Ashley Campbell On Her Father Glen, Her Route To Music And Her First Record – Interview

We were lucky enough to be front and centre during the press conferences at the recent C2C Festival in London. Ashley Campbell stopped by to talk about her upbringing, her father Glen Campbell, pursuing her own music, the ‘I’ll Be Me’ documentary, ‘Remembering’ and what’s coming next. You can read what went down below.

RW Publicity: I’m gonna start by asking Ashley to tell us about her early life. You’ve been in the entertainment industry – somehow – from the beginning, haven’t you? Because famous father and everything. But if you could tell us something about your upbringing, as little or as much as you want, and something about the musical influences and the music that was around you?

Ashley: My dad is Glen Campbell, so of course I grew up around music constantly. It’s funny, cause that’s just what my dad did, so it wasn’t this big thing. It was just “That’s my dad, and he plays guitar and sings for a living.” I got to spend a lot of time growing up seeing him do shows. He had a theatre in Branson, Missouri for a couple years, and so I grew up backstage behind a theatre and just watching show-business and how it works. At home we were always having music, any time we would go to a family reunion in my dad’s native Arkansas, it would just be full of music and people singing and doing harmonies with each other, and playing guitar. We’d stay up really late playing, kinda like what you would imagine. (laughs) Classic American family from the south, stomping on the floorboards and playing and singing together. That was just a really great environment to grow up in, and just the best people you could imagine. My family in Arkansas, they’re just the sweetest, most honest, down-to-Earth people, and so growing up around that was really a privilege and a pleasure.

But I was actually raised in Phoenix, Arizona; my dad and my mom wanted to raise me and my two brothers, Cal and Shannon, away from the show-business towns. That’s why we didn’t grow up in Nashville or Los Angeles. We were raised in Phoenix, Arizona, so we kinda had a pretty relatively normal childhood. Grew up, and we all just gravitated towards music, my brothers got more serious into it before I did – I actually wanted to be an actress. So I did musical theatre in high school and I started playing guitar when I was 15 just for fun. One of the lyrics in my song ‘Remembering’, which is I learned how to play ‘Blackbird’ – that was actually one of the first songs I ever learned how to play on guitar, because I love Paul McCartney.

When I turned 18 I went to California, to go to university at Pepperdine University in Malibu, which was absolutely gorgeous. My first dorm room overlooked the ocean, it was absolutely beautiful. But I was a theatre major, so I wasn’t really planning on doing music for a living, but oddly enough all the plays or musicals that I got into were because I could play an instrument or sing. It was kinda like the world saying “Hint hint – you should probably be doing music!” Junior year I got into a play that we were gonna take over to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and they needed someone to play banjo in the play. The director knew that I was good at picking up instruments – and I had never played banjo before – she said, “Hey, can you learn banjo for the show?” Pepperdine University actually bought me my first banjo and paid for my first couple lessons, and I just completely – like something just clicked in my mind and I just completely fell in love with banjo and started getting into bluegrass. I think what really hooked me was that moment when you’re jamming with people, just in a circle at a party, and you just totally lose yourself in playing off of each other and really communicating with other people without words. That’s what I really fell in love with.

I started getting into that, and then when I graduated from college I had been playing banjo for a little over a year, and my dad was about to go on tour to Australia and New Zealand. I said, “Hey, can I tag along? I’ve never been. I would love to just vacation over there. I’ll carry your suitcases, whatever you want.” And he said “Hey, of course you can come. That’d be great, but why don’t you play banjo on ‘Gentle On My Mind’? We haven’t had a banjo for a long time.” And so I said “Oh, okay, that’d be cool.” I was terrified; I was so scared. His Musical Director was like “Oh, please can you play keyboard as well, I’ve always wanted the strings parts to the songs.” You know, the classic Glen Campbell songs with those beautiful string arrangements. So I ended up getting sucked into the band and learning those parts, and I was terrified because I didn’t read music, so I had to go through and write out the notes that he gave me on all the music. Cause I could, you know, read music but it was kind of… [slow]. So I wrote out all the notes and I got through it. I just fell in love with playing live music and touring even more… so I just continued touring with my dad after that.

About a year later, we were about to go out and tour his new album ‘Ghost On A Canvas’, and he had been having memory problems, and we weren’t sure exactly what was going on with him. That was 2011 and that was the year that we got the diagnosis that my dad had Alzheimer’s Disease. He decided that he felt fine and he wanted to go out and keep touring, not let that stop him. So we as a family just decided to make an announcement that he did in fact have Alzheimer’s Disease and that we were going to continue touring. These amazing filmmakers found out about it, and they decided to make a documentary called ‘Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me’. The filmmakers were James Keach and Trevor Albert. James Keach did the movie ‘Walk The Line’, which is a fabulous movie about Johnny Cash. They became like family and they travelled around with us. We thought it was gonna be a couple week-long tour for the album; it turned into 150 sold-out shows in two years of touring. It was just an enormous blessing to be able to see how my dad’s fans really loved him, and interacted with him, and just be a part of that whole circle of love. The documentary actually gave us a lot of opportunities to become spokespersons for the cause of Alzheimer’s Disease, so I’ve become heavily involved with that and had a lot of opportunities to speak on behalf of people dealing with Alzheimer’s. That’s all in the film as well.

After the tour ended we reached a point where my dad just couldn’t keep doing shows, and that was November of 2012. After that, I decided it was time to move to Nashville and start focusing on my career in songwriting. My manager TK Kimbrall already lived in Nashville, so I came out there and we worked on getting a publishing deal. Just started really getting into business of music. And so I was just writing songs, writing writing writing, and it wasn’t too long before I sat down and I wrote a song about my dad called ‘Remembering’. That actually ended up being in the documentary, featured on the soundtrack, which – really cool it just won a Grammy award! The soundtrack.

RW Publicity: The documentary was nominated for an Oscar!

Ashley: It was! The song that my dad and Julian Raymond wrote called ‘I’m Not Gonna Miss You’ was nominated for an Oscar last year.

RW Publicity: I wanted to mention, going back to the banjo – the group Rascal Flatts, when they came over here, one of the songs that really stood out, that everyone seemed to like, wasn’t one of their hits, it was ‘Banjo’. I don’t know if any of you have seen the video for ‘Banjo’, it has this amazing woman playing the banjo! The woman playing the banjo was you!

Ashley! It was, yeah! That was me.

RW Publicity: You are signed to Dot Records; the wonderful classic name has been revived. I think Maddie & Tae are on Dot as well?

Ashley: They are, yes. And Steven Tyler.

RW Publicity: What a combination! Can you tell us now what the plan is? Cause you’re working on a record right now!

Ashley: I am. Scott Borchetta hired Julian Raymond right around the time that I got signed by Dot Records, so Julian of course was collaborating with my dad, he produced my dad’s last couple albums. So to have someone that I considered family all of a sudden on my team at Dot Records and at Big Machine, it just made all the difference, just because I had someone that I knew and trusted as opposed to all new people. It turns out everyone at the label is absolutely fantastic, but it’s nice to have someone that’s family working with me too. Julian Raymond and I are gonna work together. We’re trying to put together an album right now. I’m still writing for it; we just wanna make sure that we do it absolutely right and are 100% happy with it. That’s my focus this year, instead of playing a lot of shows out I’m just really focusing on finding the right songs, writing and just getting the right sound.

Think Country: I wanted to ask about your single ‘Remembering’. Obviously it’s very personal to you, and when you listen to the track you can hear that come across, it’s a very emotional track. What’s it like for you when you’re on stage, having to perform it?

Ashley: I’ve had to practise a lot not getting too emotional when I sing it, because then I just can’t sing it. Especially… I’ve had to sing it right to my dad a couple times, and that’s nearly unbearable. It’s really hard cause the subject’s very… it’s very real for me still.

UKcountrymusic.net: Obviously you’ve toured with your father and you know there’s a love of country music here. So for you, coming out for something like this, at C2C seeing all the country fans singing along to you – how do you feel?

Ashley: I feel so incredibly blessed and honoured to be here and be playing my music. Cause the UK, it holds such a big place in my heart. I just love the people here, I love coming over here, and just being here – it means a lot to me. Especially seeing people loving and appreciating country music. It’s really wonderful.

Sounds Like Nashville: You mentioned about the acting thing – would you be open to doing a role maybe that involves music, or have you been offered any role that you would even consider taking?

Ashley: I would love to get back into acting someday. I still love to do it, but I haven’t had a lot of opportunity! (laughs) Focusing on music, but that’s something that I would love to get into someday.

HRM/BRFM Radio: You mentioned Rascal Flatts – what was it like working with them, and are you gonna do any more banjoing for other artists? (laughter)

Ashley: Hopefully! It’s funny cause when I did the Rascal Flatts music video – when you’re filming – I didn’t even meet the Rascal Flatts guys. Not until a while after when I did a live show with them. They were like “Hey, you were great!” (laughs) Thanks guys! They’re so sweet.

For The Country Record: So you’re signed to Dot, and obviously there’s a lot of issues with women on country radio. Do you plan to push your music to radio or will you maybe focus on live stuff?

Ashley: Probably a little bit of both, but I would definitely love to be on the radio, and maybe be presenting people with something different than what they’re used to hearing. Cause I think there’s a big change in the air that’s coming, and a lot of wonderful female artists are already doing it. It’s just something that I think we have a great opportunity to push forward right now.