The Story So Far of Ashera, Houston's Indie Pop-Rock Artist That Is Making It Happen.
- Avant Media Institute mgmt
- Jan 21
- 5 min read
Written by Lucia Sanchez Solis
If there’s a word (or acronym) to describe this Wall of Fame inductee, its D.I.Y.
The diligent DIYer artist in question, Ashera, has been posting to her social media pages
every day, releasing a song every month for the past year, and even created a production
company with her friends to put on shows she could perform in locally. From playful
experimentations uploaded to Soundcloud to now, she is more than manifesting her dream; She is working hard and making it happen for herself. Her belief and determination to launch her career by putting in the work herself, and doing things on her own terms, is in her own words, delusion, but feels like the right mentality and work ethic to have in order to really make it big.
“It's gonna be a great journey. Like, you don't even know what's ahead of you!”
Ashera’s relationship with music started with consuming it. She would go to rock
concerts with her dad, but a shift happened during her time in high school. She began doing
musical theatre and most importantly, she also started making music on GarageBand. By taking random beats found on youtube, and following her creative intuition, Ashera found herself on the other side of music. Looking back, she doesn’t believe the songs she made at this time were good but regardless of the caliber of her early work, she found that creating music was the “only thing that captured my attention". She kept up with it until college came around, but in her brief time there, she found herself not fully fulfilled with what she was learning and where this path was taking her. Ashera had effectively laid the groundwork to what would become her biggest passion and dream, and she wanted to reroute and give it a shot. Now with a clearer mind on wanting to go into music and at the time wanting to become an audio engineer, she was ready to learn.
Ashera at AMI & Finding Her Way Back into the Booth
Even if her methodology is to do it herself, Ashera realized there were some things she
needed to be taught. By chance, a co-worker told her about AMI, she toured and ended up
enrolling! During her time here, she remembers feeling anxious and insecure at the start, but as time went along, these feelings dissipated and were replaced by confidence and the growth that came with learning about what brought her joy. Looking back on the instructors that impacted her the most, she gave shoutouts to 101 instructor Chris Robinson (she was in his first ever class at AMI!) for helping to bring her out of her shell with his enthusiasm, and former 201 instructor Mark Zamora for teaching her about mixing, mastering, the music business and later mentoring her at Lucky Run Studios where she got an internship.
“I'm really shocked how my self confidence has grown. Like the switch from going to, like a college to Avant, there was a big confidence boost in the way that the teachers spoke to me and were really uplifting.”
As an artist now, Ashera feels like now that she has the skills, knowledge, language and
perspective of an audio engineer that help her advocate for her artistic vision. Another benefit she sees of having the audio engineering background as an artist is that she has more patience and has a better relationship with other audio engineers she works with.
What she learned at AMI proved helpful because the internship she secured at Lucky Run Studios turned into a job. During her tenure there, she broadened her musical knowledge into different genres like hip hop, learning what making something “chopped and screwed” meant, and learned how to infuse emotion into music as an audio engineer and not get caught up in all of its technical aspects. At the same time, she began collaborating with fellow AMI alumni and WOF inductee Austin Smith on making her own music again.
“I think it's important to note that you can have a love for engineering and for being an artist.”
Ashera revealed that she only recently had the desire to be an artist because she finally had the confidence and belief in herself to go for it, so she left her job at Lucky Run Studios and went to work at White Oak Music Hall. Now in a job still in the music industry but with more time to focus and create for her own catalog, she ramped up making music and started planning releasing and promoting her hard work.
The Music Now
Ashera writes her music based on mainly lived experiences, but regardless of the themes in her rock-leaning indie pop songs, she places the most importance on songwriting. Her creative process is based on capturing the writing muse whenever and wherever it strikes. You won’t find her early Soundcloud musings anywhere on the internet, but you can find tracks like the avoidance anthem with an acoustic start “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” that showcases her soft and dreamy vocals with a rock twist or her latest holiday release “Ugly Sweaters” that shows off more of her pop flair with groovier 80’s inspired direction, reminiscent of a more positive and modern “Last Christmas” by Wham.
All in all, Ashera’s great production value, and lovely, polished voice tie in all of her
genre-expansive songs. With each single released working as a building block, we all want to
know what she’s working on next and what she hopes comes next.
What’s Next?
Ashera’s momentum and ambition have her set to release more new music, and continue
to perform her music live. She hopes to continue giving back to the community, something she did with her show at Axelrad that did a toy drive and the food drive show at Bad Astronaut. To further help her community, she plans on using her production company Crashout to keep hosting shows that are accessible to the Houston community, and help other artists navigate contracts to avoid pay to play scams. Ashera is a Houston girl, so it
makes sense when she let us in on her future goals of performing at a music festival with Houston rapper and local legend Paul Wall and getting a grill from the iconic jeweler Jonny Dang.
Ashera wants to prove that working hard, being consistent and believing in yourself
works. In our chat with her on the WOF Podcast, her enthusiasm and excitement for her career, her passion for music, and insight into the behind the scenes work she and her team put in, all make it crystal clear that this DIY artist has a bright future ahead.
“But I think that you can do it all, and at some point you can have it all, but you can't have it all unless you really put in the work to get there.”
For the full podcast episode with Ashera and our 301 Instructor Mark Drew, visit our youtube channel.