Sean M. Flynn
It’s never been too difficult for Ashley Campbell to find creative inspiration.
Throughout her life, the singer and banjo virtuoso has pursued art in various forms, drawing self-expression from the world around her, while following the sometimes-lonely path of complete originality.
With her debut album, The Lonely One, released May 11, Ashley explores the positives and negatives of time spent alone. Co-produced with her brother, Cal, the LP offers a glimpse into the life of an artist coming in to her own, and all the anxiety that comes with it.
“I really liked the title, The Lonely One, because it kind of represents what I’ve been going through,” she parries. “The album represents all the different aspects of the ways one can be lonely, and all of the positive aspects of it, maybe because you’re not going to settle.”
Ashley and her brother finished buffing Lonely in February, just sixth months after their father, iconic country music singer and guitarist Glen Campbell, died of Alzheimer’s disease. Captured in the Academy Award-nominated 2014 documentary, Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, in which Ashley is seen supporting her addled father on- and off-stage, his illness lasted seven years, the first half of which he continued to tour with admirable cognizance, often with Ashley by his side on banjo or synthesizer. The film’s accompanying soundtrack won a Grammy for “Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media” in 2016 and spawned Ashley’s first single, “Remembering,” which arrived in 2015 via Dot Records.
Despite her burgeoning career at that time, Ashley hadn’t always been an avid musician. She discovered her latent banjo talent coincidentally after being cast in a play at her college, Pepperdine University, in a role that required her to learn the instrument.
“The banjo kind of inspired my entire musical drive,” she says. “Up until then, [music] was just for fun. It was just kind of something all the Campbells did. But it flipped a switch in me, and I started becoming really passionate about the kind of music that goes along with banjo.”
When she graduated from Pepperdine with a degree in theater in 2009, Ashley had been playing banjo for about a year, so her father recruited her for his Australia and New Zealand tour. The gig ended up stretching for several more stints on the road, finally “snowballing” into a solo career after Ashley and her other brother, Shannon, moved to Nashville in 2013, cajoled by a joint publishing deal with Warner/Chappell. Then, they decided to go their separate ways professionally. A year later, Ashley signed an artist deal with now-defunct Big Machine imprint Dot Records, releasing several one-offs before leaving the label in July 2016.
“It just wasn’t the right fit for me,” Ashley says. “I just decided I was gonna’ make my record with or without a label, so I went in with Cal at his studio in Los Angeles.”
She co-wrote all 13 songs on Lonely, infusing each with a distinct sound, while maintaining proper cohesiveness in the album, which reflects her wide-ranging musical taste. The opener, “A New Year,” has a pop chord progression lead by a fluttery banjo triplet riff, supported by spacey cinematic percussion and occasional synth figures. Other songs, like “Wish I Wanted To,” in which Ashley sings in her light, mellifluous voice from the point of view of a girl yearning for love again, take a more stripped-down approach. Themes of lovelornness abound in Lonely, with the rhapsodic instrumental “Carl & Ashley’s Breakdown” perhaps offering the most brittle hope to be found on the album through its absence of lyrics. However, a hard-earned personal strength bolsters the underlying theme of loneliness–together; the songs are a step away from heartache and into self-discovery.
“Trying to move on from a relationship is kind of like trying to find a unicorn,” Ashley says. “Because you’re not going to move on until the next person shows up in your life, and, most of the time, it’s when you’re not even looking. It’s frustrating, but you just have to put yourself out there. I’m optimistic.”