Ashley Campbell is no stranger to the UK country fan base. Making frequent visits over the last few years, we never tire of her voice, her stories and certainly never tire of her exceptional Banjo playing.

This year alone, Ashley has been over for C2C Festival, Black Deer Festival and now The Long Road Festival. 

We caught up with Ashley at The Long Road Festival for a quick chat about some of her Festival appearences, her tribute to her late father Glen Campbell and her album The Lonely One.

Enjoy!

How are you? How have your sets been at The Long Road so far?

Oh they have been great, we played in the Honky Tonk stage today and it was packed like a tin of sardines.

I saw.

Congratulations with the success of The Lonely One – it is one of my top albums this year.

Oh thank you!

Tell us a little bit about that album because each song is equally as good as the other, no fillers. How hard or easy was it to put the song selections together and were there any that didn’t make it that you wish had?

There were a couple that didn’t make it that I am putting on the next album. You will get to hear all that should have been on the album if it was a twenty song album.

Did you have a particular reason for the running order?

I don’t know. I kind of just messed around with it on my phone on a playlist. I have listened to these songs so many times and I tried them in a bunch of different orders and when it was wrong you kind of go “oh I really like hearing this song after that song” so I just listened to it a bunch of times until it felt right.

I get that! I have to say – Good For You is my favourite.

Oh thank you, that is one of my favourites.

Lets talk about the title track because that is one of the more up beat songs and has a different style to the rest of the album – tell us about the process of that song please?

Yeah, The Lonely One I wrote with my friends Jeremy Lister and Tiffany Goss when we were on a writing retreat and I was really jamming on Linda Rondstadts Blue Bayou that morning so that is where the feel came from. I wanted to write a song that felt like Blue Bayou so I started with that jam on the banjo. We started writing from there. Sometimes music inspires us from a storyline that comes into your head, like a movie, like it is a soundtrack to a movie so I saw this girl just going in to a house and was so hurt and angry that her guy is cheating on her and she was like “how do I get back at him? Do I destroy all his things? What do I do?” And then the song turned into what it did. To give him a taste of his own medicine, to leave him alone in the house wondering and feeling bad you know?

You played a beautiful tribute to your father at C2C this year. Tell us a bit about that.

It was very difficult to be told you are going to do a tribute but it is only ten minutes. I was like “Gosh, how do you do a Glenn Campbell tribute in ten minutes and also showcase myself ?” so I thought “Medley” and I picked some of the top songs that people would want to hear. I then had to play Remembering.

Of course! Speaking of Remembering, you played that as part of the songwriters session at Black Deer Festival and had Lizzie Ward Thomas in tears.

Oh yeah. I thought the songwriters was really cool, I love that sort of intimate thing which is why I am excited for coming back in October to do the songwriters series.

Yes that will be amazing. Have you performed with any of those songwriters before?

Yeah, I actually know Chris DeStefano. We wrote together a couple of times and we met at a songwriters retreat in France four years ago. That is where I wrote Good For You and Taken Man.

Oh cool.

It was this castle and there is a retreat there every year for writers and I was very blessed to be able to go to that it was incredible.

It sounds it, I have attended something similar myself where the songwriters performed the songs they wrote that week at a show on the last day. Thank you so much for chatting today and we look forward to your set later.

Thank you so much!