Country singer Ashton Shepherd talks about her meteoric rise

Nick Hilbourn, Morning News
Published: June 6, 2008

Ashton Shepherd might agree that Marion is no metropolis, but she certainly wouldn’t call it small.

The 21-year-old singer-songwriter performing at this year’s Marion Country Music Fest hails from the small community of Coffeeville, Ala. with a population of 360 people.

“It’s very laid back and fun,” she said. “(In a small community like Coffeeville), you have a special bond with people.”

She said that she grew up listening to, pretty much, the music to which her family listened.

“My daddy was a very traditional country fan,” she said. “I had two big brothers (and) they constantly kept Merle Haggard, George Jones and Keith Whitley (on the radio).”

She had written and sang songs all her life, but she didn’t pick up a guitar until she was 15.

“I had a big chord sheet,” she said. “My brothers never showed me how. I was very independent.” She had been writing songs long before she started playing guitar and by the time she began performing seriously, she had close to 120 songs written, some of them when she was an early teenager.

Shepherd got her start in a local country band that was familiar to her brother. Consequently, the band was how she met her husband.

“My brother had known my husband,” she said, and he had “overheard my husband and his brother say they needed a lead singer, and my brother said, ‘You should hear my sister sing.’”

What came roaring out of Shepherd was the bare-bones country she had heard in her youth. Her strong, yet feminine vocals captured the attention of locals and, eventually, record executives, landing her a record deal.

It was a rush, she noted, but it’s something to which she’s grown accustomed.

“It really has become common for me to do,” she said. Giving interviews, doing television and radio shows, she said, aren’t that big of a deal anymore. “It’s my job,” she said.

She still does housework, still works on the farm and she believes that’s what she’s trying to convey to listeners.
“I try to be relatable. I don’t try to send a message across,” she explained. “I just hope that whoever is driving down the road, listening to me, turns up the song.”