INTERVIEW: Ashley Cooke on the 615 House, Already Drank That Beer and More

Ashley Cooke is carving a unique path for herself both sonically and in the creative and strategic direction around her music. Here, we interview Ashley Cooke about her year so far, her new music, the 615 House and TikTok.

 

Hi, Ashley, how are you doing?

Good. How are you?

Not too bad – the sun is finally shining in the UK, so we’re all happy over here. What a year it’s been for you, how are you wrapping your head around the past year or so and everything that’s happened for you?

The answer is I can’t, honestly, I’ve had to really take some time lately to just sit in it and realise what’s going on. My parents are in corporate and I feel like my whole family’s have always been go-getters and I’m the most artistic of the family. We’re such a family of ‘what’s next?, which is the fun part and I think a lot of this has happened because I am just so driven, but it’s also important to sit in it and really think about what’s going on.

It’s hard to know almost which moment to sit back in, because you’ve had so many successes and so much has been happening. Now you’re going on tour with BRELAND and all these things are happening. It must just be like, ‘okay, but when do I fit in the time to pause and reflect?’

Yeah, it’s been a crazy year, especially because I’m still independent, I don’t have a record label and so much has happened. It’s nuts.

I feel like out of everyone you’ve made the best out of it. It’s amazing the creative ways you’ve approached the industry – not just being creative in your songwriting but in the content you’ve created and the way you’ve done that. Can we talk a bit about the 615 House and how that came to be? People talk about the downfalls of social media but we don’t celebrate the actual cool things that can come out of it. 

For sure, so 615 was born out of the pandemic. I think all of us in the house, we didn’t really know what to do because for the longest time we were pursuing artistry and we’d go into writers’ rounds and go into shows write in Nashville and we couldn’t do any of that anymore. So, before I was a creator on TikTok, I was a consumer. So, the Hype House is an influencer-centred house in LA and I had been watching that whole house come together – everybody was individual, and I was just so infatuated with it with how they could bring so many different platforms together. I loved watching it because they were influencers, they weren’t musicians – some of them were dancers, but it was so interesting to me. I was sitting there and around that time frame, there really only were like six or seven people on TikTok that were country-centered that were really pursuing and building a fan base and really being on top of it. I was sitting there thinking about how there’s such an infatuation with Nashville already with songwriters and thinking what it takes to break a new country artist is a kind of mythical thing. I mean, there’s been so many reality shows about it and it’s insane. Why don’t we get everybody together and cross-promote and cross-collaborate? It makes no sense not to,  especially in this pandemic world. I called my friend Chris Ruediger, ‘I was like, hey this is crazy but we should start a hype house in Nashville and keep it centred around the songwriters and collaborate together’. We got a house here in Nashville and we all got together and made content and it kind of just blew up. It’s interesting now trying to figure out how that works.

I love that idea of collaborating together and making something together and supporting each other. Obviously this Friday, you will release ‘Already Drank That Beer’ and I love it – your music is just getting better and better. Can you talk a bit about that track as it was co-written with one of my favourite songwriters, Jessi Alexander, who is just a magician? Can you talk about hearing that song for the first time and knowing that you had to cut it?

So, it was written by Wendell Mobley, Jessi Alexander and Jessie Jo Dillon, of course I would have loved to have written that song but I always believed that best song wins. I’ve been writing since I was 11, but it’s always a case of the right song. I heard the song and I got to hear it as a consumer when I first listened to it. I got to hear it as the listener will when they first hear it – at least the demo version. I just loved how that that first verse really hit me because I’ve been there. I’ve been exactly where they are. Jessi Alexander was talking about she’s been through the exact same experience, too. I don’t know, I mean it was one of those songs I just knew I had to cut when I heard it, because I’ve been through it and I understood the emotion of it. I knew that other people would also relate to it. I posted it on TikTok and it kind of blew up and it’s just crazy to see.

You also released ‘Under’ recently and you’ve had such momentum around that song. It feels like you mapped out exactly where you wanted to get to with all the tracks, how did you choose which order to release things in when you have so much great material in your hands?

Honestly, that’s a great question. I kind of fly by the seat of my pants a lot, like well this one sound cool, put it out! I have a really small team and I’m still independent, so I love getting to have that creative control to just know which one feels the most right, I kind of go by what I feel makes sense in the storyline. I think ‘Under’ was a natural first one, we had written it a month or two before, so it was a pretty new track.

That’s a such a quick turnaround!

It was crazy how quick it happened.

I guess that’s the beauty of being an independent artist, in some ways. It’s great to have a major label backing you, but when you are independent, you have that flexibility to be able to release a great song as soon as you write it.

Exactly, I really do love being independent. I’m really pumped to eventually team with the right label, but I love the speed, I love being able to give people something and give them the full product soon after that.

Exactly and it has to be the right fit too. Back in April you joined Roman Alexander on his new track ‘Between You and Me,’ I loved the way your voices melded together. Can you talk about joining that track and how it evolved? 

I came to be a part of it, which is the crazy part. Basically, he put out ‘Between You and Me’ a few months before and it got a lot of traction. I love that song. We’ve been friends for a long time, so I’ve always loved him and his music. We were always friends in Nashville, but never really collaborated. The way he describes it, he loved the track, but there was a female narrative missing. He called me and our team and he loved my voice and said he would really love to have my voice on the song. In the next week, I came down and lay down the vocals and it was just the easiest process. It’s crazy how much of a life of it’s own it’s taken on in every show that I play. People know every word – it’s insane.

That’s what you want – that energy in live shows. How has it been getting back out there? Obviously you’ve had all these months where your career has been growing and growing, and now you’re going back out and people know the songs?

It’s been the best thing in the entire world. It’s crazy, because I graduated from my college – Belmont University – in 2019. I was pumped to hit artistry full force and played some shows and Nashville and just kind of getting my feet wet and then the pandemic hit. We had this whole space of time and I released music and and I went from really nobody really knowing what I was doing and being a newer artist in town – playing half-filled shows or whatever. Now we’re coming back from the pandemic and I’m  playing Whiskey Jam and it’s packed and people are singing my lyrics back. I’m so excited because I’m also going on tour with BRELAND. I’m just so used to playing shows playing new songs, but there is this electricity that happens when the people in the crowd know your music. I can’t even remotely begin to explain that feeling.

In terms of new music, you’ve got the single out tomorrow, are you planning on doing this semi regular cadence of releases? Is that the plan going into the fall and summer?

Absolutely. I’m working on a project that’s all together, but my goal for the next few years is to get as much top quality music that I possibly can out in the world. It’s a fun spot to be in, because I think for so long Nashville functioned on a album-tour cycle and I think the LA pop world and social media have changed that and I love it.

I think it’s really refreshing. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. Good luck with the release!

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you.

 

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