Ashley Monroe

Born into a musical family in Knoxville, Tennessee Ashley Monroe was a natural performer who always sang church songs for her relatives and won her first local talent show at the age of eleven. Her father's death from cancer two years later left the family devastated and her mother suffered a mental breakdown, but Monroe poured her heart into writing songs on her guitar and later moved to Nashville with her mum to pursue a music career.

She sang in bars and worked with local songwriters and after signing a deal with Sony when she was just 17, she made her first album 'Satisfied' in 2006. Record company wrangles meant that the album was only released online three years later, and Monroe faced being another talented young starlet cast aside by the industry, until she co-wrote songs for Jason Aldean and Katrina Elam and formed the feisty, sharp-witted trio Pistol Annies with Angaleena Presley and Miranda Lambert. They went on to reach number five in the US charts with albums 'Hell On Heels' and 'Annie Up' and become crossover favourites, while Monroe landed a deal with Warner Brothers for her second album 'Like a Rose' in 2013, which was produced by Vince Gill and featured the duet 'You Ain't Dolly (And You Ain't Porter) with Blake Shelton.

Her ability to combine traditional country ballads with contemporary references and wickedly funny turns of phrases drew comparisons with Kacey Musgraves and Lee Ann Womack, but she fully established herself as one of Nashville's brightest young talents in 2015 when 'The Blade' was nominated for Country Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Still unloading her troubles, dreams and infectious personality into her songs, she returned with her third album 'Sparrow' in 2018, which was declared album of the week by Rolling Stone magazine and featured tracks written with Brendan Benson and Waylon Payne.