Ashley Davis
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Ashley Davis is an American singer-songwriter whose musical imagination invites the world into her eclectic sphere. Ashley’s ability to capture and cross musical traditions transcends comparison, so her music is difficult to classify. Rather, her soft-spoken music conjures a genre and world all of its own. Good Morning America, for instance, describes Ashley’s works as “new music springing from ancient roots.” Blending a variety of influences, Ashley’s songwriting has captivated audiences on either side of the Atlantic—inviting them, instinctively, to dream. She has excelled in Celtic folk, Americana, electronic, and Winter music, turning all musical styles into spellbinding stories. Academy Award winning composer Philip Glass says that Ashley has “as much musicality as artist could wish for.”
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A Kansas native with ancestors from all over Europe, Ashley has culled from her family traditions to create a sound that is uniquely her own. One of Ashley’s ancestral homelands, Germany, fully embraced her this past Winter. Ashley’s two Winter albums (Songs of the Celtic Winter 1 & 2) have received hundreds of thousands of streams since early December, demonstrating that her music resonates with audiences worldwide. And, Germany is now her top selling territory!
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Influenced by Ashley’s many trans-Atlantic journeys, her music exhibits ethereal and aqueous qualities. Her songs seem to hover above the ocean, waiting for the current to direct them to shore. Much like water, Ashley’s music is fluid, escaping categorization. While New Age, Celtic, roots, bluegrass, country, electronic, and indie have all described her music over the years, none of these descriptors comprehensively characterize Ashley Davis today. She is, in her own words, “a songwriter, who likes particular sounds surrounding my music.”
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Ashley has been bold in her creative exploration. Under the mentorship of artists such as Clannad’s Moya Brennan, Ashley released her first Irish album (and second overall), “Down By the Sea,” in 2008. The album is a unique iteration of Irish folk blended with her American roots. It is difficult for an outsider to infiltrate traditional Irish music, but Ashley—who holds a master’s degree from the University of Limerick’s World Music Centre—has accomplished this feat. Moya and Ashley have toured together in many countries and have collaborated on various other projects.
Ashley followed the success of “Down by the Sea” with her most popular seasonal album, “Songs of the Celtic Winter” (2012). Instead of resting on that success, Ashley released her fourth studio album, “Night Travels,” two years later in 2014. “Night Travels” proved that Celtic music could be inventive and honor history while also spreading magic. In this 2014 album, Ashley poured her heart into her compositions, sharing herself bravely and selflessly in her writing and performance.
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Having reached a pinnacle in her Celtic music career, Ashley sought new adventures in her 2015 and 2018 albums. “The Christmas Sessions,” her 2015 collaboration with guitarist John Doyle, joined Irish folk and jazz to make a playful collection of Christmas standards. The album is now considered a classic in its own right. In 2018, Ashley stretched the limits of her vocal and arrangement skills by experimenting with electronic music. With “Burning Down,” Ashley proved that her voice, so at home in the Celtic tradition, could migrate to new plateaus and adopt new musical perspectives.
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In 2020, Ashley released “When the Stars Went Out,” perhaps her most creative and challenging album yet. Under lockdown in her home state of Kansas, Ashley gave herself a new task: to write songs that leaned toward the country music tradition of her childhood. “If you’re from a roots background,” Ashley explains, “you start to crave that space—the quiet and the purity of it.” To this endeavor she added a further challenge: recording collaboratively while apart, in isolation. Ashley composed the songs with her band members: Dave Curley, Colin Farrell, Will MacMorran, and Duncan Wickel. Ashley’s friends have long inspired her songwriting, but here, her musical colleagues became her co-writers, as well as her inspiration. From there, the album reached out to an even wider community: Ashley is joined on tracks by Irish and American artists, including Heidi Talbot, Tony Furtado, John Doyle, Mick McAuley, Shane Hennessy, and Grammy-award winners Tim O’Brien and Shawn Colvin. This 2020 album is an important musical footnote in Covid-19’s history book.
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A decade after Songs of the Celtic Winter, Ashley decided to return to her favorite writing topic: Winter. In 2022 she released the sister album “Songs of the Celtic Winter II.” Now, these Winter albums stand as Ashley’s greatest selling albums, with more than a million combined streams.
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The music of Ashley Davis offers cultural history, daydreams, heartbreak, and unbound imagination. Ashley is always ascending and reaching new fanbases around the globe. Even when grounded in her roots, this singer-songwriter takes flight, and listeners are captivated by her voice and tales.
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