Jumping with two feet into a snowglobe, 25-year-old Carleton graduate Ashley Crnic will warm the air with her acoustic harmonies at the Rogers Crystal Globe in Confederation Park Feb.10.
The Charlatan’s Jessica McMillan caught up with the Hamilton native to talk about her career since graduating.
The Charlatan (TC): How did you first get into music?
Ashley Crnic (AC): I first got into music when I was as little as two or three years old; it was just something that was very natural to me. In the summertime, we would go to my grandmother’s for babysitting and [she] would be singing in the kitchen and eventually I started singing along with her. She would teach us Croatian folklore songs and how to sing and dance and waltz. It stuck with me a lot more probably than my brother and I just ended up continuously doing it.
TC: How did your time at Carleton contribute to your music career?
AC: I guess I was naturally doing it, but when I went to university I started learning about sight-reading, ear training, jazz theory and musical history under classical and even under rock.
TC: How do you think the snow globe atmosphere will influence the atmosphere of your concert?
AC: I feel that it will be very dreamy, but almost like I am sitting on a very comfy couch, so it will be very laid back for my performance.
TC: Your new album is called Full Grown. What does the album mean to you?
AC: I really find that it is the perfect description of myself musically and just in general life-wise; how I have come from writing songs at 10 years old and then developing myself musically in different aspects of music, including the business life and getting to a point where after university, I have enough material to put everything together.
Each song really incorporates a part of life that I have experienced either myself or I have really gained through the eyes of someone else, whether as a friend or as a family member. I would say especially when someone passes away, there are metaphorical mentions of that in some of the songs. It’s pretty much me growing up and now I have grown up and am fully grown up.
TC: What influences you as an artist?
AC: I’m definitely influenced by the artists that I grew up listening to like Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, and Jewel who was also a folk singer . . . but lately I have been really influenced by Neil Young and the Beatles . . . I even went into some hard rock and heavier stuff like Nine Inch Nails, so it’s really a real cross of genres. Then, obviously, when I was studying blues and jazz, there were times when I was studying Etta James, for example, or Aretha Franklin.
TC: What are your aspirations for the future?
AC: I will be trying to get ready to record my next couple of songs that I have written and I will hopefully get that done before the summer . . . If anything comes of this, the next will obviously be looking for people wanting to work with me that are fantastic producers or labels or indie labels or just music companies that can do all those things with me and allow me to promote myself as a more serious musical artist to the world.
