throw in, at the time, we're thinking 'Oh my God, this guy is crazy.' But it all makes sense when you get in the car. You throw the CD in the player on the way home and it's like 'Oh my God! This sounds so good.' "

As for working on music with one of childhood idols, Turina says, "What was very exciting to me is he was just a super cool guy. It's not like we were working with The Edge from U2. John is amazingly talented but he's a humble guy. And he was having a good time. The last night we were in the studio, we split a bottle of wine and kicked back, threw some creative things out there. It was a blast."

The band will be doing its best to duplicate the richly textured sound of the Ashton recordings with just one guitar today at Club Cafe with Tangerine and The Peace.