The Millport Country Music Festival Vault – Ashton Lane

Popular Scottish group Ashton Lane had a quick chat with Maverick about some of the exciting things they’ve been up to before they headlined the Maverick Acoustic Stage on the Friday night

What can you tell me about the new album? How has recording gone?

Esther O’Connor: Really good – we write in an interesting way as a band. We write ourselves, but we also write in collaboration with our fans sometimes and write songs based around their experiences and we call them our bespoke songs.
That’s become a very, very important thing to us as a band and we’ve done lots and lots of them. It’s done two things – it’s meant we’ve really connected really closely with our fans through our music, and it’s been a constant source of inspiration because it’s specifically people’s real life stories they are telling you.
They are often very moving and really interesting. It’s been a fascinating journey, so quite a few of those songs will be on the next album too.

That’s a very unique way of songwriting, when did that start happening?

Tim O’Connor: We’ve done that for a couple of years now haven’t we?
Esther: Probably about five years ago. It was an idea we had one day and literally the very first day we did it, we just never looked back. People love it, and it’s been really popular. 

The other thing you’ve done recently is a greatest hits album – how was it arranging that?

Esther: Yes it’s called ‘The Journey’, and it was a really nice thing to put together. We did it with Graeme Duffin, who has a home recording studio we sometimes work at, but we also sometimes record at the Foundry Music Lab, which Graeme runs with his partner, Sandy.
Tim: The Foundry Music Lab is where we recorded ‘Nashville Heart’, so it’s really nice to look back over the albums we’ve done and pick our favourite tracks. It was really good, and it was lovely to release something like that, which showed years of our work.