Los Angeles based singer songwriter Anna Ash recently released SLEEPER, a collection that enhances her reputation as an artist with striking vocals and soulful arrangements to embrace the sadness, vulnerability and optimism in her song writing. Her debut album THESE HOLY DAYS from 2012, follow-up FLOODLIGHTS (2016) and L.A. FLAME (2019) introduced these qualities – and on her latest they are confirmed. We took the opportunity to speak with Anna, via Zoom, about the album, its recording process and the in-depth messages in a number of the songs. SLEEPER came out last month on the Black Mesa label and is highly recommended.
Looking back during these strange times, how have the past two years panned out for you?
I was okay financially because I had a regular side gig and enough hours at a restaurant and I was really grateful for that. So, I was able to sit back and look at my life and not panic too much. It has been a journey. On the financial side of things, I grew up poor and pretty scrappy, and did not have too much luxury, so it was interesting to take that baseline of mine and even lower it (laughs) and think ‘I’m still fine, we’re ok.’
Is Los Angeles a permanent home for you now having moved from the Mid-West and how does the music scene there compare with Michigan’s?
I’ve been here for ten years now but go back to Michigan at least once a year to visit family and also because I’ve stayed connected to the music scene there. There’s a really beautiful and strong music community in the northern part of the State. There are no cities there, so bands don’t tour up there, it’s all just local stuff. I have friends up there, one of them is the delightful singer songwriter, May Erlewine. She’s very regionally famous and doesn’t tour that much outside of Michigan and I really enjoy plugging into her world. I also spent a couple of months in upstate New York as my best friend lives up there and that world is very cool, very hip but it’s still living in the middle of the woods and I’m thinking ‘I’m not quite ready to do this yet’ So, I’ll be in L.A. a bit longer. It has a lot of magic to it, there’s everything musically here. There’s a strong singer songwriter scene here, but also a strong country scene that a lot of people don’t realise. Like a lot of people, I was really lonely for the first few years here, playing in the wrong rooms and wrong scene. I met a guy, who I ended up dating. He was in the country scene and he told me that even though I wasn’t making country music, that scene is pretty open minded in L.A. and that they’re going to love my music. He had come across my music on Spotify and was a fan. He came to one of my shows and hadn’t realised I lived in L.A. He was totally right. I changed my view and went in that direction and was welcomed with open arms. Unfortunately, that community feels like a ghost right now. Even for a town that could have outdoor shows all year round, things have not really come back yet.
If I had not heard your music previously, how would you describe it to me?
Well, I don’t put it in the Americana genre because I don’t think it’s acoustic and rootsy enough. I don’t really care where people want to throw it and I think each of my records has a slightly different feel. My 2016 album, FLOODLIGHTS, had this very soul and funk thing going on, particularly because of the type of band that I played with then. I was in college with those guys; their band is called Vulfpec. L.A. FLAME had a completely different crew of people and was probably more indie rock. SLEEPER was recorded in two sessions. The first was just me and one other guy Eric Kune, who is a really talented multi-instrumentalist. I had him running all over the studio, so maybe those songs did come out more Americana because they’re acoustic. The first half of the record was recorded with a band and people keep referring to a 70s singer songwriter sound, I don’t really know.
Where do your musical influences stem from?
I did listen to a lot of country when I was young, lots of Bonnie Raitt and Patsy Cline. I also listened to a lot of Emmylou Harris but not her country records. WRECKING BALL is still my favourite record. Also, a lot of 70s stuff that my parents listened to such as Neil Young and James Taylor. I didn’t start singing and playing stringed instruments until I was eighteen or nineteen in college. I started off very folky, playing the banjo and really into roots music. That’s probably why I don’t think of myself as Americana now because I did that back then.
You released SLEEPER on the Black Mesa label. Tell me about your relationship with them?
As an artist, it feels like being part of a clubhouse with Black Mesa rather than being your own lonesome voice. It’s a very hands-off deal with them. You come to them with a record and they’re not trying to tell the artist what sort of songs to write. They are very artist friendly and always want to get the ball rolling for the artist. Chris at Black Mesa helped me press my last album L.A. FLAME to vinyl, but I was too far down the line with that album to do a full release with them. He knew exactly what I was doing with SLEEPER. In November it felt fine to work in the studio with just one person and not bring a whole crew in. So, I decided to record the ‘B’ side of the record first and either release it as an EP or sit on it until the full album is released. There were so many question marks about how long it was going to take to make the full record, how and when we were going to be able to release it. Chris agreed to just go ahead and release the first songs as an E.P. and even though it was recorded in two sessions, it was always going to be a full record.
SLEEPER sounds like a movie soundtrack or the opening up of a personal diary as the lyrics are very deep and introspective.
They’re very personal, we can run through every one of those songs and I can describe where they came from. They’re not always about me, some of them are from stories told to me by friends and their lives. It’s not all first person.
I’m getting a sense of agitation and stress from many of the songs. I’m particularly intrigued by the title track and am interested to hear the story behind that song.
I have been trying to figure out how to talk about that song. It came from a conversation I had with an old friend. He’s a photographer who actually took the album cover shot. He kind of dropped off during covid and I hadn’t heard from him. I had one of these feelings of abandonment at the time and was wondering what was going on with him. We made plans for me to come and visit him because he had just moved. During covid we all had our own sad stories based on what we had been going through. He told me the most crushing story about a woman who had lost her whole family in a really intense tragedy. It was from a sleeper wave, which is one of those waves that come up on the shore, you can’t see them because they are underneath the water. It’s one of those stories that in perspective takes over whatever you’re going through and I was overcome with sympathy and grief. That’s where that one came from.
And the song Dress Rehearsal?
That was a song I had been sitting on for a long time. The very first lyric from that song (‘This ain’t no dress rehearsal, if it breaks in your hands, you broke it man’) came from my housemate, who had just broken this ceramic bowl of mine. He left it in a pile in a bunch of pieces and I just loved what he said. ‘It was crazy, I was just washing it and it just broke in my hands.’ He genuinely did not think that he had broken it or that it was his fault. I loved that as a metaphor, we do that so often, not realising how much damage we can do while doing very little.
There’s quite a lot of unease and disquiet in the song Fire Season.
I just have to get out of town for September and October every year because of my anxiety, I’ll regularly refresh the Twitter local Fire Department page. I live up on the side of a mountain and I can see fires on the next hillside. The hill burns every year on July 4th from fireworks. For years I’ve been thinking that I have to get out of here and that probably comes from being mid-Western, because there are not any natural disasters in Michigan. Many people live in places where their houses could be destroyed from natural disasters and all of a sudden, I found myself living in one of those places. But I don’t want to leave, this is my home, but I also feel crazy sitting here watching the hillside burn.
Was it difficult putting all these songs together and recording them without the prospect of bringing them on the road?
To be honest, I have never had a full team behind me when I’ve recorded an album that would arrange a tour after the album’s release. So, with this one, not having any real plans to tour it felt fine to me.
When you do eventually get back on tour, will it be solo or with a band?
I love playing with a band, a little trio usually and having background vocals. When I go back to Michigan for a little tour, I’ll bring a band. If I’m just going to New York or Chicago for a one-off show, I’ll play solo. I’ve also been doing this for so long that I can just find out who is in town at the time I’m playing and call up a guitar player to show up at the gig
You actually made it over to the U.K. for live shows late last year.
Yes, that was a tour that was postponed from the previous year. It just happened to work at that moment, a nice little window at that time that allowed me to come over. It was just me and a tour manager which made it a lot easier. It was great, I’ve only since played one show in New York and one show in Los Angeles in addition to that tour. It was good to play great little shows to that many people in neat venues over there.
Do you actually listen to much music yourself?
It goes in phases. If I’m writing music I don’t listen to a lot of music, I read a lot of books and poetry. I do a lot of my own engineering, the editing and recording overdubs on my records, so when I’m in that phase with headphones on tens hours a day, I’ll then listen to very specific and familiar music, stuff I already know and don’t have to work too hard with. I used to have a lot of vinyl records and for me, that was a much more comforting way of listening to music, and I like the commitment of how long I’d listen to an album instead of the downloaded playlists.
Finally, tell me what do you do by way of relaxation, I did read that you used to practice ballet?
When I was much younger, I was into dance, I’ve never been a very serious dancer. I made a joke once that I used to just get stoned and do ballet then. I live in a beautiful neighbourhood, it’s very rural even though it’s close to the city. I can just tumble out my door and hike up the mountain. I do quite a bit of that. I also used to be a pretty intense yoga practitioner but I’ve fallen out of practice a bit with that.
Interview by Declan Culliton