And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 85: Ashley Gorley...Stays At Home

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

We last spoke with this guest in Season 2. Since then he has earned 47 No. 1 singles and has had more than 300 songs recorded by artists such as Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley, Jason Aldean, and Darius Rucker. He has been named the ASCAP Country Songwriter of the Year 7 times. And the NSAI Songwriter of the Year 4 times. He has been nominated for multiple Grammy, CMA, and ACM Awards and is the most decorated CMA Triple Play Awards recipient with 15 total trophies to his credit. In 2011, he formed Tape Room Music, a publishing company with a focus on artist development. And The Writer Is… Ashley Gorley!Please join us to help keep the music community alive and thriving, giving it as much as it gives us. To donate or to apply for assistance visit the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund site: https://www.grammy.com/musicares/get-help/musicares-coronavirus-relief-fund Watch this video interview on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/andthewriteris or on Instagram at @andthewriteris. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, we are doing a few updates here with our alumni who we love dearly. And we hope all of you guys are staying healthy, safe, and staying at home during this quarantine. And hope you enjoy listening to a few of our previous guests telling you what's been going on in their life since they did their interview. Here are some updates for the quarantine versions. of Anne the Writer is. Let's start this thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Ashley Gurley,

back on And The Writer is. This time, the quarantine version. Here with Peter Pugman, my newest writer. The mascot. The mascot, the company mascot.

Yeah. Have you been, man? I mean, since you, uh, since we did your interview, you, You managed to have, you know, two or three more years maybe already of winning ask-up? Yeah, man, it's really, yes, very crazy, very fortunate.

It's been a good couple years since we've talked last for sure. Why do you keep going this hard? Like, why do you feel like you need to keep going at this pace? Yeah, you know, I don't have a good slow gear, I guess. You know what I mean? Like whatever I'm going after, I always tend to kind of hit it at a hundred. So that's just kind of a habit. You know, it's like the more songs I write, the more I want to write.

So once I get in the zone, then I tend to go pretty hard. But there's still a lot of things. I just love doing it, you know. So it's not necessarily chasing a writer of the year goal or whatever. I just love working with all the different artists and writing all the different kinds of things. of songs I have in my head, so I just have a tendency to write a lot. Do you run out of ideas?

Yes, sometimes. Something always tends to come from somewhere. I never quit or like submit to writer's block. I just wait for somebody else to have an idea or I'll just start yelling out words and melodies, you know, like something will usually happen. It's not great that we just try to make up for it with an amazing melody or something like that. But yeah, I haven't ran completely out yet, thankfully. The tank's not on E yet. Where are you? I am in Destin, Florida. We came here a couple of weeks ago. Here's the ocean there

behind me. But we came here a couple of weeks ago for spring break, and then the world, you know, fell apart. It got really scary. Still is. And we decided we were safer just to huddle up here since we hadn't been around anybody. And so we've been here for a couple weeks. We plan on staying at least another week. The kids are doing school on the same thing we're doing this on right now on Zoom, which is so weird. Looks like some crazy futuristic stuff. So they're all scattered in the house being taught and can see all their classmates on this program. So they're doing that. So they just advise everybody to kind of stay where they feel safest. And right now, we can be outside here. We can just, you know, either order food, we've just been cooking every meal here. So it's, it's been an

interesting time, but it's pretty fun. Are you able to, do you have to turn off being there? For you who goes a million miles an hour, are you able, are you forced to slow down? Or are you actually finding this to be so creative time? Yeah, well, the one thing that does make me slow down is time with my family on things like this. So I can definitely kind of unplug from chasing it. Now, there's always text and calls, and I have writers like you. a company to run as well. So there's always some things to deal with with that being concerned.

But I did one Zoom right one day. I did a couple of songs, kind of spent the whole day fixing songs and writing songs on Zoom with different people. So I've only done that one day since I've been gone. Sorry to interrupt. How did it go? It was funny. It was funny. Everybody was putting crazy stuff in the background. Thomas Rett was on the right was part of the car right and put a big picture of me as his background, some goofy picture. So it kept it interesting. But it was good. It kind of made for, there wasn't a lot of downtime and everybody kind of noodle around. It was like, ready set, go, what do you think? And the next person, like, what about this? You know, so it was like a little bit more of a condensed

version of a right when we were doing it. I like seeing everybody. I like being in the room and kind of bouncing around. You know what I like to sit still. So it was honestly tough for me, but you know, you got to do what you got to do. You guys get a good song out of it? Yeah, we got a good one. It's so with even just the latency, I would imagine playing piano and somebody singing a melody over that

our guitar must be complicated, or is it just sort of one person goes and sort of leads the way and everybody helps them out? Yeah, it's a little messy for a little while, but once we kind of know the chord structure and basic melody, then everybody kind of grabs an instrument. Like I had a guitar, which I usually don't have, when I write, I like to have nothing and just kind of run around and just, you know,

singing the microphone or whatever. But in this case, we all kind of had the guitar so we could play, hey, what if it goes like this and kind of be on the same page? So it was different, but it all worked. It really made you pay attention to the melody and the lyric, I think, even more when you're all separated and kind of singing the whole thing back to each other. So it was a really interesting thing. It's been funny to talk to my writer as the right for tape room and just see how it

going. Some of them were like, man, it's going to be terrible. And now they, now they love it. So just like most things, most technologies, they seem crazy at first, and then they're cool after two or three times you get used to it. This last year, you had, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine number one songs, I think. And none of them were with the same artists. Yes. Which is super unusual. Even for you, most of them, you have, you know, three with one artists or four with one artist. You rarely have nine number one songs and nine different artists. Yeah. That happened. Are you writing with the artists? Are you pitching the songs? I mean, everyone, I'm sure has their own story, but how does this happen? Yeah, you know, I mean, the thing I always

like, kind of in every aspect of my life is variety. I like, I have to have a lot of things happening in at once to stay entertained and driven. So probably half of these were written, you know, with the artists and the other half, probably five of them might have been involved directly with artists and four of them were pitches. I'm not sure I'd have to look, but there's been a blend of that. And like you said,

all being with different artists, they're all kind of different types of songs, just all catered to that particular artist or sometimes just catered to whatever song was in the room and somebody recorded it. So I know three or four of them were just pitches that found their home with the different artists that put them out.

Crazy. Do you ever get disappointed? had there ever Yes, that's the problem Right? Yeah, daily. I was listening. Somebody was asking me for a song

for a certain artist yesterday. And I was like, oh man, I probably got 50 of those and went through and I kept listening. I was on the beach. And it's been a good time to listen back and realize how terrible some of these songs actually are. But I was sitting there listening like, okay, that one's probably not.

It probably wouldn't send that. That one kind of sucks. I suck, you know, by the end of the hour listening back to songs. It's like, ah, I mean, no matter what, we all, I think everybody in our community is always striving for, you know, more and more, you know, just a better level of creativity or songs that we think are even better when we listen back to them. So, you know, I get disappointed. Sometimes a single, you know, somebody puts out a song that I was hoping was mine or for my writers, that same thing happens or we try to launch a couple of artists and it takes a little

longer than usual to get stuff going. But, no, overall, I'm very fortunate, you know, try to stay positive and I realize how blessed that we've been as a company and I've been as the writer last year. Tell me about, you know, when we last taught the publishing company was really starting to take off, obviously you had, you know, a few hits by your writers, but it feels like a lot of things have grown. Tell me about tapering and everything that's gone on in the last two years. Yeah, we've got, we've got 10 writers now, which is awesome. four of those are artist project writers, meaning that two of them,

we already have a record deal for, the other two, that's what's next on the docket is to try to join forces with a major label. We have Avenue Beat and Connor Smith, who are both signed to Valerie, part of Big Machine.

And then we've got Hunter Phelps and Jordan Rowe, who are a very different artist, but we're just helping them kind of A&R of their records, figure out, you know, how to craft the song, set up their calendar and all that.

That's been really fun. So four of those are, you know, artist writers, the rest of them are either top liners or producer writers. And, you know, we got to last month, we got to send around a tape room turns 21 thing, which was like a six-pack, like we just turned 21 years old. A little thing that had our 21 number ones that we've gotten as a company, not counting any of my own songs, which is cool, you know, that we've had in the last few years, which was a big, you know, a big success for us. I was just really thrilled at the new writers that we signed that were able to do that. Again, not counting me as a writer on those songs at all. So that was kind of a big landmark for us to be able to celebrate just last month. That's crazy, man.

Do you like the business side as much as you like the creative side? I do. Yeah, I like when they mesh. You know, I like making good business decisions that fuel the creative side as best as possible, you know. So I'm always going to be a creator and songwriter at heart, but I love digging into digging into contracts and doing a, you know, good publishing deals and helping people, you know, sell a catalog or doing any of that stuff, you know. I technically have a business degree from college.

You know, I can't read music. So I'm probably just as suited to do that as the other. So I try to, you know, I try to help any of my friends that are trying to do something like a catalog sale or publishing deal or whatever and give them any knowledge I have. But I do enjoy the business side. Nothing can fuel the fire that the creative side can. but I've really good time kind of playing both sides.

Yeah, I find that a lot of the best songwriters are also the best business people. One of the things that we talk about a lot with our publishing company is that looking for entrepreneurs, that's who we're looking to sign because there are tons of writers out there, but finding people who make things happen

is sort of a difference. Do you find that your writers are now trying to, to branch out and they're doing their own joint ventures with you? Is that what happens? Is there like a you know with with some of them I mean a lot of them are really like you said some some people are really good business people other writers I have I mean they want to see who they have on their book they trust us implicitly and they want to go do the best job they can and go to the red door after work you know what I mean so it just depends on what kind of creator you are but uh Zach kraal is the one that brought Connor Smith to us he's one of my writers that produced Sam hunt road

party like a backroad. He's at three number ones this year. He was my first signing actually, but he he's the one that kind of found and started to work with Connor Smith. And so we did a co-venture publishing deal on him. That's the first one that I've done with a writer, you know, like another split kind of venture like that. But I know other ones, the more success they have, they're starting to think about that. Yeah. That's an alumni of and the writers also. That's right. Yes, right. The, do you go into sessions writing, from a business perspective, and I mean that in a sense that, you know, like, Sovin and J-Cash in the pop world are brilliant at looking at an artist and knowing what they need and accurately writing that.

I feel like sometimes I know what they need and I don't necessarily hit the target. Is that why you're able to say, you know what would be great if, you know, Luke, Brian, or whatever. Tom, Brett, this kind of song, let's go aim for this kind of song, is because that would help the brand of that artist. Do you, do you, yes.

That how you write? Yeah, I've worked with Jay Cash and Sabaab, and we are similar, I think, in that way. And it doesn't take the creativity away, because sometimes we still take chances and completely miss, you know, go left field and totally miss. But for the most part,

I do think about that. It doesn't like dominate the right, but it's always in my head to think as if I'm them, meaning I think about the show a lot, which country artists think about the live show a ton. So I think, okay, how would this come off in this show? What would people's reaction be if you put this in the set tonight? You know, I'll go out and tour with some artists for a weekend

just to get a sense of, you know, what's working, you know, what could possibly be missing. And I'm fans of these artists. So I know their albums inside out. So all that stuff kind of plays into the creative process. And they trust me with that a lot, which is really cool. You know, I'll get brought in knowing, you know, they know that I know their stuff and that I may be able to bring an angle of something

they haven't done before or a type of song that they don't have in their repertoire yet. And that I pay attention to the shows and go out and really try to, you know, do my homework, so to speak. You write a lot of songs for, a lot of male artists cut your songs, not that female artists, don't cut your songs, you have a lot of male artists. Why, is that, is that intentional?

Is that sort of, do you always write from a male perspective? No, no, no, my first, several of my first few hits ever, my first hit was on Carrie Underwood, you know, this total girl song about growing up and leaving home, you know. So I've had several things with Carrie. I just had a song with Kelsey Bauer, any album and the Carly Pierce album that came out. And so I think it's just the unfortunate reality that there's not as many female artists as there are male artists that are working in country

format. I love actually writing female songs open up, opens up the melodic scope a little bit more. You know, the range a little more, kind of what you can say. You know, as you know in pop, there's so many females and I feel like there's such a variety that you can pull off when you're writing for the brilliant female artist base, you know what I mean? So, So for me, it just happens to be that who I end up, you know, having the majority of songs with is also the, you know, gender that has the majority of the charts, which is the males right now in country.

Do you feel like you've ever been pigeonholed because of, I feel like it's almost impossible to pigeonholed somebody who has so many cuts with so many different kinds of, are there a certain artists where you're like, man, it'd be great if I got to write only with Willie Nelson for six months, you know? Yeah, yes. I try to keep from being pigeonhole. I love when people say,

man, I didn't know you wrote that. You know, where they can't really pick out what I'm doing because I'm doing a melody that's different enough to where they don't think. You know, sometimes they'll be like, I could tell you wrote that. And I'm like, oh, what is that? Is that a compliment or no, I can't tell, you know?

So sometimes I like when it's like, oh, my gosh, you wrote the new whatever. I didn't know that. I love that song. So I like when that happens. Again, I try not to get pigeonhole. I would say that because I've had a lot of commercial radio success that sometimes the albums that are more Grammy album singer-songwriter

or the more old-school country, people have forgotten that I've had songs by George Strait and Riba and, you know, Kenny Chesney and Kenny Rogers and all kinds of, you know, of songs that I'm really proud of that are more of a storytelling old-school country format. So I try to run the gamut. People that really know me know that I can hopefully do whatever and adapt to whatever they want to do. every now and then, you know, there's somebody that isn't necessarily trying to invite me or really anybody else into their camp. They kind of have it covered with their boys that came to town with

them and their friends and they just kind of do what they do. And I never get jealous of that. I never get frustrated that I'm not on the Luke Combs albums. I'm not needed there. That I'm not on the Eric Church albums. He's got his thing is so dialed in and so great. And we know each other, but that's not a project. You know, I feel like they're missing. anything for that I would need to be a part of. Most of those artists I'm not involved with, we still know each other and in its respect. It's just something where I can't get to everything

and I'm not needed for everything. I'm not, you know, I don't always have the missing piece. Do you have a ceiling of success that is there some, is there a level where it's for you, you feel like that? That's either the end game or I will, you know, I'll never get what this writer did. or is it, is your goal to just to keep setting records? I mean, what is the goal besides the, you know,

the workaholic nature of needing to create all the time? Yeah, my goal, I don't have numbers in mind. I didn't know that, you know, the things I'm getting now, like whatever ASCAP writer of the year or these triple play awards, they're very cool, but I never in the beginning or throughout, my career knew that those were a thing until somebody told me I got one, you know what I mean, until they start happening. So those were never the goal. My goal was always just to not have a real job for as long as possible. And to love what I do for as long as possible. So for me,

that's taken, adding some hats, you know what I mean, co-producing some things, signing some writers. It also takes doing things outside of music. You know, I try to develop some different education things for kids or for coaching methods or different classes. is that I'd love to come up with, you know, here in a few years. So there's so many things I want to do. For me, it's just always having something else to strive for and not, you know, once I think I'm just kind of spinning my wheels or I'm just being repetitive or doing the same stuff or, you know, that I'm not getting the high out of it that I used to,

then I'll probably, you know, begin to branch out into other stuff. But I'm not there yet. As long as I love it, as long as I get as excited as I do over either hearing a song on the radio or finishing a song that I love or hearing a crowd sing it, sing it back. back live, then I'm not planning on slowing down. I know we talked about this in your interview, but one of the difficult parts for songwriters who work a lot is balance. And, you know, it seems like you've always mastered the balance,

at least externally, but it's a good refresher. How do you balance your life? Oh, man. Well, I mean, I don't always. There's sometimes that I don't give enough time to my wife or to a relationship with a friend or my kids or whatever. I definitely don't have it all figured out. If somebody thinks they do, they probably don't.

But I try not to make writing as 9 to 5 as I possibly can if I'm at home, if I'm in Nashville. Meaning I get started and try to get home. I try not to miss a ball game so they know they're the priority. And I try not to be on my first. phone working or like I don't run out to the studio at 7 p.m. because I have an idea. So I'll either get back up at 10 p.m. and work on something or I'll, you know, just start something earlier or work faster or miss an opportunity here and there. There's been runs I get invited on. I was invited to go

out with a big artist for spring break and was tempted to cut it short a couple of days, but just couldn't do it. You know what I mean? So just little decisions like that that shouldn't even be that tough to make, but because we all love creating so much, sometimes they are. So just trying to, trying to really think. And my wife is a great gauge of those things, you know, like when it's like, hey, I was thinking about doing this. And it's like, oh, yeah, you should totally do that. You know, this summer, I'm going to go out on some tours and it totally worked out. I was like, hey, I don't want to be gone all summer, but what about this? And we talked about it. And I take several days off in the summer to be home with the with the family and do stuff with them so then there's going to be a few

runs i go on so again like you said it's just kind of a balance of not getting addicted to the work so much that it consumes me which is kind of the struggle right for all of us so um i love being with the family i love being down here and i'm i'm not missing missing writing this week even though i know i have people doing it uh i don't have too much foam o because it's beautiful here and and i'm just having a good you know a good time with them and also you know this week is a is a very serious week. So it's a big time to talk to them about what's going on in the world and things are out of our control. And I try not to miss opportunities to do that to sit with them and talk about things even more important than music. So again, I fail a lot, but I try to keep everything

in check as much as I can. Yeah, I think one of the things you said that's clearly notable with writers right now is almost assuming everyone's healthy. You know, there's almost a relief you know, there's this relief, the fact that there's no FOMO. You know, only a few artists can actually write via Zoom and fewer of them can record vocals. Yeah. You don't know how long this is going to last, but that everything has to slow down

is almost a breath of fresh air for a community and a generation, people who are living off of more and more, more new, new, fast, fast, fast, you know. Yeah, true. Yeah, it's such an odd, challenging thing to not go congregate and to not, you know, run, run, run all the time. It's really unfortunate.

I know several people that have lost jobs and they're struggling, and it's really, really tough. So all we can do is pray for them to help them out what we can. And I think at least my team, we all realize there was a text going around yesterday, all realizing just how fortunate we are to be. be at a job where the pay, you know, doesn't stop. They can do their job from home. We, uh,

we've been going through songs. We've been checking in on the writers just personally, which is cool to take a minute and do that. And that's been great. And also, you know, they've been kind of going through some songs and talking about things we can send around to artists that are just hanging out at their house. You know, they're wanting to, hey, send me some stuff, you know? So everybody kind of slowing down

is, it's been really, really tough for the world. For us creatively, um, it's been a, you know, it's been a good thing to just kind of take a step back and do that. So again, we've been sending songs to pitch. We've been finishing songs we forgot about. So that kind of stuff's been good here in the last couple weeks. Crazy, man.

What a weird time. It's crazy. I think you have a nice view of the ocean for the next week or so. I hope so, man. Of course, we're kicked off the beaches. We sneak out there. Don't tell anybody. Don't tell the sheriffs, but we sneak out there once it gets dark

and play a little spike ball. Ashley Gourley gets arrested for sneaking out on a beach during a quarter. Yes, yeah. It's like I had to finish the game and I'm just getting locked up. Who's the best spike ball player in your family? Oh, I mean, one of the teenagers for sure. Probably my daughter is pretty good. I've gotten beat several times.

I can hold my own in the corner hole games, but spike ball I'm still getting used to how to play that. I just got introduced to it last week. So I got a little catching up to do. Do you play all out, or is it one of those things where you can let them win and then you realize that they're going to win anyway? No, I go all out. My kids are old enough now where, yeah, I'm not sheltering them from loss, put it that way.

I'm going as far as I can. Well, thanks for checking in with everybody and doing this update. and, you know, let's hang out over the next week, space time you want. Yeah, let's do it, man. Best wishes, man. Tell everybody, everybody stay safe and healthy. And soak up this time with your families

and just stay sane over there. Dave, love to you guys. Yeah, man, you too, but thanks. See you. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter, interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist, or visit our website at and the writer is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter.

And The Writer Is is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Berg'sma, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Golan.