We interview Ashley Campbell ahead of the release of her new album ‘Something Lovely‘ about the project.
Hi Ashley, how are you? It must feel like a very strange lead up to your album release than your debut album?
Yeah definitely, I wish I could be in the UK doing these interviews in person, but here we are.
You always release into the unknown, but it must feel so weird not to have the other fun stuff that goes along with creating an album?
Yeah I know, it’s kind of sad, it’s bitter sweet because what I love about releasing new music is getting to perform it for people and actually meet the fans and hear what they have to say, so it’s really weird, hopefully next year we get a little more of that.
Hopefully you’ll at least get a flavour of that online. Speaking of the pandemic, how much of this album was written this year and how much prior to all of this kicking off?
Yes, we recorded the album in December 2018 and we finished it into 2019, so it was all totally ready to go before the quarantine hit.
Have you continued to write in this time and do you think your songwriting has changed at all?
I don’t know, I’ve done a little songwriting but I’ve mainly been focussed on some other stuff and the album release, but it’s just weird. I don’t know, I don’t think it’s changed my songwriting, I wish I had a better answer for that.
Talking about the record itself, it’s so beautiful and so embedded in the traditional country genre and culture. Obviously it’s natural that would happen with your legacy, but how conscious are you when you’re creating music that you’re building on this genre and on the greats before you?
Well I wanted to bring this nostalgic classic country sound to a modern voice and to a modern audience because this is the music that I love, you can’t just keep listening to old music so I’m trying to create new music that makes you feel the same way. It’s all very organic and real players playing it, there’s not too much automation, I just want that real studio sound to come back, because so much is computerised these days.
Does that mean you have a very different studio set-up? Is there a different way to make sure that sound is created?
Well, we tried to record the rhythm section mostly live together, so we did all the live drum and bass tracking, we tracked all the instruments at once. The Wrecking Crew in the old days, they’d just get in one room and they’d do it all together, you’d have to get it right. So that’s what we tried to do for this album, of course limitations on space in the studio, we had to do some over-dubbing, for the most part all of the tracks are begun live with the drum and the bass and whatever else we could fit in the studio at the time and we went from there.
Did you start off with ‘Something Lovely’ and it led from there, or where did it start?
It’s just a process of songs I’ve had for years and songs that I had just recently written by the time we recorded, it’s definitely a big span of time in terms of writing for me. Some of the songs like ‘Digging Deep’ I wrote about ten years ago, that was one of the first songs I ever wrote. Some songs I had not even thought about – we had a list of songs for the album and then the next week I was going through all my old voice recordings and found this one called ‘Walk on By’ and I forgot I wrote that song and it’s actually really fun, my producer liked it so we threw it in.
Obviously you’ve even got that ‘Good Vibrations’ cover in the mix – it’s such an unusual but incredible end to the record, is it hard to reimagine tracks like that are so well known?
Well what we did, we kind of figured out the sound for that track in an organic way, I had the guys over who were going to play on it, it was actually on my birthday, December 8th 2018. We just sat around and they had all learned the chord structure and we just sat around my house and played it a bunch of times, it was really fun, we came up with it together and I’m really lucky to have such talented musicians around me.
You worked with Kai Welch on this project, how did that partnership come about?
I picked Kai because I totally trust his intuition with music and his taste, and so it was actually really easy to work with him because he got what I was going for, so I just let him take the reins and I was there the whole time. It was a very together project. As an artist, you get demo-itis and always think it should sound a certain way, if it’s really important to you, you need to push for it but sometimes you need to let go of your preconceived notions. If I’m not sure about something, I usually sit with it for a couple of days and usually I’m like ‘you were right.’
I guess one of the examples of that is ‘Remembering’ that was reimagined for this project, it always gives me chills hearing it live, so why did you decide to go back and revisit that track? What does that mean to you?
Well ‘Remembering’ is my most personal song, I wrote it with Kai, so it was really important for me to record it with Kai because he and I created the song, so I wanted to have a finished project that we had created together as well. I wanted it to be more organic because I wasn’t 100% happy with the recordings that were out, they were a little too slick, a little too over-produced, so I wanted to do my personal take on the song.
Another track on the record that stood out was the one with Vince Gill, what was the story behind that song? I know your family has a long history with Vince, so was that a natural choice to have him on the song?
Oh yeah, so I knew I really wanted to have a collaboration on the record, I didn’t write that song with Vince in mind but that song stood out to me. I thought ‘gosh, who would I love to have on this record, and Vince Gill was definitely one of the first people who popped into my mind who might say yes.’ I wrote ‘If I Wasn’t’ with Roy Orbison in mind, so a classic singing voice, so I knew Vince would crush it and I think our voices blend really well together. He was very kind to say yes and he’s just a total pro.
Absolutely. Another one of the tracks I’ve loved from the record is ‘Suitcase Heart,’ can you talk a bit about the inspiration behind that track and what it means to you?
Gosh, ‘Suitcase Heart’ is pretty personal too, it’s kind of me reflecting on myself and a fear to commit, I’ve always been so afraid of getting hurt that I don’t even let something start and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that, it’s something we all need to work through maybe.
That’s the power of music, for people to hear something they can relate to. I’m so excited for people to hear this record and hopefully when this is all over we’ll get to see you in the UK before too long…
I’m drinking my English breakfast tea with milk, I miss it so much!
