Ashley Davis is tall, starry, and often solitary, quietly making her way through the world while sharing a remarkable array of music. She is an innovative American singer-songwriter whose musical imagination invites the world into her eclectic sphere. And yet, to simply label her a singer-songwriter would be a disservice to the vast, imaginative world her music conjures. She has collaborated with Shawn Colvin, Tim O’Brien, Moya Brennan of Clannad, Sara Watkins, The Chieftains, and David Newman, to name but a few examples. Ashley’s songwriting has captivated audiences on either side of the Atlantic—inviting them, instinctively, to listen and dream. She has excelled in Celtic folk, Mantra Music, Americana, Electronic, and Winter music, turning all musical styles into spellbinding storytelling. Davis is an alchemist of sound, transmuting diverse traditions and deeply personal experiences into her unique sonic tapestry.
As the Academy Award-winning composer Philip Glass so aptly put it, she possesses “as much musicality as an artist could wish for.” In Irish America, Ian Worpole asked Ashley how she and Philip Glass had “crossed paths.” She explained that when she was a young girl, her mother, the arts presenter for the University of Kansas, was presenting him to the university as a new and up-and-coming composer. Years later, Ashley sent him her first album, and he sent her a beautiful note about the music after listening to it. She was floored. Then when he showed up at her Joe’s Pub gig in NYC – she was doubly floored. “When he came backstage and was very complimentary, I said, “Well, then put me on a soundtrack!” He laughed and said, “Why don’t you call me and we’ll go have coffee and talk.” Coffee did happen many times after that and he continues to encourage and guide her on her music through the years.
A holistic portrait of the artist must address her unique position at the intersection of different genres, ideas and talents. In addition to her music, Ashley is a highly-skilled Reiki Master, having dedicated several years to her training in Asia. Reiki is a Japanese technique used for stress reduction, relaxation and the promotion of healing. Reiki is a hands-on, energy healing art that originated in Japan during the early 20th century and was developed by Mikao Usui. This extensive training allows Ashley the privilege of performing healing sessions around the world, enriching her music and practice with diverse insights and techniques. Ashley has expanded the traditional Reiki Usui method to incorporate other modalities to aid in her healing practice. and runs a successful clinic in the United States where she is devoted to helping clients find balance and achieve overall wellness. The holistic nature of her life influences her music.
“I love doing healing work, and my clients are very patient about my time on the road. I would love to see the clinic grow so that I can take on other practitioners and help more people. I believe that I was put on this earth to help as many people as possible. Whether it is through music or energy healing, that’s my job until I exit.”
Finding Her Path
Ashley has been bold in her creative exploration, an artist who exists in a space of her own making—a place where the lush soundscapes of Celtic folk meet the stark honesty of Americana, where ancient mantras find a home alongside modern pop, and where the ethereal and the deeply personal are one and the same. This duality—the appreciation of both the aesthetic beauty and the spiritual weight of her material—is what makes her art so compelling. 
Her first album, Closer to You, came out in 2005. In that same previously referenced interview by Ian Worpole, in Irish America, from early on she was discovering as well as exploring her own personal heritage, “I often had people come up to me at country gigs and ask me where the Irish influence comes from. I had no idea what they were talking about. Investigating further, I discovered that my father’s side of the family had originally emigrated from Ireland, and for some reason this part of our family history had been buried and sort of lost. Fast-forward about five generations later and this Kansas gal comes out singing like she’s been around Irish music all her life. So I took it as a very clear sign that it was time for me to use my voice to uncover the layers of our Irish family history that had been buried on the long and unforgiving trek from the port in New York (in the 1800s) to Kansas…”
Her Global Music Tribe
Under the mentorship of artists such as Clannad’s Moya Brennan, Ashley released her first Irish album, Down By the Sea, in 2008. Sonic Hits said that “The album is a unique iteration of Irish folk blended with her American roots. It is difficult for an outsider to infiltrate traditional Irish music, but Ashley—who holds a master’s degree from the University of Limerick’s World Music Centre—has accomplished this feat. The music of Ashley Davis offers cultural history, daydreams, heartbreak, and unbound imagination. Ashley is always ascending and reaching new fan bases around the globe. Even while grounded in her roots, this singer-songwriter takes flight, and listeners are captivated by her voice and tales.”
Celtic music comes from many geographical places, from Canada to the obvious spots like Scotland, Ireland, etc., and the term refers to both orally-transmitted traditional music as well as an homage in the form of recorded music. The modern Celtic nations include the Bretons, the Cornish, the Irish, the Manx, the Scots and the Welsh. The styles vary considerably to include everything from traditional music to a wide range of hybrids. But perhaps the Celtic spirit inhabits more than a geographical location, like a mysticism that transcends reality when you are in the center of it, and it also will transport you to a place you’re not quite sure where you are, but it feels right. The sound richly expresses general things like love, culture, and longing. Celtic music can honor history in an inventive way, while spreading timeless magic.
Songs of the Celtic Winter came round in 2011, and Davis intentionally created a collection of winter songs that were secular, rather than specifically Christmas-themed, to be enjoyed throughout the entire Winter season. Collaborating with various musicians, including Cormac De Barra on harp, and Gawain Mathews, who co-produced the album, the album features harp, mandola, cello, fiddle, low whistle, and various guitars, creating a rich and layered soundscape. The album includes both original compositions by Davis and traditional songs, including “Auld Lang Syne” as a closer which is now one of the most widely listened to versions of this song. This album turns out to be part one of the Winter theme, and features a blend of traditional and original songs, with a focus on creating a mood of quiet reflection and peaceful contemplation suitable for the Winter season. It is highly popular on holiday radio, including streaming platforms such as Pandora.
Night Travels launched in 2013, and early in 2014, Cindy Reich interviewed Ashley for The Celtic Connection, where she said “I didn’t set out to write an album about dreaming, whether it is nighttime dreaming or daytime dreaming. But whatever I was going through when I was writing this—I was having a lot of very vivid dreams and daydreaming quite a bit over the year of writing it, so that obviously infused into the writing.” In Irish Echo, Colleen Taylor (June 4, 2014) described the music like an actual unfurling dream, the listener travels beside Davis on an imaginative path, on an enchanting thematic exploration of nighttime reveries and daydreams, that meshes genres and blurs past and present, dreams and cognizance. Night Travels captures and integrates the Celtic enchantment with the beauty and mystique of the American prairie. “Ashley Davis sings songs that are hundreds of years old, and she draws from genres that thousands of musicians lay claim to, yet her sound is so inherently unique that even the most motivated of imitators could not replicate it.” This process of uncovering and reinterpreting is a recurring theme in her work. The ability to make the listener feel as though they are part of a shared, almost mystical, journey is central to her art.
Holiday Music with Heart
The Christmas Sessions with John Doyle is her 2015 collaboration blending Irish folk and jazz to make a playful collection of unusual Christmas standards which is now considered a classic in its own right, designed to transport you back to your happiest holiday memories, offering a moment of peace and reflection. “It’s a truly beautiful and heartfelt gift for the season” said the Celtic Connection. “Both artists prioritized the essence of each song, allowing the melodies and vocals to shine without excessive embellishment.” They chose songs that meant the most to both, as memories from childhood or because of their striking musicality. As Ashley explains, “These songs are so beautiful, they really only needed me to be the vessel that carries them to the listener.” John adds that they aimed for “a classic sound but with only what was necessary instrumentally, so the vocals and melody would really stand out.”
In 2018, with Burning Down, Ashley once again finds new rich places to explore, transcending genre boundaries with her vocal and arrangement skills by experimenting with more electronic sounds was a significant leap. She brings her voice into the plugged-in realm of pop/electro albums with fancy studio production and dramatic synth sounds. In the Irish Echo, Colleen Taylor said that Burning Down “makes this trendy transition by providing a complex thesis on why the move from folk to synth might make sense, creatively. Burning Down is a hybridized album that delights in displacement. As a listener, that displacement taught me a number of lessons. When I listened to the title track, I recognized the chameleonic nature of creativity—that sometimes in order to invent we must first uproot, displace, change our colors, become newly alien to ourselves.” Ashley easily proved that her voice, so at home in the Celtic tradition, could migrate to new places and adopt new musical perspectives. This album was about displacement, about uprooting oneself to invent anew—a microcosm of Davis’s career trajectory.
Her collaborations also speak to this spirit. The Crannua Collective (2019), is the debut album from a supergroup of ten of the top artists and composers in Irish and Celtic music from all sides of the Atlantic – Moya Brennan, Dave Curley, Ashley Davis, Cormac De Barra, Éamonn De Barra, John Doyle, Colin Farrell, Cathy Jordan, Gawain Mathews and Mick McAuley. They have joined forces to create an album of new music, ten songs and two lively instrumental sets, with a contemporary feel, yet firmly rooted in the traditions.
In Folk and Tumble, Damian McNairney shares his impressions about this first album from the Crannua Collective. “Ashley Davis is a talent I haven’t come across before but will now seek out. Her voice tops and tails the album. On opener, ‘Are You Going My Way’, she at times sounds like a young Sinead O’Connor. ‘Winter Is Over’ sees the young woman from Kansas sing over lilting guitar, accordion, and violin on a co-write with Mick McAuley.” Crannua translates as The New Tree, branching from as diverse regions as Donegal to Kansas.
When Songs of the Celtic Winter Part II came about, Joe Ross in the Roots Music Report said, “With this album, Davis’ goal was to create a musical set that will become the cornerstone of every Winter’s night. …Her evocative vocals and empathetic singing style, along with an inspired body of material, give her Celtic-infused folk pop contemporary relevance invested with gravity and emotion.” Songs of the Celtic Winter II achieved the #1 spot in December 2022 on The Roots Music Report’s Top Celtic Albums Chart.
Following in 2024 came the first album by the now well established Ashley Davis Band, with Dave Curley, Colin Farrell, Will MacMorran, and Duncan Wickel, joining Ashley, bringing about her most creative and challenging album yet, When the Stars Went Out. Deirdre Cronin in Irish Music Magazine said that the title evoked a myriad of possibilities around the name, the notion, the times we live in, “Guided by her own intrinsic gift for grafting new songs onto this older idiom, and a voice made to haunt songs with echoes of poetic lyricism, she was welcomed naturally into the living tradition song circles and subsequent collaborations with legends like Moya Brennan, Cathy Jordan, John Spillane, Paddy Moloney, and more.” This writer’s favorite track far and away is “Davey Jones,” haunted by the ocean depths, the final resting place of drowned sailors. It’s a concept steeped in superstition and folklore, but the main thing is the way that her voice chills my soul, in the best way.
The Mantra Music Debut
A spiritual mantra is a nurturing sound experience, simple holy words repeated mindfully, that resonate with the spirit and supports personal growth and transformation. The words are in ancient Sanskrit languages and are believed to purify negative emotions and karma, leading to enlightenment and the positive transformation of the practitioner’s body, speech, and mind into a pure, exalted form. To my secular ears they also just sound cool with or without the spiritual overtones. It’s worth noting that her album, Mantra, is somewhat of a departure from what her fans expect to hear, yet it reveals an important aspect of her personal life and studies as a student – now master – of Reiki.
These ancient son
gs are intended to be sung in their original language, honoring the long traditions of these melodies and lyrics. Davis pays homage to these strong traditions by singing them in her deeply resonant voice, and refreshening the instrumentals. The final track is the exception. Transcending the Sanskrit tradition, “Between the Flowing Trees” (5:58) stands out as the album’s sole English-language track. This guitar-strummed narrative about love and life provides an interesting contrast to the ancient chants. Davis’s singing in English adds a unique intimacy, exploring themes of tragic devotion, emotional hearts, and romance under the moon and trees. A solitary flute weaves through the guitar melodies, culminating in heartfelt promises.
Many Genres, One Powerful Voice
Ashley’s ability to capture and cross musical traditions transcends comparison, which is why her music is difficult to classify. Her soft-spoken music conjures a genre and world all of its own. Good Morning America, for instance, described Ashley’s works as “new music springing from ancient roots.” As a Kansas native with ancestors from all over Europe, Ashley has culled from her family traditions to create a sound that is uniquely her own. One of Ashley’s ancestral homelands, Germany, fully embraced her this past Winter. Ashley’s two Winter albums have received hundreds of thousands of streams since early December, demonstrating that her music resonates with audiences worldwide. And, Germany is now her top selling territory.
Germany first discovered her through the singer Moya Brennan (the voice of Clannad). The two musicians have worked and toured together over the years, which brought about Ashley being written about in a German Advent calendar that adorns most German households. “And they wrote about a song of mine called ‘Nollaig Moon.’ Two weeks after it was published, I had a million streams in Germany off a song I had written 12 years ago – and a new contract for distribution and touring in Europe!” Moya and Ashley have performed together in many countries and have collaborated on various other projects.
While New Age, Celtic, Roots, Bluegrass, Country, Pop, and Indie have all described her music over the years, none of these descriptors comprehensively characterize Ashley Davis today. Influenced by her many trans-Atlantic journeys, her music exhibits ethereal and aqueous qualities. One of the most wonderful places that Ashley has performed was at a beautiful springtime festival on the Yangtze River in China, to 100k people, who were all quiet and listening to every note and bird around them.
It has been said that her songs seemed to hover above the ocean, waiting for the current to direct them to shore. Much like water, Ashley’s music is fluid, escaping categorization. She is, in her own words, “a songwriter, who likes particular sounds surrounding my music.” For Ashley, music is multi-faceted. Music is a healer, a lover, a provocateur… “I believe that music records history in many ways. As a songwriter, I can go back through the songs that I’ve written and trace what was happening where at that time in my life; but so can the listener/fan of that song too!”
Ashley completed her MA in Traditional Irish Music, all in the Irish language and part of her BA is in Latin. She loves working and singing in ancient languages, and expanding her influences into more distant parts of the world. “There was a time when I was always actively seeking out old songs, as I assumed that my career would lean more that way,” Ashley reveals, adding “Now I am really known for writing my own songs and making them sound old.”
New Music: Unifying and Inspiring
Which brings us back to Songs I Was Raised On. This double-album is more than a tribute; it is a profound commentary on the present moment. In a world fraught with political division, Davis is returning to a time when songs were a unifying force. “These songs brought people together during those famously turbulent decades from both sides of the aisle,” she explains.
Through her clean acoustic sound and pure vocal performance, she seeks to “rekindle the power to do it again.” Each track is a jewel of hard-won wisdom. But there is also hope. Here, she introduces the double album on Instagram, and music fans will be delighted to find it to be available in vinyl, CD and digital formats.
“Diamonds & Rust” is troubled by the past, while “If You Could Read My Mind” is a confession of unspoken sorrow. Davis’s version of “Both Sides Now” captures the full weight of the loss of innocence, a theme that resonates deeply in our cynical age. The album is a beautiful, if melancholy, acknowledgment of life’s hardships. From the raw honesty of “Fire & Rain” to the poignant loneliness of “Jesse,” Davis uses her voice as a vessel to carry the weight of these timeless stories. 
In her rendition of “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” she brings a universal lament to a new generation, a peaceful protest that reminds us that even in the face of loss, there is a chance for renewal, for flowers to grow in the wake of graves.
Ashley Davis is undoubtedly one of the most talented singer-songwriter-producers of our time, deserving of becoming a household name. She thrives in a life defined by movement, a heart grounded in love, and the enduring hope that better days are still to come. Blessed with a voice that encompasses and magnifies all of life’s beauty, she has found a way to express feelings that we sometimes struggle to articulate.
Listen or follow Ashley Davis here or go to the shop.
Feature article by ©ContemporaryFusionReviews (2025).
Recommended reading: check out a 2021 story by Dick Metcalf on the dissenting protest music of Gene Pritsker and Friends.
