biography
She may have a cute little doll face and a soft, unassuming demeanor, but don’t let that fool ya. Ashley Ray is not quite America’s sweetheart. Take the fiercely competitive streak that comes out if you try and beat her at darts, or the way she’s perfectly at home in grungy dive bars. She can more than handle her half of the bucket of beer, and she rocks a mean Georgia Satellites impression at karaoke. Hell, she’s a former cheerleader who just might kick your ass if you bring that up.
With her debut album in the works at Capitol Records Nashville, the world is about to know the truth about this 23-year old Kansas native, a girl who always knew what she wanted to be, and didn’t quit until she got there. She’s standing at the door of country music, and with brash, rowdy songs that draw on the genre’s history while barreling towards the future, she’s ready to kick it down. It’s just your typical American success story… being lived out by someone who’s anything but ordinary.
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Ashley Ray grew up outside Lawrence, Kansas, on a farm so remote the options for getting in trouble were pretty limited. “I couldn’t sneak out,” she laughs. “My parents would hear me drive away. I was in the country.” So when the elementary school sent home a notice about guitar lessons, it seemed like a decent diversion from back-roads life, and Ashley showed up at her first lesson with a “$50 cheap-ass guitar from a pawn shop,” determined to learn. “I honestly don’t know what made me want to do it,” she says. “No one else in my family plays an instrument. But my mom tells me I used to sit by the stereo when I was 3, and put my head up against the speaker. Music was always on in our house. It was everything.”
Ashley’s folks might not be musicians themselves, but they are blue-collar heroes. Mom’s a UPS driver—“She's done everything from working the counter to driving those big ol’ brown trucks. She's about 5'5” and 115 pounds soakin’ wet, yet she's the strongest woman that I'll ever know,” says Ashley—and her father, who passed away in the fall of 2006, was a construction worker. “He built everything he had from the ground up, from houses and car engines to what he wanted most in life: a beautiful and very loving family.”
What they both built in Ashley was a strong Midwestern work ethic—and then they gave her a set of early influences that’s hard to beat: “My parents loved Bob Seger, Fleetwood Mac, Keith Whitley, James Taylor. And we knew it was Saturday morning cleaning day when Reba was on.” But it was a Patty Loveless album, When Fallen Angels Fly, that made Ashley want to be a singer. “I loved every song,” she says. “I wish I’d made that album.” She’d started writing by the time she was 10, trying her hand at fragments of poetry that never quite became a whole song. For a while, she was so shy she’d only sing while facing the wall. In high school, she’d ditch the parties after football games to coop up in her room and practice. She played talent shows, sang in choir, sat in with bands made up of men twice her age.
No one was shocked when, after graduating high school, Ashley left everything behind and moved to Nashville. The first person in her family to strike out on her own, she enrolled in Belmont University to earn a business degree and help ease the transition—but she had no intention of giving herself something to fall back on. “The point of school was to come here and meet people,” Ashley says. She unquestionably succeeded when, in order to research a project, she called manager Scott Kernahan, who at the time was working with Lee Ann Womack. Ashley got an ‘A’ on her paper, the pair stayed in touch, and now Kernahan’s got two acts on his roster: Country superstar Dierks Bentley, and Ashley Ray.