You're Going to Want to Get to Know Ashe

This is an article written for Teen Vogue, published on February 12th, 2019. The original article can be found here.

California singer-songwriter Ashe’s music makes you feel like you’re in the company of a close friend. It’s both striking and authentic, deeply familiar and immediately comforting. When I get the 24-year-old musician on the phone, she’s making the 10-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles solo. This was during the last leg of her tour with Hobo Johnson, during which she chose to supplement her journey with the audio of beloved sitcom Friends.

California singer-songwriter Ashe’s music makes you feel like you’re in the company of a close friend. It’s both striking and authentic, deeply familiar and immediately comforting. When I get the 24-year-old musician on the phone, she’s making the 10-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles solo. This was during the last leg of her tour with Hobo Johnson, during which she chose to supplement her journey with the audio of beloved sitcom Friends.

“I’ve been listening to Friends on Netflix,” she tells Teen Vogue, “cause I’ve never actually gone through the seasons and I’m like, Why not just freaking do it now?!” In our interview, she opened up about trust, unrequited love, and the importance of a healthy cry. And spending time with Ashe makes you realize that she’s just as unwaveringly warm, open, and uninhibited as her songs feel when listening to her music in your apartment.

“They’re all incredibly from my soul and my heart,” Ashe says about the tracks off her debut EP The Rabbit Hole. “I always said that when people hear this album, I hope that they feel like they have someone else on their side or someone else that gets them or can understand…I hope they can find a friend in me.”

From coping with the world’s endless supply of a**holes on “Sometimes People Suck,” to slipping into self-destructive behavior on “Wrong Side of Myself,” to explicitly highlighting our everyday ups and downs in “Real Love,” listening to The Rabbit Hole feels a lot like a catch-up sesh with an old buddy. Lyrics like “I've burned up all my bridges, I keep pissing off my friends, I wonder how much longer they'll put up with all my sh*t” on “Wrong Side of Myself” explore the inevitable yet often unspoken experiences many of us go through, but with compassion.

“I hope that they’re relatable,” says Ashe, whose past artistic repertoire includes working and performing with artists such as Louis the Child, and writing for Demi Lovato’s 2017 song “You Don't Do It for Me Anymore.”

For Ashe, it’s vital to pay attention to the positives. That’s because she’s gone through her own share of difficulties while being raised in an extremely conservative environment. After watching substance abuse in her family, attending a school that didn’t teach evolution, and having recently finalized a divorce, Ashe holds nothing back. These past experiences have given Ashe an “empathy to those that are really close-minded, because I was in it, and I was close-minded, so it helps me love on people who are that way.” As forthright about her shortcomings as she is her triumphs, Ashe is consistently opening herself up in order to grow.

Unsurprisingly, much of what Ashe shares through her music comes straight from the pages of her journal. “I’m already working on my next album,” she adds, “so there’s a lot of good material in there.” Much of this we’re sure to see as Ashe continues on a world tour with Quinn XCII, which just started earlier this February; she’ll also release a new song just in time for Valentine’s Day. Not to mention the single she just put out in November with Party Pupils and MAX, called “Love Me for the Weekend.”

Ashe’s capacity for not only peeling back the layers of herself, but also for sharing these realizations and inviting us along on her journey of self-exploration is seemingly unending. “Sometimes we’ll feel alone in these feelings,” she says, reminding us that “really, we’re so unbelievably not alone.”