UCN Interview at CRS 2013 – Ash Bowers: “Whether you like my music or not, it’s real.”

11 years ago Liv Carter Comments Off on UCN Interview at CRS 2013 – Ash Bowers: “Whether you like my music or not, it’s real.”

For CRS 2013, Ash Bowers presented his new single, ‘Red,’ to country radio. The Tennessee native has been building a career as a songwriter, and a performer, with melodic, modern country music. We sat down in the busy media center to talk about the new song, the upcoming album, and my favorite topic of all, songwriting.

UCN: Welcome to CRS 2013
Ash Bowers: Hey, glad to be here! It’s going to be a fun week, it always is.

UCN: Given that we are at CRS, let’s talk about the new single, ‘Red.’
AB: Yes, three good friends of mine, Adam Craig, Derek George, and Tim Owens, wrote the song. I write for a company called Wide Open Music Group, a publishing company. The president came to me and said ‘I really love the stuff you write, so if you’re interested in making a record, let’s do it.’ Obviously, I was up for it. Nine of the twelve songs on the new record I wrote, but sometimes you get those songs that you just can’t walk away from. ‘Red’ was one of those. I called Adam and said ‘Hey man, send me some new songs. I know you’ve got some fantastic stuff and we are just missing that one slot for a really up-tempo fun, great thing.’ So he said ‘cool, I’ll send you over some new things I recently wrote.’ I heard that song and I instantly fell in love with it. I sent it to my producers Billy Decker and Noel Golden, who helped me produce the record. And they called back instantly and said ‘man, this is exactly what we needed.’ So we went in and cut it. It just fit with what we were going for with the record and what we are intending to do, because the next step for me was obviously choosing a single. I also wanted something that related to what was going on in my life.

UCN: Is that why it became the single? Because it was just that song where you heard it and you just want that’s me
AB: Absolutely, we just went with our gut. We just said ‘this is the single!’ Everybody, across the board, just all agreed to that.

UCN: Is the single representative of the other material on the record, is it similar to the stuff you write yourself?
AB: Absolutely. I wrote so much of this record with a core group of guys. When I got to Nashville in 2006, I didn’t turn down one single co-write that I had the opportunity to do. So over the last six or seven years that I’ve been here writing songs, even though I’ve been in this room with some incredible songwriters, there for some of those guys who I just completely jelled with as a songwriter. It has come down to a core group of about five people that I just feel like I write really good songs with. They help me bring who I am out of the material. Adam is one of those guys. He’s part of the group that I’ve still continue to write with that I’ve written so much of this album with. But it’s also the sound of the song. We’ve cut everything with big guitars and big drums for this record, so I think it’s a very good representation of the whole album.

UCN: I remember reading about you that you did this crazy commute in and out of Nashville.
AB: Actually, I still do.

UCN: You still live in Jackson?
AB: Yes, I still live in Jackson. I make the commute about four days a week. We have really small kids and we have lots of family there, and it’s home. I mean, Jackson is about a two-hour commute for me everyday. That’s one way. So that’s four to 4 1/2 hours a day. But the thing is, Jackson is close enough where I don’t absolutely have to move here, but I can still deal with it.

UCN: But it’s far enough that you can get away.
AB: [laughs] Yes, exactly. far enough that I can get away.

UCN: Do you find yourself writing in the car?
AB: Oh absolutely! There’s been a number of times were I’ll come in with, not only an idea, but I’ll have a pretty good structure for a verse and a chorus by the time I get here and sit down. Thank God for the iPhone, because I’ll just be singing what I’m thinking while I’m driving. Then I’ll come in and sit down with whoever I’m writing with and I have to make them sit there and listen to all the things I’ve come up with over the last two hours. [laughs]

UCN: So there’s a lot of road songs, road trip songs. [smiles]
AB: Absolutely. [smiles] There’s a lot of driving on my record, for sure.

UCN: What was it like for you to write here initially and to learn the craft, and how did you feel yourself developing as a writer?
AB: That’s a really good question. I first started writing songs when I was about 17 years old, and you know, I had written so many songs by myself that it was definitely something I had to get used to, being in the room with somebody else and bouncing ideas off them. But you know, I found myself in the room with guys like David Lee Murphy, and other guys that I was fans of when I was growing up. And I also ended up with people that obviously are not the people that I should be writing with, people that were so far towards the pop world, which is not what I do. Initially I thought ‘this is so far out of my box, I shouldn’t be here.’ But as soon as you say that, you come up with a great song somewhere in the middle. So it’s definitely a fun process! What I always try to remember every day is, that I come here to learn from these guys. Most of them have written songs that I was a fan of, that I loved when I was growing up, that were big hits. Regardless of how long I’m here, every time I walk into a room, I try to learn something from these guys, and just soak it up and enjoy the time. I always say, if I’m going to sit here and write songs, I’m either going to have a really good time doing it, and if not I’m still going to come up with a good song.

UCN: Yes, I think even from bad writes, you know, those writes where you struggle for four hours, you will still pick up something.
AB: Oh, absolutely!

UCN: Even if it’s just that you think ‘next time I’ll know how to deal with the situation,’ or an idea can come from it for the next write.
AB: That’s exactly right!

UCN: When you went from writing on your own to writing with more people, how did it feel opening up when you’re writing more personal stuff, when you are suddenly having to share that with somebody you maybe didn’t know?
AB: Well… A lot of my first co-writes were really very shallow songs. [smiles] I’ve never been one to just open up and throw my dirty laundry around with anybody, especially ones I didn’t know. But sometimes it takes somebody looking at your story from the outside to help you express those things, and to say those things. So yes, I know what you mean.

UCN: Plus, you’re married and have a family, and so do most of them. They know what you’re talking about.
AB: Yes, that’s right. And we’ve all been through the same things. And you know most of us, 90% of the guys here writing songs, were raised in a blue-collar family situation like I was growing up. It’s country music, we’re mostly all cut from the same cloth. Most of us have been through 99% of the same stuff in our lives, so that makes it easy and fun.

UCN: Which parts of your life end up in songs the most?
AB: A lot of it really.

UCN: Is there nothing you protect?
AB: There’s not much that I protect. There some things I would like to write about, like my kids. But I’m such a big fan of my kids and it’s hard to take things like that, that means so much to you, and put them in a song and think ‘man, I justified the way I feel about my kids.’ There’s things like that, that I have yet to be able to put into a three minute song and feel like I did a great job saying the way I feel. But in my music I say a lot of things about me growing up, and things from my youth and teenage years, you know, a lot of stuff about my relationship with my wife. We’ve been together for twelve years. That is something I definitely enjoy writing songs about.

UCN: How do you access emotions? Is it ‘this happened the other day, so let’s write about this,’ or do you go ‘this thing happened now but it reminds me of something that happened four years ago,’ and then go back, dig in, and write about that.
AB: You know what, it depends on the idea of the song, and whatever hits you and how it hits you that day. But man, a little bit of everything. Sometimes it’s both those things.

UCN: One of your songs I really like is ‘Stuck.’
AB: Thanks, that was my first single at radio.

UCN: Very cool.
AB: It sure was! [smiles] I did an album with Buddy Cannon a few years back, and that was the last thing that we picked for the record. I love the song. It’s amazing how many people relate to that song and loved it. I remember a buddy of mine said ‘Man, I love that song, I’m glad to hear it on the radio.’ And I said ‘Man, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the song, it’s that there’s a lot of people stuck in situations they wish they weren’t in.’ [laughs] People really, really related to that song.

UCN: I can just imagine them coming up to you at shows going, ‘dude, I know what you’re talking about!’ [smiles]
AB: That’s exactly right! [laughs]

UCN: There are two things in particular I love about it. One is the details. I like details in songs and you have the guy saying he’s going to Tiger Mart, those kind of details. It’s not just “a gas station”, it’s named, and I love that, because it puts you in the story.
AB: That’s right.

UCN: And the second thing is its escapism. But kind of in a Kenny Chesney-type way, where even if you can’t actually leave, because maybe you actually really do love your family and don’t want to move away…
AB: Absolutely. [laughs]

UCN: But for those three minutes you get to dream about escaping. I love it that the song allows you to do that it’s not condemning the being stuck, it’s descriptive about that feeling.
AB: Absolutely, and you know what, a good friend of mine when I came to town and started writing songs, he said ‘in country music you write what you see.’ And that is so true! I took that advice and I thought about it. And I thought about all the songs that I love, the songs I’m really passionate about, like Kenny Chesney’s ‘Back Where I Come From,’ all those songs where I can see every detail of the story. There’s something about imagery like that, that takes you to a place, that makes you escape. Those are the songs that really affect me when I hear them on the radio even today. Even if it’s the hundredth time I’ve heard that song, I think ‘I can get lost for three minutes.’ That’s what country music is supposed to do to you. I think that’s what music in general should do to you.

UCN: Yes, I agree. I don’t know if you’ve heard the new Tim McGraw record?
AB: Yeah!

UCN: The day of release WSIX played in its entirety and they got to ‘Book of John’…
AB: Oh, I love that song!

UCN: I had to pull my truck over to the side of the road, because it was making me cry.
AB: I know, it’s such a great song! I love that, that is my favorite song on the record for sure.

UCN: It’s probably one of my very favorite Tim McGraw performances. What other songs have done that to you?
AB: ‘Back When I Knew it All,’ that Montgomery Gentry did, that was one that I love. ‘The Good Stuff,’ I was a huge Kenny Chesney fan when I was growing up. There are so many good songs. ‘Sound of a Million Dreams’ was a song on the radio this year by David Nail, that’s another one that instantly comes to mind. ‘I Drive Your Truck,’ the new Lee Brice song, is another one where you just…man, it’s just so real, and you see all those pictures and you just get lost in it. That’s just a handful of songs, I could probably go on and on.

UCN: You have a new record coming out yourself soon, right?
AB: Yes, I have a new album coming out, it’s going to be this spring, probably mid-to-late April. We just got it finished last week. We’ve been saying it was done for the last six months. [smiles] You know, I would come in and write something new and everybody would be, ‘oh man you have to get this on there!’ And finally it came to a point a few weeks ago where I said ‘really, this is it, we have got to stop.’

UCN: Yes, you can go on forever, you just have to make that decision at some point.
AB: Yes, and the thing is, the songs that need to be on there, are the ones that you continue to love that you wrote six months ago. A lot of the time, you finish something and you think ‘man, this is great, I wrote this this morning, and I love it.’ But then the next day it’s ‘I hate it.’ [smiles] So the ones that seem to be coming back, those are the ones that need to be on the record.

UCN: Someone told me the other day that the ones you want to put on an album are songs you could see yourself singing for the rest of your life.
AB: Yes, absolutely!

UCN: Really, every single one, as you never know which one might hit big.
AB: Dude, that’s exactly right! I know guys that had songs on the radio that became big hits but they hate them. And they’ll go ‘man, I hate singing that song, I never wanted to do that in the first place.’ And now they’re stuck with it. And, you know, when you have a hit, you have to be that person for a long time. You’ve got to go out and be that guy for years. So I’ve always been so careful about the songs I picked, just for that reason. Just because you’re the artist, you’re not always the one who ultimately makes decision on what goes to radio. So I was always extremely careful about what I put in the box for them to pick from, because you never know. I can’t say ‘I’ll just cut this because the label head wants me to,’ because sure enough, if you don’t love it wholeheartedly, that will be the one they send out to radio.

UCN: One thing I wonder about talking to you, is that in the last few years there were all these songs about trucks and dirt roads and being oh-so-country. For somebody like yourself, or Craig Campbell, for whom genuinely that is what’s going on in your life, and you’re just singing about who you are, has it been at any point frustrating sometimes to hear people who live in luxury condos in high rises downtown…
AB: Beyond frustrating…

UCN: When you hear them put stuff out like that, we’re not naming names, does that make you go ‘dude, that’s my life not yours.’
AB: And you know the thing is, when that happens, when I hear something on the radio like that, it’s so obvious that this ain’t the situation! It doesn’t make me mad, but doesn’t infuriate me, but it’s almost to a the point where I feel bad for that person. It seems like they’re chasing the trend. You’re never going to be that guy. I remember one of my best friends, who I’ve known for years and years in this business, a guy named Jimmy Melton, who is one my favorite songwriters in town. He’s had a ton of big hits on the radio. I heard him tell a guy one day ‘man, be who you are because nobody will be better at being you, then you.’ So, you need to be that guy, and he said that if you’re not dirt roads and farm trucks, don’t sing about it. You need to sing about who you are, and you will never regret being that person you know and singing those songs. They will be believable. I totally agree with that 100%. I grew up in a very blue-collar, country atmosphere. It would be like me singing about living in New York City. If I did that with my accent, you would know that that ain’t true. [laughs] You know, a lot of people want to be stars more than they actually genuinely want to make good music and tell their stories, and I think that’s the reason why a lot of people do that.

UCN: Something I’ve learned over the last two years is kind of leaving people alone when they do that. I started out being quite judgmental about that but now I understand the game a lot more, I understand the industry.
AB: That’s it.

UCN: And like you said before, they don’t always control the material that they’re allowed to cut.
AB: Yeah, and then it’s a whole other story. Songs get pushed on people and that’s the way this business has been and will probably always be, to a point. I’m thankful to be at a place now where we didn’t cut anything for this record that wasn’t me, or that we didn’t believe in. If it’s on the record it fits in one of three categories. It was either my story 100%, or I couldn’t live without that song, or I got an extreme amount of crowd response at our shows and feedback from the fans. So whether you like my album are not, it will be an Ash Bowers record. You’re getting my story.

UCN: Those tend to be the albums I like, where each song is a little bit of somebody’s life. I like it when people really put themselves in their songs.
AB: Absolutely. And I think when you look at guys who have been the most successful, they’re as real as you can get. If you look at Eric Church, I believe every word he says.

UCN: Well, I also think you can’t make it last if you’re not yourself, you can’t keep that act up long enough.
AB: You’re exactly right. And guys like Eric, I respect so much because the things he says, you believe every word.

UCN: You have your core group of guys now to write with, but now that you’re getting your name out there a little bit more, who are some of the writers that you would one day love to work with?
AB: You know what, I am a huge Jeffrey Steele fan

UCN: I love Jeff! [smiles]
AB: He is one of the reasons I even came to town and started playing music and writing songs. He was probably my biggest inspiration as a songwriter. I came to town in late 2006 to start writing songs, and I think I’ve written with everybody here except for Jeffrey Steele. I’ve written with every big-time songwriter from Craig Wiseman, Neil Thrasher, Casey Beathard, David Lee Murphy, Rhett Akins. But the one I still have to have the opportunity for is Jeffrey Steele. But it’ll happen one day! He’s just such a great songwriter, and he has always inspired me.

UCN: This is interesting. Thank you!
AB: Thank you so much, I appreciate this!

 

You can connect with Ash Bowers via his facebook page and Twitter, @ashwbowers.

 

Liv Carter

Liv Carter

Liv is a career coach for creatives, and the people who work with them.
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
Liv Carter

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