Awards, accolades and high profile bookings only bolster Ashley Heath’s purposeful journey to cultivate deeper connections. She tunes into a feeling, allows it to emerge in lyrics, melody, chords and strumming styles. She surrenders all, to engage and inspire potential listeners.
Along with her current band members, “Her Heathens” Ryan Crabtree on bass and Paul Gladstone on drums, playing to live audiences allows her that cyclical connection she’s so fine at maintaining long after the doors to the music hall are closed and locked up for the night. When her love light shines, you feel it all the way in the back of the room and all the way home in your car.
The path from open mics to Tennessee’s infamous Bonnaroo Festival has been steady, deliberate and well planned. Band mates, mentors, booking managers, venue owners all say the same things about Heath; she’s the real deal who’s got something important to sing; unpretentious and full of wit and spunk; evokes goose bumps with her captivating voice; one of the best laughs they’ve ever heard and the hardest working musician in town.
Here’s just a few of the scores of fan-reviews I found online:
“Sweet, sultry, bluesy musician, Ashley Heath is as authentic as they come.”
“Her performances will rock and soothe your weary soul.”
“…an excellent guitarist, who writes songs that speak to my soul…a
genuine human being.”
“….one of the most talented singer/songwriters ever. Her energy is pure and tangible.”
“Her band is mad-talented! Ashley can sing like nobody I’ve ever heard!”
“Heath’s Heathens provide the right tones and beats that serve the lyrics and Ashley’s soaring voice.”
An excerpt from my June 2016 interview: “With a blend of Soul, Blues and Americana sounds, Ashley Heath is rising as one of Asheville’s finest and uniquely gifted musicians with her velvety vocals and bluesy guitar style. Her bravery for pursuing aspects of herself through music is limitless.”
The actual question/answer part of our phone interview a few weeks ago was all of maybe 15 minutes long. The entire conversation was over 70 minutes!
Nerding out talking about music is one of my favorite things to do too so when she started talking about chord structures and where to put a whole note and when to play a quarter note to give the phrase some space, I listened intently and just kept saying “yeeees.”
We vented about our shared experiences with the proverbial unsolicited critic or two at every show; the ones who aren’t the slightest bit careful of our feelings when they approach us, spewing banter about what we should do more and what we should do less. We talked fondly of the fans that support and dig what we put out and how some have become friends.
She’s grateful for the friends she’s made music with outside her own project that empower and teach her. For example the performances she enjoyed at Archetype Brewing, pre-pandemic, where she played regular Sundays for several years with an impressive and popular quartet. That group consisted of the incendiary guitarist and phenomenal singer, Patrick Dodd (who she still performs with there), the formidable harmonica player and mellifluous vocalist Joshua Singleton and the eminent and selfless saxophonist and Asheville matriarch Ruby Mayfield who sadly passed away in April.
The implication of what this global pandemic has brought to the forefront for artists has been profound. Ashley’s first experiences playing out again have happened at prominent outdoor festivals. Catching theTedeschi Trucks band’s set at Merlefest where Ashley and Her Heathens also performed, she expresses it this way, “I felt like I was in the Olympics. It was huge and overwhelming, inspiring and emotional.”
“The mindset I’m trying to change is the one where I think, if I can do this one thing then I can do this other thing that I really want. Then if I do that thing, I’ll get to yet another thing that I really want. So I refuse to go back into that mindset, now that I’m back out in the world and doing some touring. That’s the clarity I found spending almost 2 years of my life home alone.”
What she was doing before the lockdown, was working at a breakneck pace soliciting and getting gig after gig on the local scene.
“It wasn’t really working because even though I wasn’t showing it, I wasn’t happy going at that pace. I don’t know what my future holds exactly, but I do know that I’m not going to take 20 gigs a month if I’m not happy doing them. I can create the same monumentally satisfying experiences I have doing the bigger stages, for my smaller audiences too. That connection can be made no matter how many gigs I accept, no matter how many people I’m playing for or how big the room is.”
We talk about the community driven polls where winners in categories are announced after allowing fans and peers the chance to vote for their favorites online. “I take the standings and my wins in any given category as testimony to the hard work I’ve done to create a fan base.”
She poignantly equates creating music to a painter’s blank canvas. “We interpret through color choices and brush strokes, how many colors and where we place the colors and how the colors blend, and establish the sonic outcome of the song.”
By early 2022, Ashley hopes that she’ll release her third collection of “paintings” via a 6 song EP. The songs have been written and the basic tracks are recorded. The most intimate parts are still left to do, like final vocal tracks, solos and order. She’s excited to work with engineer Clay Miller over at Crossroads Studios in Arden.
After listening to a 3-song sampler from one of her recent shows, I heard a song I hadn’t yet called “Something to Believe.” Ashley assures me it will be on the next EP. The chorus lyrics: “Are we done with the hard times, are they over? Let me in or let me out, give me answers, tell me somehow. Are we’re gonna end this, end this and work it out? The push and shove is killing me, there’s no end in sight you see. Give me, give me something to believe…”
“Ashley Heath is an open songbook who embraces vulnerabilities.”
Links to stream and purchase Heath’s records and to keep up with her schedule:
pbs.org/video/ashley-heath-and-her-heathens-11kmeo/
facebook.com/ashleyheathandherheathens
amazon.com/Where-Never-Ashley-Heath-Heathens/dp/B07BW319P3
amazon.com/Different-Stream-Ashley-Heath/dp/B01FJ3UQ1A
open.spotify.com/artist/37y8xDxW9JSGer0J9fd843
open.spotify.com/artist/1FlOl4q9T6MqCBJsGGVSOp
Peggy Ratusz is a vocal coach, song interpreter, and songwriter.
For vocal coaching email her at [email protected]