Kassi Ashton
Kassi Ashton projects a certain devil-may-care attitude in her music. From the defiant anthem “Called Crazy” to the disco-kissed “Drive You Out of My Mind” to the stirring ballad “The Straw,” Ashton displays a strength that feels unshakeable on her debut album Made From the Dirt.
That’s all by design. Made From the Dirt is the culmination of seven years’ work — and a lifetime of practice. Ashton and her family faced some hardships when she was young, and she had a lot of pent-up energy. Her mother worked at a private airport in California, Mo.; the singer-songwriter isn’t sure if it was her idea or her mom’s, but she started her performing career busking in the lobby.
“It was a place to direct my energy and something to keep my brain busy and healthy and out of trouble, but I also loved it,” Ashton says. “It became the ultimate emotion reliever, stress reliever — a place to put something.”
In the years since, Ashton has poured those experiences into her songs. They don’t always come out explicitly in her lyrics, but hard-earned grit and a sense of self-possession are a fundamental part of her music. Ashton’s story also informs the title of the album.
“I actually feel bad for people that have had a really great life,” she says. “Like, I’m jealous of them — but I also feel bad, because I’m like, ‘You have no idea how strong you are and what you can endure, because you’ve never had to.’ … All of my favorite things about myself have come from struggle. I was not born with them.”
Ashton puts this evolution at the center of her live show too. She makes herself an avatar for her audience’s struggles and their triumphs.
“I’m super lucky to have a career where, yes, I can escape onstage, but I’m also doing it so that the fans can escape too,” she says. “That’s the point, right? To be seen and to feel yourself in your bones, but to also get the fuck out of your head.”
This narrative inspires both the physical layout of the stage and the flow of the show. She enjoys watching people in the crowd slowly come out of their shells.
“For the last song, I say, ‘If you take one thing from my show tonight, please let it be this: Whoever you are, whoever you want to be, you can be that thing,’” says Ashton. “‘There are no boxes, there are no boundaries — nothing you can’t have, nothing you don’t deserve. Say I deserve it all!”
Made From the Dirt was a long time coming. Ashton signed to UMG Nashville/Interscope in 2017, but she chose to hold off on touring until she’d crafted a collection of songs that she felt were worthy of touring behind. Before she could take them on the road, COVID struck. In that downtime, Ashton reevaluated her music and looked for ways to push her boundaries.
“We’ve always known this album was alternative,” she says of her team. “We always knew there would be people that didn’t get it. We always knew that it wouldn’t be straight-down-the-middle, the most commercial beer/truck music. But they never made me feel like I didn’t fit somewhere.”
Whether or not you get it, the music is impossible to ignore. Ashton uses an array of rhythms and a wide variety of vocal tools to elevate her songs.
“Vocal inflection and melody can be just as powerful, if not more so, than lyrics,” she explains. “Melody is where the real emotion comes from. My writing process a lot of times starts with a melody, or at least a lyric that I feel inclined to sing. In my brain, I should be able to sing the melody with no words, and you get an instant feeling of what the subject matter is. The emotion should be that clear.”
Ashton feels confident that Made From the Dirt will resonate with her audience. And if it doesn’t, at least she did it her way.
“If I’m gonna go down, I’m going to go down as myself. When they listen to it, I want people, whether or not they know me well, to say, ‘That’s totally fucking Kassi.’”
