Ashton Shepard Shares Her Favorite Country Classic Song on opry.com

While it’s difficult if not impossible to define a country classic, what’s not nearly as problematic for fans or for country artists is to name a personal favorite country classic. In celebration of the fall return of Opry Country Classics, opry.com asked a few country artists to share with us their personal favorites—no matter how they define “classic.” Ever wondered which song Ashton considers her favorite country classic? Check out the opry.com’s What Makes a Classic Country Song? cover story and see. (Hint: She must keep getting it wrong.)

Five questions with Ashton Shepherd

By Bill Lynch
Staff writer
Advertiser

WANT TO GO?

Ashton Shepherd
WHEN: 9 p.m. Friday, September 4.
WHERE: Tomahawks Smokehouse and Saloon, 5930 MacCorkle Ave, St. Albans
COST: $19
INFO: 304-201-2070 or here

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Country singer Ashton Shepherd is managing to balance a music career and motherhood just fine, thankyouverymuch. In 2006, the 19 year-old mother won a contest in Gilbertown, Ala. and got to open for country star Lorrie Morgan.

A record executive was in the crowd, thought Shepherd had promise and signed her to a record contract a few months later. She released a respectable debut album, "Sounds So Good," and charted with two singles, "Takin' Off This Pain" and the titular "Sounds So Good."

The Gazz caught up with Shepherd in advance of her show Friday night at Tomahawks. Now 23, Shepherd says she's busy working on her follow-up album

Q: Here we are at the end of the summer. How was yours?

A: Laid back. I've been doing dates here and there. I've had a week or so at home, then a week or so on the road. I did some canning from my garden and wrote some new music.

Q: What's the most interesting place you visited this summer?

A: We toured a lot of places, but for me Washington and Montana. It's just such a different country than where I'm from. I'm from low Alabama, and it's just totally different. It was just some of the prettiest country I've ever seen.

Q: How is life on the road and life at home different for you?

A: At home, I'm your typical mama and wife. The best thing that ever happened to me was having my husband and son before my career started. It's kept me grounded. A few years ago, I used to want to go out more when I got home. Now, I just like to stay around the house, visit with my family. My parents are only 30 miles down the road. My husband's parents are next door.

With the road, I take for granted how fun it can be: the playing, the traveling and the laughing. It's fun. After the show, I hang out on the bus, have a few beers, and it's great. Of course, there are no beers if my little boy is with me.

Q: You mentioned working on new music. How's that going?

A: I've got about 20 songs I've written over the last year. I'm not one of those people who pound out songs or a song a day. I try to let them come as they may. I think that's kind of what makes them more real. They aren't forced.

Q: Are you performing any of the new songs yet?

A: I'm keeping them mostly to myself. Every once in a while, I'll get a wild hair and play something extra acoustic, but mostly I'm keeping the lid on the jar closed for now. The record company is thinking we're going to release a single in January. There will probably be a new record by next September.

Ashton Shepherd in the raw

A conversation with the country songstress, who hits Red Bank on Friday

By Alex Biese

When the Writers in the Raw series returns to Red Bank's Count Basie Theatre on Friday (May 1), taking the stage for the intimate, acoustic evening will be a punk rock pioneer (David Johansen of the New York Dolls), an alt-rock bandleader (Rhett Miller of the Old 97's), a big name in DIY indie rock (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's Alec Ounsworth) and a rising country starlet, Ashton Shepherd.

And while the gaps between the performers' genres of choice may be wide, Shepherd said she is anticipating sharing the stage with her fellow songwriters on Friday night, when she'll bring her traditional country sounds to the stage of the Basie.

"I'm looking forward to everybody," the 22-year-old Alabama native said. "I think it's going to be awesome to get to see everybody (perform) in such a raw way, because I think so many artists nowadays lack the know-how or the talent to really just sit there and play acoustically, and I feel privileged that I have been chosen to show talent in that way, so I'm excited about that."

The married mother of a 3-year-old son, Shepherd released her debut album, "Sounds So Good," last year, and was met with rave reviews in publications such as The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. She recently spoke with Metromix Jersey Shore.

Your album has been out for a little over a year now. Has the feeling sunk in yet of having the record in stores and hearing your songs on the radio?

Yeah, I mean, somewhat it has, but then at the same time, it hasn't, because it's such a surreal thing. I mean, we live in a very small town, in Leroy, Alabama. I grew up in a family of six people in a little bitty house, country living and just simple things every day, riding dirt roads is one of the biggest outings we had; where I grew up there weren't red lights or anything.

So, you go from that, and even since my married life with my husband and my little boy, (it's) the same thing. They farm produce and I've even sold produce on the side of the road before, so I've done some of the most real-life stuff people could do, and so it makes it, I guess, even harder for it to sink in for me that this is actually happening for me.

Your album received a lot of critical acclaim. Do you think people were longing for a return to the traditional style of country that's on the record?

I do. I think it's one of those things where people have been without it because supposedly what's hits isn't country music, real country music, and it's kind of rammed down your throat, the same, orchestrated-type of country music, and they kind of push it down people's throats when, in fact, people out here where we live love country music, real country music. And, not knocking who's out there today, because I'm a big fan of everybody on the radio, but that type of country music, I think it's a sad thing for it not to exist, and I think the people are real hungry for it.

The title track of the album, "Sounds So Good," is a really good summertime tune. What is some of your favorite music to listen to in the summertime?

You know, gosh, we even cover this song from time to time, "Fishin' in the Dark" (by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) is one of my favorite summer songs, (it's) about going fishing and we even cover that song at some of our shows. Another one of my favorite songs, it just sticks out, is David Lee Murphy, "Dust on the Bottle." I mean, I have so many favorite songs, but those are a couple of songs there that always remind me of summertime.

The first track on the album, "Takin' Off This Pain," starts with a great pair of lyrics that really help establish an identity and grab the listener. Can you tell me a bit about writing that song and those opening lyrics?

You know, that song actually, I sat down on my couch and I had come up with it; (I) just wanted to write a song, and I sat down and sang that line first. And sometimes, as silly as it sounds, that's how I write my songs. I can just be sitting there and it just will literally fall into my lap or come out of my mouth; I'm just coming up with it, out of thin air. Once I wrote the first line that you're talking about, "I've got a cold beer in my right hand, in my left I've got my wedding band," well, there wasn't no doubt where the song was going after that, to me, as a writer.

Everybody, I think, that is married, feels like they don't get enough attention sometimes. I think it's just a normal thing, and I think some people just people just feel like they have just had it, I'm tired of you watching the T.V. and not paying any attention to me, and so I just tried to put all that in there for a regular person out there that feels that way.

What's the songwriting process like for you and your brother-in-law (Adam Cunningham), who co-wrote some of the songs on the album?

Adam and I really haven't written together a ton, believe it or not. We're always talking about coming up with stuff together, and we're always coming up with ideas and bouncing them off of each other, and it just so happens that a few of the songs on the record were some of the ones that people liked the most (and) was stuff we had done together.

As a matter of fact, me and him right now are trying to make a point to make a scheduled time together to write, because look at what (has) come out of us writing. Like "How Big Are Angel Wings," we sat down, he had the idea, we sat down together and knew where we wanted to go, he knew exactly how he wanted it, he had some of the chorus written and we finished it together.

Like "Old Memory," he had this big storyline of how the song should go and he wasn't sure about a lot of things, and that's where me and him working together works great, because we sit down together and come up with something that maybe by ourselves we couldn't have come up with, so it's pretty cool.

One of the other standout tracks on the album, for me, is "I Ain't Dead Yet." Can you tell me a bit about that one?

Oh yeah, I wrote that song (and) that's as true as anything I've ever written in my life. I wrote that song when I was a stay-at-home mom and my husband worked construction and my little boy, gosh, he was probably 8 months old, sitting in his highchair and I was feeding him and he was eater Gerber puffs and I had my guitar there, I picked it up when I was sitting at the kitchen table.

I had been wanting to write a song that stated what I felt like about being a young mama that still likes go out and have fun sometimes and don't want to be ridiculed for it, because when you say "go out sometimes," sometimes means sometimes, it's not something you do all the time, it's a break you need every so often, and that's how that some came about. I wrote it from the first line, "I got a baby at home," to finish, never even knowing that I was going to use the hook "I ain't dead yet," and it just came as I wrote the song, if that makes sense.

Oh yeah, definitely. And how has being a mother affected your life on the road? Has it made it difficult, or do you bring the family on the road with you?

Using a Red Bank, NJ show for example, I fly there on a Friday and I fly home on a Saturday, in that case usually my husband flies with me and my baby's grandparents will keep him for a night or whatever. Like last week, we went out for two shows and my husband stayed home with my son and my brother-in-law, the one we just talked about writing with me, he's my bass player, so me and him make the drive to Nashville, and him being with me, I feel really safe, because I feel like he is my brother.

The alternative to that, and what we try to do the most, is when we have full band shows, two and three nights a week on the road, we just bring my little boy with me and he stays on the bus with us and sleeps in a little bunk and he's just one of the ones on the bus, like a little roadie. We try to bring him out as much as we can and even it out so that when I do have the times that I have a couple-days trip and he doesn't go, it's doesn't bother me nearly as bad, because I've tried to bring him out as much as I can.

» www.kyte.tv

IT’S ALL (SO) GOOD
New Artist Herds Her Sound To Fans

“Hey baby let’s jump in your truck...we’ll ride and watch for lightning bugs”

That’s a line from Ashton Shepherd’s second single, “Sounds So Good”, which is also the title of her debut album. Though the traditionally country 22-year old is a newcomer to the major market, she actually started steeping herself in the mixture of music years before today. And you can certainly hear the years, and beyond them, in her songs. There’s the take-off and pain-free first single “Takin’ off this Pain”, which sings of shearing her ring and other marital stories, but there are also those like “The Harder They Fall” (as in, “the bigger the heart, the harder they fall”), and “Whiskey Won The Battle”. “Battle” was fought and written solely by Shepherd’s brother-in-law and touring bassist, Adam Cunningham. In fact, any writing on the collection she didn’t create came from Cunningham.

“We’re basically like brother and sister,” Shepherd says of him. “He’s easy to write with. I started practicing music with him when I was 15”.

‘The longest I’ve ever spent struggling with a song is probably a week,” she continues. “With ‘I Ain’t Dead Yet’, it kind of came to me like a book, the lines just started pouring out. I had the line ‘I may be getting older but I ain’t dead yet’ and I wrote it in about 15 minutes while my husband was on his way home from work and I had just fed my little boy.”

Launched and productionally propelled by the accomplished Buddy Cannon, she says her favorites on Sounds are “I Ain’t Dead Yet” and “Sounds So Good.” And though it’s not on the album, she often covers the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Fishin’ in the Dark” in concert.

“I started writing when I was just out of kindergarten,” she shares. “It may not have been the best stuff, though. There is a song called “Johnny” that I liked.”

She won her first talent contest at age 8, and at 15, she still wasn’t sheepish at all; already making music in studio- the studio of Alabama member Jeff Cook, located in Ft. Payne, Alabama, to be exact. Her mom took the cover shot.

“We had the minimum of 1,000 copies made of that CD,” Shepherd says. “I sang so many places where people said, ‘Oh we’d love to have a CD. Do you have something? So we did that so people would have something of mine.”

“It was a nice learning curve,” she adds.

And for those who haven’t “herd” the latest news, there’s more good word in Shepherd’s story- she recently received word from Amazon.com that Sounds So Good picked its way to stay atop the #2 spot on their list of 2008’s Top Ten Country Albums. And she even took #27 on the Top 100 Albums list.

The fortunate one excudes, “I can’t wait to meet people and for people to meet me. I hope everybody connects with my music...I think they will. I think people will feel the realness in my songs. I’ve always dreamed of this ride I’m about to take. I feel as blessed as I’ve ever felt in my life.”

And as if to prove her wild and wooly ride is just getting started, Shepherd continues to be outstanding in her field- having just done a taping of GAC-TV’s Into the Circle series with Patti Loveless and Vince Gill, whose “My Kind of Woman, My Kind of Man” she used at her wedding. Plus she rounded it out on tour with Sugarland (thanks to which, by the way, she had to cut this interview short). Their dates together wrapped up in mid-November.

Now darned if that doesn’t sound oh-so-good.

- Melissa Coker, The Athens BLUR Magazine

The Wall Street Journal’s year-end list states “the most promising debut of 2008 came from this young woman from Alabama” and calls Shepherd “a potential Loretta Lynn for a new generation.” Sounds So Good was The Washington Post’s pick for 2008 album of the year (all genres) and Entertainment Weekly includes “Sounds So Good” on their list of 10 Best Singles of 2008 (all genres). In addition, Shepherd holds the #1 spot on the Nashville Scene’s Country Music Critic’s Poll in the New Acts category, which was voted on by top music journalists from all over the country.

After an incredible year of being welcomed into the music industry by her peers, radio, the critical press and fans, Shepherd is very thankful to be hitting the road again. “I can’t wait to get out there and perform,” says Shepherd. “Country music fans are just amazing people. They make new artists like me feel loved.”

The singer/songwriter from Leroy, AL will open shows for Little Big Town on their A Place To Land tour tonight in Montgomery, AL and Friday night in Atlanta, GA.

HOT DISH: Ashton Shepherd Still Enjoys the Rural Life

January 26, 2009; Written by Hazel Smith

"Ashton Shepherd
'Sounds So Good'
Mercury/$13.98

"The most promising debut of 2008 came from this young woman from Alabama who writes her own tuneful songs about housewives with kids to contend with, nights out to recover from, and husbands who may or may not recognize their worth or do them any good. (The man she admires in her 'Regular Joe,' it should be noted, is a better-than-average adult, not a patronized, more-average-than-thou 'Joe the Plumber.') The songmaking suggests the possibility that we've got a very smart observer of the down-home married woman's lot here, a potential Loretta Lynn for a new generation. The evocative singing -- generally soaring only where it counts -- makes for strong listening right now, and there are fiddles and pedal steel."

Best of 2008: Ashton Shepherd

Ashton Shepherd is a 22-year-old Alabama songbird who writes and sings about motherhood, small-town rural life, music, her feisty streak and booze -- not necessarily in that order. Her mission statement: "I like a pint of Crown and a country sound and stayin' out all night."

On her debut album, "Sounds So Good," Shepherd channels Loretta Lynn, name-checks Keith Whitley and celebrates the pickin' shed behind her house. She sings, in a deep, honeyed drawl, that "there ain't nothin' like the sound of a cooler slushin' on the bed of your truck" -- which was merely the line of the summer.

Shepherd is the real deal -- a formidable songwriter and a gifted singer with a rich, expressive, decidedly twangy voice that's just brimming with personality. The country traditionalist sounds alternately tough and tender, with an emphasis on the former. "Sounds So Good" opens with Shepherd singing: "I've got a cold beer in my right hand/In my left I've got my wedding band/I've been wearing it 'round now for way too long./And I'm more than ready to see it gone/And I'm the only one who can set myself free/So I'm takin' off this pain you put on me." (As it turns out, it's a sharply drawn character sketch, not a real-life confessional: Shepherd is happily married.)

I joked in Sunday Style & Arts that somewhere, a jealous Miranda Lambert was probably breakin' out the kerosene. But Shepherd won her over, too, with Lambert saying earlier this year: "The first time I heard Ashton Shepherd's voice, it's like she reached out of the radio and grabbed me. ... I love that in her music you hear her life and the down-home feel of her lyrics. She is perfectly unpolished. The fact that she is a redneck, beer-drinkin' chick from Alabama, I mean what's not to love?"

Indeed.

"Sounds So Good" is my pick for 2008 album of the year.

Shepherd called from her single-wide trailer in southwest Alabama one recent morning. It was 8 a.m. CST, an unreasonable hour for a musician. I was hoping she'd explain that she'd been stayin' out all night, drinking a pint of Crown, etc. But no. "I like to do my interviews early," she said. "That way, I can let my little boy James sleep a minute. It's just easier than having him sittin' on my lap, watchin' cartoons while we talk." She noted that her husband was out hunting. So, so country. So, so great.

Was there ever any question that you'd make a traditional-sounding album? That's not exactly the easiest sell these days.
It was always just gonna be what it is. I remember when we first started, me and [producer Buddy Cannon] were starting to get to know each other. I remember talkin' to him one day and I was telling him the different music that I love. I said, "Buddy, I love John Anderson's music. I love that sound, with the fiddles driving a lot of his songs." And I gave a couple of other examples of real country music that I like.

I was a little afraid then because I didn't really know Buddy. I knew a little of his history of course and just how legendary he is. But I didn't know what he was going to want to do with my songs. Producin', that's not what I do. I'm just a singer-songwriter. I forget how he said it exactly, but he said: "Ashton, you're country, and I am too. And that's the record we're gonna make." When I got off the phone, I felt like: Gosh, he gets it. He gets what I do. He was sayin': "We're both fans of real country music, and that's what we're going to go in the studio to make."

I haven't listened to the record in a long time. I've kept away from it so I could start to listen through it again at the end of this year and start to think about a third single for radio and everythin'. I forget how traditional it sounds in so many ways. It's still kind of contemporary compared to old country music. But when you listen to it after listenin' to the radio a lot, you go: Wow, this is pretty country! (Laughs.)

You really need to listen to it again. It's awesome -- my favorite album of 2008, and I've heard a lot of them this year.
I'll tell you what: That makes me feel real good, that people believe in it. It really lifts my spirits and makes me feel good when somebody says you want to do an interview because I'm in your top albums of 2008. I'm going: Wow, it's really okay that I don't have a big No. 1 that stayed up there for eight weeks yet because I have a lot of other supporters in big ways.

(Much more inside.)

I know it doesn't buy you that swimming pool or big, 500-acre ranch or anything, but ...
You know, I'm such a simple person. Me and my husband, we live in a single-wide trailer with our son. We're very down-to-Earth people. My goal with my music -- of course, I want to be able to build a foundation for my son, to have money for his college and be able to put up trust funds for him. I would love to be able to do all of that stuff. But meanwhile, I'm just proud to be able to be makin' a living with my music. I was playin' music anyway. But I was playin' it for $300 a night at a little, bitty bar where people weren't listening, you know? But there was a really big change for me and my husband. He used to work construction work; he was a millwright. It was a total role-reversal for us. We went from me being a stay-at-home mom to him being sort of like a stay-at-home dad. They come with me over half the time on the bus when I'm on tour. But at home, he's got our son.

I don't mean this in a bad way toward the industry, but if this all fell out from under me tomorrow, I would still be playin' music here at home, and I'd still have my family. Last night, I was playing my husband some new songs, and my little boy got some money and gave it to me and said: "Here's money for playin' your guitar." (Laughs.) And he gave me a kiss. He's such a big little fan, and my husband is, too. That means so much. I don't have to have a lot of glamor and all that. It's nice, but at the end of the day, I'm just so proud to be able to be makin' music on top of already havin' my dream, which was to have a husband and a little boy and being able to have family livin' near us. All my family lives within a couple hours of us. None of them live out of state or anything like that. I'm a very fortunate person.

As you were making the album, you were also trying to mother your baby boy. Did you get to sleep at all?
(Laughs.) Oh, I did. But it was a very big transition for me. It went from me saying, "Miss Rachel" -- which is my husband's mama -- "can you watch James?" to them watching him more and more throughout the whole process. When I did radio tours, my husband went with me everywhere and they kept James all the time. And I'd never really left him from the time he was born. He never went to daycare or anything. I was home with him every day, which was what I wanted to do. I love to play with my baby all day and run to Wal-Mart or whatever and cook supper. That was fine and dandy with me. So it was a very big transition.

This might sound strange, but I grew up all my life being scared to death about making it. I wanted to, but I was scared to death of it. When I was little -- 10, 11, 12 years old -- and I had my little girlfriends at school, it was: "What am I going to do about my friends? Am I gonna just up and leave where I'm from? What am I going to do about my daddy's job?" I was thinkin' about all that stuff when I probably shouldn't have. And, of course, after I'm out of high school, I'm married, I've got a son, and I'm thinkin': "Well, I'm definitely not uprooting now. I live 30 minutes from my parents. My husband's parents live right next door. We've got a beautiful place to live. Why would I up and leave? That would be crazy. I want to make it, but I don't know how. I don't want to do the regular thing and move to Nashville and be there 10 years." I am such a homebody. That's such a different breed, I guess. So many people look at that and go: "That's just so weird. My parents live in Arizona and I live in Minnesota," or whatever. But I can't take being that far away.

Buddy Cannon told me that the studio musicians who worked on your album keep asking about you, which is pretty rare since they do so many sessions with so many singers. His point being that the "Sounds So Good" sessions were really special. What do you remember about them?
I remember just how easy it seemed to be, and how everything just flowed like magic. There was only three tracks on the record that weren't just acoustic, so we'd all sit in a room and listen to the acoustic versions of my songs, just me and my guitar. Then we'd step inside the studio, and they'd play it. The way they brought things to life in the matter of playin' the songs the first time just made it so special. It was just unbelievable what they were able to come up with and what Buddy was able to do. It was my first time to record an album that was supposed to be that significant. I was a little nervous myself. My thing was: How do I know where to start, where to stop, when to come in? They read music and all that stuff, whereas I can't read music. I just have to go off what I'm feelin'. But it just flowed. It was so magically easy, you know?

Obviously, you had pretty strong feelings about the songs, since they were your own. But at some point during the sessions, did you say to yourself: Holy Loretta, they sound even better than I'd ever imagined?
Oh, yeah. I'll get excited about every one of them 'cause, like you said, they're my songs. But when I write a song, I never know for sure what somebody else is going to think of it. I'm always pretty humble, I guess you'd say, about my songs. I mean, I've got some that I just love personally, like: Hey, please, let's put this on a record! But I always want to know what people's opinions are because I have such an attachment to all of my songs. I had no idea when I went into the studio that, like, "Sounds So Good," the title track to the debut album, was going to turn out like it did. I had no clue. Not one inklin'. It wasn't that I didn't think it was going to turn out good. But to me, it was just to me this simple acoustic song that I had wrote about what we do around where we live in a little small town in Alabama. I had no idea it was going to sound like it did. I couldn't picture it.

You're just a baby -- 22 years old. And yet you've been doing this forever: Singing around the house since you were barely out of diapers, and -- this is the most amazing thing -- writing songs since you were about five. What the heck were you writing about then?
You know, I've always been a huge country music fan. In school, I went a little south or whatever you want to call it and listened to a little rap and a little rock because all of my friends did it. They weren't really country music fans. When I was in high school and grade school, whoever Hannah Montana was back then, that's who everybody loved. But I was listening to Clint Black and Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson and Patty Loveless on country music radio.

I'm very perceptive about being able to listen to something and make my own thing out of it. That's what I did listening to country radio. I've been writin' songs since I was a little girl -- 5, 6, 7 years old. I kind of liked my alone time when I was little. I'd go outside, sit on the swing set or on the trampoline and I'd make up songs about a boyfriend-girlfriend or somethin'. I had a so-called boyfriend at school when I was 7. He'd come swim with us, Mama would make us sandwiches -- just little things like that that I would put into a song the best way I knew how from listening to the radio. That's kind of how I went about it.

I had some songs that were just as silly as could be. I had some songs I just made up. I even made up a song about my two big brothers being in the Army. Well, neither one of them was in the Army. I was just making it up. It's strange. It's a very God-given talent. I've been blessed with this ability. I totally understand people going: "How were you writing songs at that age? What were you writing about?" I was just going off of what I was hearin' on the radio. Sometimes it would be something I made up, sometimes it wouldn't. I still write that way. I still write based off other people's situations and mine together.

So country radio was your songwriting school?
Yes, I'm self-taught with it. My mama found five or six songs in a notebook that I had wrote when I was 10. I had wrote "For Travis Tritt" on one of them, "For Lorrie Morgan" on another one. That was just my hobby when I was little. It was writin' songs and singing them for my parents, rather than drawing them a picture. I don't know how in the world how the songwriting comes so easy to me. I used to ask my husband, "Well, how come you don't try to write a song?" He'd get frustrated with me and say, "Ashton, it's not like it is for you. You can sit down and come up with two verses to a song in five minutes. But most people can't do that." I take it for granted myself, just what a gift it is, cause I've had it for such a long time. I've been very fortunate.

You have solo songwriting credits on seven of the 11 tracks and co-writes on three others. The writing is just great; but you also have a fantastic voice. You a better singer? Or a better songwriter?
Oh, gosh. You know, it's hard to answer on my own because I always think of everybody else's opinion. But I would have to say probably singer. I feel like I'm not necessarily a Martina McBride or the Carrie Underwood-type belt singer. I can do that. But as you can tell from me talking, I have a different sound -- a lower-pitched voice for a female. If I ever did sing a Martina McBride song, which I used to when I was little, I'd have to lower it a couple of keys. I can't sing it at her pitch. I feel like my voice and what I do with my voice is somethin' different. I feel like it's special.

What's been the most amazing thing about this year?
Gosh, there's been so many. Every single thing that happens is something that I've never been through before. Everything's been a first. But I found it absolutely wonderful when I played the Opry for the first time. I was looking around going: "Wow, there's Bill Anderson! There's Roy Clark!" I never even pictured playing the Opry. It was completely out of reach.

So if you were scared of success and didn't even see yourself on the Opry stage, what was the dream when you were coming up?
I don't really know. I knew God had given me a talent. And I knew that it would've been a complete and utter waste to have not done something with it. But at that time, I had no idea what tour income was or what publishing money was. I knew a lot of singers were rich, but didn't know why. I was just really clueless about it, to tell you the truth. I just wanted to have a career in it.

I guess I was looking at it just like if I wanted to be a nurse or a veterinarian or just whatever people in class said they wanted to be. Of course, that got made fun of pretty bad. But that was what I wanted to do. They were like: "You need to go to college, and you need to do this, and you need to do that." But I didn't want to go to college. I was given this gift, and I wanted to do something with it. And I felt guilty, because I hadn't done anything with it. My songs were just all sittin' in notebooks and I hadn't moved to Nashville and I wasn't pursuing it any harder.

I guess the kids who laughed in school aren't laughing anymore, are they?
No! (Laughs.) That's such a nice feeling, I've gotta say. I'm not a very mean person or anything like that, but it's very nice to know that their flipping my videos on the the TV and hearing my songs on the radio. There were so many naysayers, probably more than there were supporters when I was in school. I had a lot of people that made me sing wherever I went; they loved my singing. But I had some people that just didn't give a rip about it. "Awww, that's just stupid. You're not ever gonna do anything with that." It makes me feel pretty good to be where I am now.

What's in that Alabama water? The two best Music Row albums this year, without question, are yours and Jamey Johnson's "That Lonesome Song."
(Laughs) I don't really know. It really is a neat thing that that many singer-songwriters come out of this area. Maybe it's just the traditional roots, the way we're brought up and that kind of thing. I don't know.

What are your favorite albums/songs of 2008?
Jamey's "In Color." The first time I heard it I just got chill-bumps all over myself. I love that song. I really like Lee Ann Womack's new song, "Last Call." I could just listen to those two over and over again. I think Taylor Swift is just an unbelievable writer. I think she's really got a great talent in how she's able to express herself in a song and put so much stuff in there. I'm a big fan of Miranda Lambert's stuff, too.

By J. Freedom du Lac

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ASHTON SHEPHERD ENDS THE YEAR WITH A COMPLETED MAJOR TOUR,
GAC HOLIDAY SPECIAL AND CRITICAL ACCLAIM

NASHVILLE, TN – MCA recording artist, Ashton Shepherd recently wrapped the first major tour (Sugarland’s “Love On The Inside” Tour) of her budding country career. Shepherd opened for the tour in over 20 cities across the country, beginning in Asheville, NC on September 13^th and ending in Bossier City, LA on November 16^th.

"Being on tour with Sugarland was the best thing that could've happened for me. It really boosted my self esteem as an artist and taught me a lot,” said Shepherd. “I had a lot of fun out with them! What a great way to end 2008.”

Now that the tour has wrapped, Shepherd is focusing on the holidays and showing fans an inside perspective of her holiday traditions. Great American Country (GAC) will debut an hour-long special, Holidays at Home with Ashton Shepherd, November 23^rd at 10pm EST.

With the success of her first two singles, “Takin’ Off This Pain” and “Sounds So Good” critical placement on highly coveted end-of-year lists is expected. Shepherd has already topped Amazon’s Top Albums of 2008 ranking #2 on the Best Country list and #27 on the Top 100 Editor’s Picks. She also appeared on Blender magazine’s Top Songs of 2008 with “Takin’ Off This Pain”.

Motor Mouth
T-Pain Cranks Out Hits Thanks to Auto-Tune Software. Now Everyone Else Wants to Come Along for the Ride.

By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 9, 2008; M01

T -Pain is tired of hearing the sound of his own, heavily processed voice.

Actually, the Tallahassee hip-hop star is tired of hearing everybody else simulating the sound of his synthesized voice -- the one that's run through a software program called Auto-Tune for a giddy effect that makes him (and them) sound like a singing cyborg or a warbling chipmunk, or maybe a much funkier Peter Frampton.

Superstar singers and rappers from Kanye West and Lil Wayne to Chris Brown and Ciara have been borrowing T-Pain's trademark, so incensing him that he's using his natural voice to talk about it on his new album, "Thr33 Ringz."

The Auto-Tune King, unplugged?! It's the equivalent of Jack Nicholson removing his shades to stare you down, or your mother calling you by your full name to emphasize just how much trouble you're in.

"Listen to the radio, it's obvious I still kill," T-Pain raps au naturel in a song called "Karaoke." The 23-year-old hitmaker proceeds to kill the copycats with a profanity-laced rant in which he seethes: "Y'all [bleeeeeep] can die slowly/Cause to me it sound like a buncha karaoke."

Oh, snap!

Or, as it might sound via Auto-Tune: Snaaa- aaauh- auhhhurrr- urhhhh-AAAAP!

"Every time I hear somebody singing one of their songs, it sounds like them singing karaoke of one of my songs," T-Pain says in a telephone interview. "Don't think I'm not going to hear it when you take that whole style from me. It's pretty much everybody; they're taking the sound I came out with, which was real different, very distinctive."

Until recently, the so-called "T-Pain effect" was actually known as "the Cher effect," after producers of Cher's 1998 dance-pop hit "Believe" pioneered the use of Auto-Tune to create rapturously robotic vocal flourishes that suggested a vocoder on steroids. In fact, there's a long history of manipulated, metallic-sounding vocals (and sorta-vocals) in pop music, with artists from Kraftwerk, ELO and Bon Jovi to Madonna, Midnight Star and Daft Punk using everything from talk boxes to vocoders to spike their recordings with exotic, robotic voices.

A talk box is a tubular device that allows a musician to change the content of an instrumental sound -- via a plastic tube placed in the mouth -- so that the instrument appears to be "talking." A vocoder alters the sound and shape of the vocal signal by sending it through a keyboard synthesizer. Operationally, Auto-Tune has more in common with a vocoder than a talk box.

T-Pain, whose given name is Faheem Najm, is careful to note the vocoder-and-talk-box-laced legacies of Roger Troutman (of Zapp) and Teddy Riley (Guy, Blackstreet) in "Karaoke." But there's no question that he's become synonymous with the suddenly ubiquitous Auto-Tune effect, which adds a distinct, delirious and decidedly sticky sound to his songs -- many of them enormously successful.

Last year, two of T-Pain's singles and five others on which he was a featured vocalist landed in the Top 10 of Billboard's Hot 100, which some purists saw as yet another sign of the digital-music apocalypse. The alternate view: Making your singing voice sound like a Speak & Spell that's been submerged in a bathtub is no different from a guitarist using a wah-wah pedal to tweak the timbre of an instrumental line or a whammy bar to bend the pitch of a note.

"I've heard [the criticism] since I came out," says T-Pain, who just three years ago was a relatively unknown rapper who sometimes sang the hooks for his group, the Nappy Headz. "People were really hating on it. But I'm being accepted for doing it now. I'm actually being congratulated."

And copied. Success breeds imitation in pop culture, and following T-Pain's breakthrough, there's been a full-fledged Auto-Tune explosion in hip-hop, as heard on Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," Chris Brown's "Forever," Janet Jackson's "Feedback" and G-Unit's 50 Cent showcase, "Rider Pt. 2," not to mention various songs that feature T-Pain himself, such as Ciara's new single, "Go Girl."

"You're talking about bona fide hits by A-list artists, the biggest names in hip-hop," says Dion Summers, a senior programming director for Sirius XM's hip-hop and R&B channels. "The T-Pain technique definitely makes a song stand out. It sounds so cool, and it gives more rise to the record and makes it seem lighter. He really hit on a winning formula. It works; that's why these other artists are doing it."

The chart-topping Auto-Tune converts Lil Wayne and Kanye West are given a pass by T-Pain, having asked their occasional collaborator for his blessing to use the effect. "Wayne would get on the phone with you right now and say I'm the reason he started using Auto-Tune," T-Pain says of the New Orleans rapper, whose lascivious "Lollipop" made him sound something like a futuristic frog. (The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early May.)

"And Kanye said, 'Let me borrow your style for a second.' He would tell you, 'Yeah, I took that from Pain.' " West has taken it and run, straight into the studio: On his upcoming album, "808s & Heartbreak," the erstwhile rapper proffers processed vocals that sound as if they were sung by Stephen Hawking's vocal synthesizer. "If you don't like autotune," West wrote on his blog earlier this year, "too bad cause I love it."

T-Pain still loves it, too. On "Thr33 Ringz," which comes out Tuesday, he continues to embrace the technology. Aside from "Karaoke," which actually does contain a handful of Auto-Tuned notes for added emphasis, there's only one track on which T-Pain doesn't use his signature sound: "Keep Going," a heartfelt ballad about the musician's wife and children.

"I do that on every album, a song without Auto-Tune that has a lot of meaning to me," he says. "Something that important and close doesn't need to be enhanced with a lot of effects. It's already emotional enough; it should be natural. But people don't really pay attention to it, I guess. They always expect Auto-Tune."

Though T-Pain has a knack for crafting sharp hooks and catchy beats that tend to fill dance floors, it's the effervescent vocal effect that defines him. That's why he generated so many laughs when, during his stint as host of the BET Awards last month, he got into an argument with his Auto-Tuner. The man-machine relationship -- which T-Pain also spoofed in a video for the Web site Funny or Die -- rang true.

"People think I have to change my voice in order to sing," he says. "What people don't recognize is that you can't just put Auto-Tune on your voice and have a hit on your hands. You still have to make the song a hit, make the beat hot. Take the Auto-Tune effect off all these songs I've done, they're still going to be hits."

Last year, T-Pain reached No. 1 on the big Billboard chart three times: With his own "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin')" and as a guest on (and producer of) Chris Brown's "Kiss Kiss" and Flo Rida's "Low." Notably, "Low" didn't include any Auto-Tuned vocals, which T-Pain offers as evidence that his success isn't dependent on a gimmick.

"He doesn't have to do it -- he's doing it for fun, not because he can't write a good song," says Robin Thicke, an R&B singer who doesn't use the T-Pain effect. But, Thicke says, as a producer, he used Auto-Tune for its original purpose. "I've produced for some people who weren't great singers," Thicke says. "I had to use it on their vocals."

The great irony of the Auto-Tune explosion is that the software that's now being used to distort vocals in an intentionally obvious, attention-getting, over-the-top way was originally created to do something stealthy in the recording studio: correct pitch problems.

While pop music isn't anything like rocket science, it took a geophysicist to figure out how to clean up wrong notes. Twenty years ago Harold "Andy" Hildebrand, who'd spent nearly two decades doing seismic data research in the oil industry, started a company, Jupiter Systems (since renamed Antares), that applied mathematical models and digital-signal processing technology to musical applications. Its first program was used to create seamless synthesizer loops.

The idea for Auto-Tune came during lunch one day, when Hildebrand was jokingly asked by the wife of a sales rep to come up with an algorithm that might make her singing sound better. "We were discussing what I should do next, and she said, 'Maybe you could make a box for me that would make my voice in tune,' " Hildebrand says from his Northern California office. "And everybody just stared down at their lunch. . . . Everybody knew it was impossible and was therefore a stupid idea." So of course, he says, he had to do it.

The result was a software plug-in that corrects a singer's pitch, in a way that's theoretically imperceptible to the untrained ear. "The automatic algorithm compares the pitch of the singer to a scale, then gradually moves the singer's pitch toward the scale note," Hildebrand says.

Introduced by Antares in 1997, the Auto-Tune application was revolutionary. It reduced the need for -- and expense of -- doing countless vocal retakes in pursuit of a perfect end-to-end vocal; it also allowed singers (J. Lo) with pitch problems (Britney) to sound somewhat palatable (Cassie).

Auto-Tune and pitch-correction programs like it are now used in just about every pop genre. There's also a version that can be used during concerts. (Is it live? Yes. Are you hearing the music naturally, without "invisible" fixes? Maybe not.)

It's so prevalent that Nashville producers rave when they encounter mainstream country singers, like Ashton Shepherd, who can record without any pitch correction. Harvey Mason Jr., a successful pop and R&B songwriter-producer, conservatively estimates that 60 percent of recording artists are using Auto-Tune as it was originally intended. But, he says: "I don't think I've ever had an artist ask for it. Most artists assume they don't need it."

He adds: "A lot of times, you're just trying to salvage a great performance that you might lose because of one bad note. You're not using it for total pitch correction. But some people just slam it, and everything they sing comes out in tune. You have to be careful with it -- sometimes Auto-Tune sterilizes performances and makes them sound clinical."

Is it cheating?

"I don't engage in those conversations," Hildebrand says. "I just make software."

He laughs, then notes that he's making money, too. Lots of it. "The industry's going to have to make up its own mind [if] it's a monster or not." (And anyway, says Hildebrand, who earned union scale in a symphony orchestra while in high school and studied composition at Rice University's Shepard School of Music: "Frankly, I don't listen to pop music.")

Summers, the satellite radio programmer, says the answer to the cheating question "really depends on what you use music for. If you're talking about singing at its purest, then absolutely. It's kind of the equivalent to taking steroids at the Olympics. If you're a singer, sing. But this is the entertainment industry. Take the J. Lo example. It's a look, a feel, a vibe. It doesn't really matter how she sings. You come to see her in concert, you know she's not doing a Whitney [Houston]. You're not there for that. You're there to be entertained."

Ne-Yo, the neo-classic soul man who has the No. 1 single on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart this week in "Miss Independent," says he despises Auto-Tune. "It takes the emotion out of your voice. And it's really used in the place of having actual vocal ability or skill."

But, he adds, "T-Pain has figured out a way to use it to where he can get a point across with it. Personally, I dig his style."

In T-Pain's hands, Auto-Tune is used as a tool, not a crutch -- a sort of flavor enhancer that falls somewhere between sweet cream butter and MSG. To achieve the effect, the Auto-Tune's "retune speed" setting is adjusted to zero; rather than moving a vocal toward the nearest correct note gradually, it's processed almost instantly, resulting in an unnatural stair step in pitch that makes human vocals sound unhuman. "It really wasn't meant to be used that way," Hildebrand says, "but it's becoming really popular."

So much so that Antares is releasing a discounted, stripped-down version of Auto-Tune this month to coincide with the release of T-Pain's album. Whereas Auto-Tune plug-ins typically sell for more than $300, Antares is offering the Auto-Tune EFX for $99 through Guitar Center -- "for the guy who wants a simple T-Pain effect or simple pitch correction," Hildebrand says.

This, of course, means more T-Pain copycats are inevitable. Some will be more famous than others: Sean "Diddy" Combs has already announced that his next album will feature a heavy dose of Auto-Tuned vocals, which actually sounds like an upgrade, given how monochromatic the mogul-rapper's voice tends to be in recorded form. Christina Aguilera -- a bona fide belter who doesn't need the help -- has hinted that she might experiment with the effect, too.

And eventually, this too shall pass -- just like the trend of using speeded-up soul samples in hip-hop several years ago, and the "radio voice" trend in R&B around 2001-2002, when certain lines were filtered and processed so that they'd sound as if they were being sung through a transistor radio or a telephone.

Until then, the frontman for the futuristic hip-hop movement has an idea. "Everybody's singing like me," T-Pain says, "so I figure maybe I should rap like everybody else."

» twitter.com

Southern draw

Ashton Shepherd's winning over fans with her small-town country sound

Troy L. Smith

When it comes to music from the Deep South, there's country and then there's country. Rising star Ashton Shepherd, part of WBEE's upcoming Stars & Guitars show, certainly falls into the latter category.

Her thick Southern accent may be apparent on her soft country tunes, but it's nothing compared to how Shepherd sounds when it's not accompanied by melody. Whether she's referencing her parents as "Momma and Daddy" or reminiscing about her teenage musical hangout, The Pickin' Shed, Shepherd is a small-town country girl through and through.

"I'm probably one of the plainest people you'll ever meet," a laid-back Shepherd said during a recent phone interview during a tour stop in Mississippi. "When I'm at home I like simple things, like riding the dirt roads with my husband and son."

Shepherd grew up in the miniscule town of Coffeeville, Ala. (population 204), which clearly shows in her music. The majority of the songs that make up her major-label album debut, Sounds So Good, were written before she ever hit the big time -- some, like the love ballad "Lost In You," when she was just 15 years old.

"My parents would always describe me as mature for my age," says Shepherd, now 22. "Of course, when I was younger I was writing about breakups and school crushes on guys, but every now and then I'd put myself in other people's positions. Things that I had never been through, I was able to put into words and music."

Shepherd's been writing songs since she was 5, with the unconditional support of her parents who both were singers. Shepherd's parents funded their daughter's self-released debut album when she was a freshman in high school. And after numerous talent competitions and showcases, Shepherd was signed by MCA Nashville (home of Reba McEntire and George Strait) in early 2007. Shepherd released Sounds So Good just a year later this past March.

"It's still very surreal," says Shepherd, whose voice rings with a sense of excitement when recounting the past year and getting to meet idols such as Vince Gill and Alan Jackson.

"I'm still getting used to all this," she says. "I'm just a normal girl. I don't like fancy-schmancy things. I'm not about dressing up." The album art for Sounds So Good seems to contradict that, showing a gorgeous Shepherd in full makeup and a fancy black dress and jewelry. Though she's quick to point out that, at her request, all the photos were taken at The Pickin' Shed (which also is the title of a song on her album), a venue built by her brother and future husband when where they were teenagers.

And for all the glitz that comes with a major label deal, Shepherd's music rarely veers from her modest origins. MCA allowed the young songwriter full creative control, opting for material written when she was back in her hometown.

Though she has a deep-rooted Southern slickness that doesn't exactly mirror her more pop-sounding contemporaries like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift, Shepherd's music apparently resonates with country music fans -- even fans outside of the Deep South.

Talking about a recent run of shows in New York state opening for Sugarland (including a stop in Rochester two weeks ago), a pleasantly surprised Shepherd said: "The crowds really, really seemed to like my stuff. I didn't really expect that kind of reaction."

WBEE's GITARS & STARS

With: Joe Dee Messina, Billy Currington, Ashton Shepherd and others

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5

Where: Henrietta Fair and Expo Center, Henrietta

Tickets: Sold out but available to weekly winners on WBEE-FM (92.5)

Details: www.wbee.com

» www.umgnashville.com

Concert at battleship in Mobile to honor Alabama war dead

Ashton Shepherd of Leroy is featured performer at benefit to take place Sunday
By GEORGE WERNETH

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Rising country music star Ashton Shepherd of Leroy will be the featured performer at the Fallen Heroes Memorial Benefit Concert to be held Sunday at Battleship Memorial Park on the Causeway in Mobile.

The 22-year-old singer-songwriter, whose debut album, "Sounds So Good," was released in March by MCA Nashville and climbed up the country charts, will be donating her 4:30 p.m. performance.

The show will benefit a memorial honoring Alabama military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, a spokesman said.

"Our goal is to sell 5,000 tickets to this event," said memorial spokesman Nathan Cox of Spanish Fort, who said plans call for constructing the memorial at Battleship Park to honor the nearly 100 Alabamians who have died in the two wars.

Tickets for the concert are $20 for adults and $10 for those ages 18 and under, Cox said.

A former Marine infantry officer and Iraq war veteran, Cox said plans call for raising $125,000 for the memorial, and he noted that some $50,000 had been raised so far in the campaign that began about six months ago.

In a recent phone interview from Tupelo, Miss., where she was performing, Shepherd said she had earlier been touring the Northeast as the opening act for the country superstar duo Sugarland. She has gained a reputation for her traditional country style and said she has been received enthusiastically by audiences up North.

"They were standing up in their seats, hooting and hollering," she said of the welcome she received recently at a show in New York state. Speaking in her Southern drawl, she said, "They always say something about my accent. Everybody does."

Her three hit songs have been "Sounds So Good," "Pickin' Shed" and "Takin' Off This Pain," and she performed on the Grand Ole Opry television show in April. She said she will be featured in a Thanksgiving television special in November, which is to be filmed in Leroy, where she lives. She said the date and time the show will air have not been set yet, but she said it will be shown on the Great American Country channel.

"Everything has been going extremely well," said Shepherd, who added that she also recently opened a show for country superstar Alan Jackson.

The Coffeeville native said, "Being on the road has been a great experience." She said her husband, Roland, and their 3-year-old son, James, often travel with her on tour. "My husband has been good about supporting my music."

Shepherd said she's looking forward to performing in the Mobile area and that lots of family and friends from Leroy and Coffeeville are planning to come to the Battleship Park event. Among those planning to attend, she said, are her parents, Donnie and Denise Shepherd of Coffeeville.

Cox said family members of Alabama military personnel who have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan will be honored during the event.

Donations should be made out to the USS Alabama Foundation and mailed to: Attn.: Iraq/Enduring Freedom Memorial, P.O. Box 65, Mobile, AL 36601-0065.

CMT News

Ashton Shepherd Wants to Make a Connection on Sugarland's Tour
"Sounds So Good" Singer Opening Shows on Love on the Inside Dates

by Craig Shelburne

Ashton Shepherd landed one of the most desirable tour slots this year, opening shows for Sugarland's “Love on the Inside” tour. Although she released her major-label debut album only a few months ago, she's already completely comfortable working a stage because she's been performing at fairs and festivals in her native Alabama since she was in high school. The only difference now seems to be the size of the venue.

"When I walk onto the stage, I always try to make my impression on the fans. Wave at them, smile at them and always try to look happy," says Shepherd. "And I don't have to try hard because I'm always happy when I'm on stage. I'm happy to be up there singing for people."

Shepherd has already made an impression at country radio with her first two singles, "Takin' Off This Pain" and "Sounds So Good." In a recent interview with CMT.com, the twangy 22-year-old talks about her family's overwhelming curiosity about life on the road, running into old friends who encouraged her dream and what Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush are really like.

CMT: How do you prepare for a big tour like this?

Shepherd: I think the best thing to do to prepare is just making sure, obviously, that your show is like you want it to be -- that you're comfortable with your players and comfortable with your set, and how you're rolling in and out of songs. Things like that. Really, more importantly than feeling good about your own show, I really try to get in my own zone. Regardless of how thick you're supposed to be with your band, I'm sort of a "in my own world" type of performer, and I just like to connect with the audience. That's one of the most important things, to me, is being able to sing to them and connect.

What does your family think of your career?

I think a lot of them are shocked, even though they've been watching me sing from a little bitty thing. They expected me to make something of myself, but I don't think anybody ever really thought that this could happen. I didn't think it could happen. I wanted it to, but I didn't know how. So they're all really excited for me, shocked and, you know, checking on me every day and wanting to know all the details.

What did they say when you told them you got this tour with Sugarland?

They were just thrilled. They were like, "Really? Oh, my gosh!" You know, of course, there comes the questions again. I can't even tell you how many questions they ask. My poor daddy will call and be like, "Well, how long is it from Carolina to Pennsylvania?" and "Where are y'all stopping at?" and "Who's on the bus with you?" And I'm goin', "Oh, lord, Daddy, I got so much on my mind right now, I just don't want to answer all these little questions." But they're totally thrilled that I'm out with Sugarland.

How you would describe Jennifer and Kristian to someone who's never met them?

I've heard a lot of people say this, I know it's a simple phrase, but "down to earth." I think the first time I ever met them was when they were opening up for Kenny Chesney, and Kristian gave me his number, I mean, right off the bat. Just, "Hey, if you ever need any help, if you ever need anything. ... Because we know this is a tough run, and it's hard, and there will be a lot of changes made, and you'll be going through a lot of different things." They were that helpful to start with, just laughing with you and talking with you. Every time I've ever been around them, they were that way.

How involved were you in preparing your tour merchandise?

I was real involved. Of course, I had a few ideas of my own that I brought up. And, of course, I'd say, "Hey, let's see this in a different color and different designs" and whatnot. But I've gotta admit, I may be a songwriter and a singer, but I'm not very good with stuff like that -- or decorating a house. The stuff girls are supposed to be good at, I'm not.

I know you made some recordings when you were a teenager, and I thought that was great because you already had merchandise with you at shows.

Oh, yeah, we did. Well, we just went so many shows with people saying, "Oh, man, do you have a tape or CD or something we can buy?" Of course, we were like ... "No." We went so many shows like this that eventually we went out -- me and my parents -- and had a little CD made. We would sell a ton of 'em at shows. And this was way before any record deal was ever in sight.

What was on that record?

It was 12 songs I had written. I was 15 years old when I made the CD. I went to Cook Studios in Fort Payne, Ala., and put 12 songs that I had written on a CD. We took all the pictures ourselves, me and my mama did.

Do you have people that still remember that album when they come to your shows?

Oh, yeah, especially around home. This is the funny part about it: I can remember specific times where friends of mine would come up and say, "I want you to sign this thing because I know you're gonna be huge one day." I remember a specific friend of mine that came up and told me that. I mean, he was so sure, like, "I know you're gonna be a star one day." I thought, "I hope I am," you know? And there he is. I met him later after all this happened, and we see each other in the store, and he goes, "I told you."

UB show a good bet for all tastes

By Elmer Ploetz
Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News

Country singer Ashton Shepherd, left, performs with her accompanist Wednesday at WYRK’s Fall Acoustic Concert.

OK, here’s the harried handicapper’s rundown of the entrants in Wednesday night’s singing and picking derby in the University at Buffalo’s Center for the Arts.

The first thing to look for in betting on which of these young and/or newer artists is going to hit the big time in Nashville is the track. The Fall Acoustic show sponsored by WYRK-FM was a great opportunity to hear them without the huge video screens and big-time sound processing that is common to the big-time tours where they frequently serve as opening acts.

If it’s a California track, go for Jimmy Wayne. The guy had a hardscrabble youth, but he came out of with a sunny outlook and a smooth voice that brings to mind the 1970s country rock of the Eagles — without the cynicism. Even his song about his sister and her abusive former husband — called “Stay Gone” — is cheerful.

He also was the loquacious one on stage, out-talking even Ashton Shepherd. The third performer — Jamey Johnson — was a man of few words, usually reserving them for one-liners that cut to the quick.

Shepherd, meanwhile, was the classic country artist of the three as they took turns playing their own songs. Each brought accompaniment: Shepherd a guitarist, Wayne a percussionist and Johnson a guitarist and a guy playing slide guitar on his lap.

Shepherd, just 22, said she is meeting her husband and son tomorrow as she continues her tour.

But her songs were frequently about breaking out of the constraints of everyday life — traditional fodder for country women. On songs like “Take This Pain” — her tale of a woman taking off her wedding ring and leaving her loser behind — she stretched her deep twang and drawl around the phrasing to the point of almost turning some lines into yodels.

Johnson was definitely the dark horse. In fact, almost everything about him is dark, including his sense of humor. With a black Rob Zombie beard and dressed in a leather jacket, ripped jeans and a ski cap, he and the rest of his trio looked like they could either sell you gas or rob you — before they go into the back room to continue their picking session.

In an age when it seems like every other country song turns into a personal testimony of redemption, Johnson’s stripped-down, taut versions of songs like “High Cost of Living,” “That Lonesome Song” and “Take It Away” seemingly took the sold-out audience’s breath away after the comparatively sunny songs of Shepherd and Wayne.

It’s hard to find flaws in a show like Wednesday’s. Eighteen songs, two hours, $20 tickets, and you get a chance to really get a feel for the personality of the artists.

I’d play it safe and box the trifecta.

Concert Review

WYRK Fall Acoustic Concert

Featuring Jimmy Wayne, Ashton Shepherd and Jamey Johnson on Wednesday night in the University at Buffalo Center for the Arts.

Old-soul spirit
Ashton Shepherd's detail-rich country songs are rooted in real-life experience.

BY DAVE RICHARDS
dave.richards@timesnews.com [more details]

October 16. 2008 12:01AM

Ashton Shepherd is a small-town girl with big-time talent and old-soul spirit.

She grew up in Leroy, Ala., a humble place of about 300 to 400 souls, surrounded by peanut fields. Her father worked at a paper mill; mom stayed home and played country music on the radio.

Shepherd soaked it up, then found herself singing along to Garth Brooks, Clint Black, and early Alan Jackson records.

"I was around country music all my life," said Shepherd. "I had a real passion for it. I tell people it's simply a God-given talent. I don't know why I wanted to play guitar, I don't know why I love singing so much except that I know God gave me a talent. He touched me on the head with it. I don't know how I write the songs I write. I've just always been able to do that."

Remarkably, she wrote the songs on "Sounds so Good," her debut, before she was 18. Yet they're mature, wise-beyond-her-years songs that deal with traditional country themes like heartache, drinking, and being a mom and a housewife.

"I've sort of been an older soul all my life," Shepherd said. 'That's just me. Even when I was a little girl, I had deep thoughts about things and was trying to figure out problems. I always had that kind of personality."

Heck, at age 8, she sang Patsy Cline songs, not pop hits, at country fairs. At 15, she recorded her first CD, with the cover photo taken by her mother.

In June 2006, Shepherd won a talent contest by singing Martina McBride's "Independence Day" and two of her own songs, including "I Ain't Dead Yet," about a good mom who still likes to party. First prize was an opening slot for country star Lorrie Morgan. At that show, a Nashville record producer heard Shepherd and invited her to visit Music Row.

Within a year of arriving, she had a label deal with MCA.

"I know, it's a fairy-tale story, it really is," Shepherd said. "But I had my first showdown at 8 years old, so I've been doing this a really long time. Though I'm young and it happened for me in a quick way, I was going after it for a while."

Nashville sometimes sees a performer as naturally beautiful as Shepherd is and tries to cast her as a slick, pop-country diva. No way would Shepherd let that happen. Working with veteran producer Buddy Cannon, she crafted a traditional country CD with steel guitars and fiddles. It's way more country than most country on country radio.

"MCA signed me knowing I'm a proud country artist," Shepherd said. "Buddy told me, 'We're going to make a country record. That's who you are and that's who I am, too.'"

Shepherd co-wrote 10 of the 11 songs with her brother-in-law. They crafted many of them at the Pickin' Shed, a little getaway on her family's property with a pool table, darts, and space to jam.

"It's a warm, wonderful special little place for me," Shepherd said. "I don't spend the time there like I used to, but I loved whenever we had a gathering and would cook fish on the grill. Everyone would come over and bring their guitars. I just really enjoy the place."

So much so, she wrote "The Pickin' Shed" for her CD, accentuating how most of her detail-rich songs are rooted in real-life experience.

"I don't know how to write any other way," Shepherd said. "It's got to be something I really feel or something that really hit me. It can't be something that I push out."

Now, barely pushing 23, she's released one of country's most acclaimed CDs of 2008 and has a host of superstar fans that boggles her mind. Keith Urban and his wife, Nicole Kidman, invited her to hang out on his tour bus. Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush asked her to open for them on tour.

None of this has gone to Shepherd's head. She's adamant about remaining in Leroy with her husband and son.

"I don't ever want to lose being normal," Shepherd said. "That's hard to do in this business. What we do is not normal. What artists do is just crazy stuff -- fly to California one day, get on a tour bus the next night and head to another gig. It's hard to make it normal. But I try as hard as I possibly can."

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Country star Ashton Shepherd: 'I'm just a normal person'

Courtesy of MCA Nashville
By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff

With any luck, by the time country singer Ashton Shepherd gets off the road in December, there will still be a few deer roaming the woods around Leroy, Ala., for her to shoot.

At 22, the rising star has a lot to keep her occupied -- a new album released in the spring that peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard country albums chart; tours with big names like Kellie Pickler and Sugarland; a performing schedule through autumn that leaves little time for her to go back home to Leroy.

While she's grateful for and humbled by that success, home is where her heart is. And despite the accolades and wonders that such success has brought, she yearns for nothing more than returning to South Alabama before hunting season ends.

"Probably more so than other artists, I do go back to such a normal life," Shepherd told The Daily Times this week. "We live in a secluded area with our kinfolk right by us; we've got croplands and fields; and we like to go fishing and hunting. I'm just a normal person, and I always feel like such a normal person. I don't really feel like a star.

"It's all very surreal. When I'm on the road, I get homesick. I'm a very big homebody. I enjoy touring, and I love my fans and love being out here, but I really love being home. I've got about a month off around December, and I can't wait for that time -- to be home for that length of time, to go hunting, to be with my family."

Such sentiment is one of the reasons she connects so easily with fans. Born in the small town of Coffeeville, Ala. (population 360), she never strayed far from her birthplace; Leroy, an even smaller community, sits about 40 miles to the south and about 60 miles north of Mobile.

Her parents were musically inclined, and young Ashton was singing not long after she could talk. When she was 8, she entered a country talent competition, singing songs by Patsy Cline. It was the first of many -- she continued singing at country fairs, benefit shows and community events, and by the time she was 14, her brothers convinced her to learn to play the guitar. Not long after she started, the songs started to come.

God-given talent

"I just turned 22 years old, so I'm very young, but I feel like I've always had a little bit of an older soul about myself," she said. "I've always been able to make up songs about stuff I shouldn't know about, and it's always struck a chord with people. I think it's a true God-given talent.

"I can't truly give myself as a human being credit for it. I do kind of feel like an old soul. I like to be silly and have fun, and I'm happy-go-lucky, but in my mind, I feel like I'm 40 years old for some reason. I don't know why; I always have."

At 15, she recorded her first record -- an independent album that she sold on the side at her performances. The next few years were a whirlwind of personal milestones -- marriage, a child and continued performances around South Alabama. She listened to the sounds coming out of Nashville, drifting through tiny speakers and truck stereos across the fields of peanuts, peas and cotton that she helped pick on the family's farm, and thought about what it would be like to hear her own voice on those radio stations.

And then she found out. It was two years ago, and she won a talent contest in Gilbertown, Ala., that offered, as first prize, an opportunity to open for country star Lorrie Morgan at a local concert. She performed, was noticed by a country music executive who happened to be in the audience and got invited to Nashville to record. She got there, had the sense to seek legal representation to protect her interests, found an office online and made a phone call.

Not only was the woman who answered helpful, she put Shepherd in touch with Shelby Kennedy, son of legendary producer Jerry. Shelby brought Shepherd to MCA Nashville, which offered her a recording contract, and less than a year after arriving in Music City, she completed her major-label debut, "Sounds So Good."

Family supportive

"Before that, I was a stay-at-home mom with a little boy and a husband who worked construction," she said. "I stayed at home and took care of my son and cooked supper. I wanted a career, but more than that, I wanted to be married and have children, and I wanted to be home with them. Internally, I was always a little mixed up about that, and I didn't know how I was going to handle it.

"My husband, though, has been incredibly supportive. Some people are sarcastic and say, 'I bet he is real sweet; he's got a great thing going with his wife being a star.' But nobody knew who he was or who I was before this happened -- he was the one bringing home the paycheck, and I was cleaning house and cooking him supper. We shared everything together.

"Over the last two years, it's been a total role-reversal, and he does wonderful with it," she added. "He's never jealous; he never pokes or pries or asks a million questions. I just couldn't ask for a better person."

To her husband, Roland, she's still Ashton Shepherd -- small-town girl with a gorgeous voice and a star on the rise. It may shine brighter in Nashville, where corporate bean-counters and number-crunchers pay far closer attention to charts and sales numbers, but it's still a shining little beacon of wonder over tiny little Leroy.

"Hometown girl does good" -- Shepherd sees it and feels it every time she goes home, and at this point in her career, it never gets any less surreal.

"I get asked for autographs -- friends of the family, wanting their pictures made with me, wanting me to sign things for them," she said. "That's the odd part about it -- I'm like, 'Holy crap! We've known each other for two or three years!' Even in my hometown, when I go to Wal-Mart, people will come up to me asking for an autograph.

"That's the odd part about it -- it doesn't feel like anything has changed, but I guess it has. I still feel like I'm just Ashton, just a normal person, and whenever that happens, I still feel honored. And I hope that never changes."

Ashton Gets Advice from Vince & Patty

Oct. 3, 2008 — Newcomer Ashton Shepherd has earned high praise from critics and her peers, and now she’s been counseled by a couple of music giants, picking up wisdom from Vince Gill and Patty Loveless in the GAC series Into The Circle.

Gettin’ to know Ashton Shepherd...who's opening for Sugarland

It’s not every day you get to talk to a country music sensation, but I got my chance this week. Ashton Shepherd is the one of the newest voices to country music; however she is definitely a recognizable voice. Her new single “Sounds So Good,” is topping the billboard charts and can be found on just about every country music station in town. Her other single, “Takin’ off this Pain,” is turning into the perfect “moving on” song for women all over the country.

Her southern charm really came through in an interview I had with her this week about the realities of hitting the touring scene. Not only did she leave her hometown of Leroy, Alabama, to travel around the country opening for Sugarland; she is also learning the struggles of being a star… and a mom.

Shepherd visits with her son about every other week when he and her husband, of almost four years, come to see her on the road (and yes, I did say ‘husband,’ so obviously “Takin’ off this Pain” was not written for him). Shepherd admits that even though she loves touring and performing every night with Sugarland, that she really misses her family, and being at home. Shepherd was a stay-at-home mom before she struck gold. The southern star explains her new lifestyle as “kind of hard to get used to, but we make it work and have a lot of fun.”

I was interested to know what inspires Shepherd to write her lyrics. She ranges from “feel good” songs to “gettin’ down to business” songs, and even “tear jerking” songs.

N4U: What inspires you to write the lyrics to your songs?

AS: Sometimes I write a song about something specific that I’ve gone through. And then other times I just write about life in general…no one or nothing in particular.

“Angel Wings” can really get to a person’s heart. Did you write that for someone you’re close to?

No, actually my brother and I were sitting around and started coming up with the lyrics. So many families today go through traumatic and life-changing experiences, so I wanted to write a song they could relate to.

What is your favorite song on your debut album?

I don’t know if I necessarily have a favorite song, but I could listen to “Sounds So Good” over and over. That song just makes me feel good.

Now I know you said you are happily married, so where did “Takin’ off this Pain” come from? That song doesn’t sound so happy!

(laughs) I just started writing down the lyrics about an angry woman and then I thought about how I’d feel if my husband and I were going through that. But don’t worry; I’m still wearin’ my wedding band!

So when did it hit you that you were becoming a “celebrity?”

I don’t think it has yet. I don’t wear a lot of makeup or fix my hair when I’m off stage, so people don’t come up to me and recognize me right away. I don’t know if it will ever really hit me that I’m a “celebrity.” But I do try to be as nice as I possibly can…I want to be a good celebrity, not a bad one!

Keith Urban said on CMT that as soon as he heard “Sounds so Good,” that he went out and bought your CD. What does that mean to you to have Keith Urban say that?

It makes me feel accepted, and so grateful to be in this business.

Shepherd has been compared to the great Loretta Lynn both for her style and her charm. She told me if she could meet any famous country star it would have to be Loretta Lynn for sure. “Not just because people compare me to her a lot, but because that is who I grew up listening to and relating to. Loretta is just great.”

Dolly is, of course, another one of Shepherd’s all time favorites. “I admire Dolly Parton as a writer and for all her accomplishments. I just really like the traditional singers who sing from their heart and not just from the stage,” explains Ms. Shepherd.

My interview with Ashton Shepherd was nonetheless extremely casual, funny and full of charm. She was easy to relate to, and it was fun to just listen to her trademark voice. She is without a doubt ready to be let loose in the music industry!

Be sure to catch Ashton Shepherd on tour with Sugarland Friday, October 24 at Roberts Stadium. This show is a guaranteed good time for true country music lovers of all ages!

In support of their new album release, Sugarland will bring the LOVE ON THE INSIDE tour Friday, October 24 at 7:30 p.m. to Roberts Stadium. The tour will feature special guests Kellie Pickler and Ashton Shepherd.

Seats are $46 and $36. All tickets are subject to Ticketmaster Fees, Handling Charges and Facility Fees. Tickets can be purchased at The Roberts Stadium Box Office, The Centre Box Office, All Ticketmaster outlets including fye in Eastland Mall and Evansville Schnuck's locations. Tickets can be charged by phone by calling (812) 423-7222 in Indiana and (270) 926-6661 in Kentucky or on the Internet at Ticketmaster.com.