Ashton Shepherd – 'Sounds So Good' – CUT–BY–CUT
“Takin’ Off This Pain” (Ashton Shepherd)
“There’s really not much of a story behind this song. I’ve had the opening line, ‘I’ve got a cold beer in my right hand / In my left I’ve got my wedding band.’ After that, the song just came out of nowhere. It was as if I was writing a story or something. I based it on real people, things I’d seen before and stuff that family members had been through. It all came about because of that little opening hook.”
“Regular Joe” (Ashton Shepherd)
“I was in the shower, and I started singing, ‘He ain’t your regular Joe.’ I knew as I was singing that something was coming to me. I knew where I wanted the song to go; in the direction of an ex-girlfriend or ex-wife talking to the other woman. So that set the stage immediately. I wrote a couple of verses. Then I thought how awesome the turn-around would be to have the twist of the other woman realizing, ‘Hey, I better go home.’ So I just finished it that way. Like I say, sometimes they just come out of the air. Or the shower.”
“Sounds So Good” (Ashton Shepherd)
“We were playing music in the Pickin’ Shed, and Adam, my brother-in-law, asked me to get him a beer off the back of the truck. I did. I walked outside. The ice had melted and I heard the cooler sloshing when I reached in and got the beer. I thought, ‘There ain’t nothing like the sound of a cooler slushin’ on the bed of your truck.’ After I said that line, I came up with, ‘There ain’t nothing like the sound of real country music. Come on, turn it up.’ Then I knew that the song should be about real things, about what people around where we live do and about what a lot of people do. Simple country things that real people can relate to.”
“I Ain’t Dead Yet” (Ashton Shepherd)
“To me, ‘Sounds So Good’ and ‘I Ain’t Dead Yet’ are probably the two most this-is-who-Ashton-is songs on the record. With my songwriting, I write from other people’s perspectives and also from mine. This one is definitely from mine. I wrote it with my son right in front of me. I was feeding him to keep him quiet while I wrote the song. Whenever I have the guitar, he wants to be part of me, either hollering and singing along or holding the pick. Anyhow, that’s how the song was written, right there with him.”
“I Like Being Single” (Ashton Shepherd)
“I came up with the title, but then I was kind of stumped. Then I just put myself in the position of remembering what it was like for me. One time my now husband, then boyfriend, and I had problems and had broken up. I felt feisty about it and wanted to say, ‘Hey, you know what? I don’t miss you more than I like being single. I’m going out to have a good time and enjoy myself more than I did with you.’ I came up with the idea and set the stage for the song. I didn’t really have to think too hard about the words, because I knew where I wanted it to go.”
“Lost In You” (Ashton Shepherd)
“I wrote this when I was 15 years old. I was sort of feeling like I liked this boy. And although I’m usually a very talkative person, that whole night I didn’t know what to say. I felt kind of lost. Oddly enough when I met my husband, it also applied because that’s how I felt with him.”
“How Big Are Angel Wings” (Ashton Shepherd / Adam Cunningham)
“This puts a totally different curve on the record. It lets people know that there’s a soft side. My brother-in-law came home from work one day and said, ‘Look, I’ve got this song title.’ At work, they had been drinking Red Bulls. And you know on the commercial for Red Bull it says, ‘It gives you wings.’ That’s how he came up with the title. He said he thought it was so pretty. When he told it to me, I said, ‘Gosh, that is a beautiful title.’ He pretty much had the chorus written, and he knew he wanted the little girl to be taking medicine, looking up at the doctor and asking questions. He’d pretty much come up with 50-60% of the song. He got a phone call, and while he was on the phone, I wrote the second verse and finished it.”
“Not Right Now” (Ashton Shepherd)
“When I was about 17 years old, I was working with my sister-in-law at a finance company. Through the week, I was living with her and my brother and going home on the weekends. One day, I went to her house on a lunch break. I got my guitar, and I was playing it. My husband and I had been dating a couple of years, but had broken up at one point. So I was out on the town, because I had the freedom to. I had a lot of people barking at me about, ‘You don’t need to be doing this and that.’ You know, trying to parent me. So that’s where that idea came from. That’s a realistic song because I lived it. I was feeling like, ‘I don’t have to settle down. Not right now.’”
“Old Memory That Don’t Remember Me” (Ashton Shepherd / Adam Cunningham)
“To me, this is one of those songs that anybody can relate to. Either you or somebody you know has done this. How many people have walked in a bar and seen their ex or somebody they used to care about and have those mixed feelings about it? My brother-in-law gave me the title. I said, ‘Well, obviously it’s going to be about somebody who’s sad about seeing this.’ All I could picture in my mind was somebody seeing somebody they had been with. I sat down to write and just came up with, ‘I got a pocket full of money I shouldn’t spend to drink him away again.’ That feeling is terrible. A lot of it I based on what I felt like when my husband and I had broken up. Because after all, he’s the love of my life. Of course we’re married now, but I remember what it felt like to see him at the little local bar and know that he doesn’t know who I am anymore. So that’s how the song came about.”
“The Pickin’ Shed” (Ashton Shepherd)
“I wrote that about two or three months ago, so it’s a brand-new song. I love the Pickin’ Shed as much as anything in the world. So I told Buddy [Cannon, the record’s producer], ‘I’ve got this song, but I don’t know what you’ll think about it going on the record. I think it would be awesome, because it lets people know what we do, where I’m from and all this stuff.’ So I played it, and Buddy said, ‘It’s awesome.’ I was just tickled to death. I just grinned from ear to ear. I am so proud he liked it, because I didn’t know what the feedback was going to be. It is such a personal song, yet when we recorded it, it became a fun song for everybody. It’s like it’s not personal anymore. It’s just about a place you might have that you go to and feel dear about.”
“Whiskey Won the Battle” (Adam Cunningham)
“That song is 100% my brother-in-law. He sang it to me in the Pickin’ Shed one night. He’s constantly thinking up great catch lines and hooks. After he played it, I just said, ‘I love it.’ It’s just a great country song.”
“The Bigger the Heart, the Harder They Fall” (Ashton Shepherd / Adam Cunningham)
“That song is another one that Adam gave me the title for. We were sitting on the couch together up at his house, and right when he said it, I sang, ‘She’s 5 foot 3, and Lord, ain’t she sweet.’ I wrote it like a book, from start to finish, in about five minutes. It all came together, right there. My brother-in-law went, ‘Holy crap, how did you do that? All I did was give you a title.’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ You laugh when you hear about people being psychic, but it’s almost like when I hear a song title, I envision it. I meant it to be a peppy song, but I’ll be danged if those Nashville players didn’t burn that one up.”
Added: August 2008
Featured Artist: ASHTON SHEPHERD
© Danny Clinch
