Ashland Craft’s new album Dive Bar Beauty Queen isn’t just a clever title — it’s a mission statement.
Fresh off the road from opening for Luke Bryan, the South Carolina native is stepping fully into the spotlight with this self-produced project. The album is a gritty, vulnerable, and occasionally rowdy look into Craft’s life, and it’s also the first time she’s taken full creative control.
“I’ve always not only loved music and singing with songwriting, but I also just love big music and instrumentals,” she explains on a recent phone call. “And in addition to knowing all the songs on the radio, I would also know the guitar solos and sing along with those too… I just knew that part of my music, part of that was the production side of things.”
Craft co-produced the album with Lee Starr and Jess Grommet, musicians and collaborators she credits with helping her find her voice behind the board. “They helped me learn, you know, how to say things in the studio to kind of get your point across a little bit quicker,” she explains. “They’re just teaching me all the time.”
That creative boldness extends to her songwriting. She co-wrote all but one of the album’s 11 tracks, and several cut deep. One in particular — “Wasn’t the Chevy” — is a raw, emotional gut punch.
“That’s one of those vulnerable, real, raw songs. And I’m really hoping to get into more of that,” Craft says honestly. “That song, I’m willing to say, probably out of all of my songs that I’ve released so far, still makes me tear up when I like, listen to it and when I talk about it.”
Craft admits it’s the kind of songwriting she’s gravitating toward more now. “I think it speaks a lot to the songs that I’m hoping to get moved into,” she says. “You know, I just have all dancing and positive happy songs. I think that’s always a game-changer for me.”
She’s only played “Wasn’t the Chevy” live once so far, at her album release party, but she’s been practicing it on piano and plans to perform it that way on tour. “I took piano lessons for four years when I was a child… and I really, really want to whip out the piano on that one,” she says. “I’m hoping [the fans] know it and they’ll pick it up… if I can even make it through the song without crying.”
Then there’s the title track, which Craft wrote when she was just 18 or 19 years old. “For whatever reason that night, the words just kind of fell out of me,” she recalls. “I wasn’t even looking at Nashville yet… I didn’t really care. I was just getting words into my voice memo.”
She never planned to release the song, but her label, Leo33, encouraged her to revisit it. “They’ve heard it, and they championed it… I was the one that was kind of like, ‘Are you sure you want me to release this song?’” she admits. “There’s maybe two lines… two or three lines that I revisited and rewrote in the song. But everything else is true blue, 19-year-old Ashland.”
The result is a song that’s as personal as it is meaningful. “It’s made a big difference in many different areas of my life,” she says. “Again, I definitely didn’t think I was going to be releasing that song, but it turned out to be the perfect title track for everything that we have been working on up to that point.”
Before taking the leap into self-produced artistry, Craft got her start in the small town of Piedmont, South Carolina. “I feel like I just kind of got a little taste of everything,” she says. “But also, I got to experience the kind of blue-collar work every day that the people around me did. So I felt like with my dad listening to traditional country music all the time, that was just kind of the start of it.”
Of course, many fans first met her on The Voice, where she made the Top 10 on Team Miley. “The Voice was definitely its own experience. I felt like that was my national crash course, in a sense,” she says. “I was so used to playing around in bars… definitely was not used to the lights and the cameras and the singing on the spot. It was just all so new to me.”
But she was ready. “I think I was just ready for my first taste of freedom more than anything, and that was exactly that for me,” she says. “It really put me to the test.”
Miley Cyrus offered guidance and motivation throughout the process. “She really helped me briefly approach all of these difficult situations and push myself, which was really cool,” she says. “I still hope I get to work with Blake one day… I still get hell for not picking him all the time!”
Now that she’s back on tour, this time as the headliner, Craft is reflecting on the lessons she learned from supporting Bryan.
“Truly just watching his energy on stage and the way he’s been doing this for so long and still gets out there — at ease, just himself. He’s fun, he’s comical,” she says. “I think he just made the point that if you’re yourself, and you get out there and you have fun, and give the hell of a show, people are also going to have fun.”
As for which track she’d recommend as an introduction to Dive Bar Beauty Queen? She couldn’t pick just one.
“Part of me really wants to say ‘Wasn’t the Chevy’… And then part of me wants to say ‘Hangin’ Up the Honky Tonk,’ because I think that’s the other side of me that’s like fun and loves to throw it down,” she says. “So yeah, so I need a taste of both. I would say listen to the half of one, half of the other. That way it’s one song.”
