Soft Grass

City Lights

Night Silk

Drunken Laughter

Southern Jazz

Broken Concrete

Wild Smile

Ashley and I wanted to challenge ourselves with this branding work for her upcoming single and subsequent album. Nashville is a vast city- more than just the two crowded streets on Broadway– and the most intimate and historical parts are often overlooked. 

We headed over to Cornelia Fort Airpark with the intention of shooting around the planes and hangers there, but I of course, migrated right to the cattle field nearby. I stuck Ashley in a dark blue dress that really pulled out her nimble figure. She’s something akin to a greek nymph statue and I wanted to highlight this with the column shape of the dress and the cross of its straps. My signature go-to is to pull in classic rural, Southern tropes and interpret them through Greek or Italian sculpture or paintings. 

A real white trash renaissance. 

Ashley is a challenge in and of herself- she is a lover of all things indulgent, elegant, pink, and bejeweled. I often feel like I’m trying to put Marilyn Monroe in muddy cowboy boots with a shovel in her hand. She’s a small town gal moving out to the big city anyway, and I want to marry all sides of her together and push them forward. So, we can get as rural as I want, it’s still going to have poise, elegance, and a whole lot of glam. 

I used the empty space of the sky overhead to allow her to take up room, to show off, and express the turmoil of being a small-time musician going after king-sized dreams.

Then we headed over to Printers Alley Nashville. This is where we really got into a groove, I think. She went all out in a modern twist on old jazz get-ups wearing a red silk dress and jeweled shoes. I indulged myself with the light. Multi-Colored signs buzzed overhead, tungsten spilled out from bars and pubs, and girls on roller skates rolled by with flashing hats. 

Nashville is often shrugged off as a hub of bro-country or white-collar boys trying to sing with a country twang, however Nashville didn’t become the country music capital of the world for nothing. Nashville is built on the backs of true country musicians from rock’n’roll to jazz to blues. The jazz scene here is underground, but raw, real, and once you find it will prove exactly why Nashville is still the king when it comes to the music scene.

Printers Alley is a mecca of light, ambiance, and life- especially for the creation of an album cover. I don’t use studios and my usual backdrop is a rolling Southern or Appalachian landscape, so having to push my comfort zones and being rewarded so heavily was a creative reset with my work.