Houston Press – HOUSTON’S NEWEST ACOUSTIC INGÉNUE IS MASON ASHLEY

I have a place in my heart for the sad sweet songs that tend to come out of the young women who record at the Red Tree Recording Studio. I still hold Kathryn Hallberg up as one of the best acts to have ever graced Houston, and I continue to wait impatiently for a followup to Alyssa Rubich‘s debut EP. Alas, both of them have now scattered out of the city, but that has cleared room for 16-year-old Magnolia native Mason Ashley.

Ashley has been singing and playing all her life, and was a regular attendee of Kyle Hutton‘s songwriting camps. It was there that she caught the attention of Jeffery Armstreet and the rest of the Red Tree family, entering the studio to craft the five tunes that make up her first EP, Into the Song. It’s a little cliché to say that she writes beyond her years. Ashley may still be in high school, but has pursued formal songwriting education since she was a pre-teen. Is it really odd to find that a good student should excel at her craft, tender though her years may be?

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