William L. Howerdel (born May 18, 1970) is an American musician, best known as a founding member, guitarist, backing vocalist, songwriter, and producer for the band A Perfect Circle, as well as for his former solo project, Ashes Divide.

[citation needed] Stephen Porcello, the high school teacher who was the adviser for this program, took Howerdel to New York City and helped him select his first electric guitar.

[citation needed] Howerdel spent several years sound engineering for New Jersey artists and further worked as a guitar technician for numerous others, which, before forming A Perfect Circle, included Faith No More, Fishbone, David Bowie, The Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Guns N' Roses, and Tool.

[7] Rough versions of three or four songs were written during that era, including the track "Stripped Away", which was even played at soundchecks at A Perfect Circle (APC) concerts while supporting the album.

[8] Shortly after Thirteenth Step, APC decided to quickly throw together a collection of anti-war cover songs just prior to the 2004 United States presidential election, entitled Emotive.

[14] In addition to Freese and Keenan, the record also includes contributions from drummer Dean Sainz, Concrete Blonde's Johnette Napolitano, Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba, and former APC bassist Paz Lenchantin.

[19] Ashes Divide toured extensively in 2008 but pulled out of an opening slot for Puddle of Mudd at the end of the year, for undisclosed reasons, and fell out of the public eye.

Notably, they debuted a new song that Howerdel originally called "Untitled" but which has since been dubbed "Trafficking" by fans who attended Ashes Divide shows in late 2009 and early 2010.

[28] In April 2017, Howerdel commented that he still continued to work on new material, but that the sound had deviated so far from the project's first record, that he was contemplating whether or not he'd release it under the Ashes Divide name.

[citation needed] In 2005, he wrote and recorded music for the video game Jak X: Combat Racing,[36][37] which also features remixes of Howerdel's songs by Danny Lohner and Dean Menta, as well as including contributions from Josh Freese, Troy Van Leeuwen, Atom Willard, Joey Castillo, ex-A Perfect Circle bassist Paz Lenchantin, and Wes Borland.