Photo: Amber Sharp of Sharp Shots Photography
By Matthew Busch
There’s a book that Ashly’s husband gave her called “ The Tramp Guide”. Before you get a notion, know that any tradesperson, be it a carpenter, electrician, or plumber, who travels from state to state is called a “tramp”. And so the book is a directory full of connections to the Unions in every state for every trade occupation. Ashly has an urge to pick up the phone and share her new album with each one of them.
Ashly is the lead singer-songwriter for Little Jane and the Pistol Whips. Her band's new album, Long Road Ahead, is loaded with anthems for these craftsmen across America, She’s speaking for the working-class Americans, and she comes by it honestly – her husband is a traveling linesman. But while this album is for those like him, it is also an album that speaks to herself and her own experiences, “Keep it Simple”, was more or less a dig on the whole package that is the “Nashville system” - an experience being overly complex and taxing. Ashly’s second focus on this album — aside from craftsmen — was to create an album that provided a soundtrack to get listeners “out on the dance floor”, which this song clearly aimed to do and succeeded.
Before speaking with Ashly, I received her CD in the mail, and from the mailbox into my car it went. By the end of the first track, I too felt this sentiment. I yearned for an open road, sunny skies, and an hour away from all of this in front of me. However brief, the album gave me time to unwind and let go of all the stressors life had dropped on my front door. Speaking with Ashly after I listened to the album, somewhat pulled back the veil, and explained why I experienced this feeling from the voice I was listening to.
Ashy wears many hats, working as a counselor through tele-health by day and a songwriter by afternoon. Ashly is hanging her posters and putting herself out there and opening up while acknowledging she’s an introverted soul. And these hats she wears keep her in motion, traveling from Bozeman Montana to other states with the season’s changing weather. And this is not out of luxury but logistics. “In Montana, there’s a shift, there’s a moment, where something changes in the air, and falls coming, and because we’re staying in a 5-wheel trailer on people’s property, if you don’t leave, your stuck, you know? Like you’re heading to the south, which we’ve been doing, going to Arizona, and if you don’t pull this trailer out, it’s going to snow six feet around you and how are you going to get out?” So that’s the piece in her final track that ‘if I don’t get out, I’ll be here until the tulips bloom’” Said Holland.
There’s a lot of growth that’s accrued since recording her first album to where she is at right now. “The Long Road Ahead” is presented as a “forward-facing” title, but therein lies a twist. The title and the passion for life, love, and dancing, and all that comes along with it which is driving this album forward, lies on the bedrock of a foundation by lessons learned from her past. It’s an introspective look back in lyrics. I missed it initially when reviewing the album. In candor, I was a little caught up in the musicianship and sonic experience of what I was hearing. But when I spoke with Ashly it was unavoidable. “I just wish I could have told my younger self when I made the first album in 2010 — when I was thirty, Now I’m 43 — I wish I could have just said trust yourself more, I just gave a lot of the creative power over to the producer or somebody else, and I had ideas, but I just didn’t follow them or trust them” Said Holland.
So when you listen to these tracks, you’ll know a little bit more from reading this. That the crackling noise you’re hearing at the beginning of “Lost to the Trade”, isn’t the sound of a campfire, but the sound of electricity; the sound of an electrical lineman losing his life from taking a ground wire off by hand. A lot of the dynamic sounds to that track happened through working with a remarkable Audio Mixing Engineer in Canada named Darryl Neudorf, who has worked with other great musicians such as Neko Case. Several songs poke fun at the steeped formula of Nashville, or being “Montana enough” for the radio. Ashly is making a cognitive decision to throw away all airs and meet people from a place of simplicity, she’s simply trying to approach people across the board, human-to-human. By taking this approach she’s connecting songs with everyday workmen and workwomen.
An album such as this feels almost like a road paved ahead will lead to further simple working connections of working people on the next album, like the songs you might hear John Prine or Woody Guthrie sing as they travel across America writing songs about Americans. I, for one, am interested in where this album takes her, and am interested in what’s next. Do yourself a favor, plot a trip to escape, and get out and put this in your player or on your radio.Write your text here...
9/10/2023