Today we’d like to introduce you to Ausha.
Ausha, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started playing music pretty impulsively honestly. One day when I was about 16 out of the blue, I decided I wanted to play guitar and within the day, I jumped onto eBay and bought one without really any research. And thank god for it because shortly after that something with four strings showed up at my doorstep. At this point, I can say with confidence I think it was fate more than a foolish accident. I don’t think I would’ve fallen in love as quickly and heavily as I did if it was a guitar. I think there’s something really overlooked and misunderstood about bass that I really identified with and felt seen by when I picked it up. I was in online school when I started and I didn’t really have friends so I spent at least 7 hours a day playing, I would even get pretty panicked if I went a day without playing because at times, I can be pretty obsessive over it. Since I have ADHD that honestly tends to be the way I operate in everything I am passionate about. But I owe a lot of my self-confidence as a person to that and to my confidence in who I am as a musician – especially having struggled so much in finding that before music. It became my whole identity and still is.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I wish it had been because I waste a lot of energy kicking myself and adopting guilt for the decisions I have made in the past and the “what if’s that constantly haunt me. When I was at what felt like a high of my musical career, my mentor in music, Tim got cancer. He practically guided me from the moment I picked up the bass. He single-handedly was responsible for my eclectic and extensive taste in music, I would push myself as a musician because I wanted to impress him – and I did. I started my youtube channel because of him. One day I auditioned for Berklee and I choked – BAD. The moment I left the building, I burst into tears because I knew I wasn’t getting in. I cracked under pressure and didn’t do myself justice. Shortly after, I got my email inevitably rejecting my application. This didn’t phase me too much but I met with Tim again and he excitedly asked me if I got my letter and I lied telling him I was still waiting. Part of me anticipated id have time to re-audition and deliver good news – Tim died a couple of days later. After this, I spiraled, I made bad decisions, I entered dangerous, abusive relationships with people that forced me away from music, I rejected music scholarships, rejected tour opportunities and I buried myself in guilt every time I looked at the instrument I had betrayed. The potential I threw away ate at me. It took about two years of hiatus, a lot of healing, and a lot of self-forgiveness to not only get back to it but now I can play circles around the person I was before all of this. I know I’m supposed to be who I am now as a musician and person despite (if not especially because) all of that
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Music is my main medium – bass particularly feels like an extension of who I am as a person. But my dream is to be a solo musician and I am currently in the process of writing and producing a few singles that will be out within the next year for that. It will be featuring bass at the forefront of a lot of the music but I’ve been singing and working in production to create a better-articulated sound for the things I’ve wanted to communicate with this music. I also am very involved in other mediums such as fashion design – I am designing and hand producing my own line as TheMaxPowers in collaboration with my band Catbamboo as well as a merch line under my own name Ausha. I am also a photographer but purely for the love of the art. I think it’s important to have nonlucrative mediums and photography is a good outlet for me to have that and do things to be silly and have fun and not take too seriously.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I find the industry to be taking a really exciting turn lately. I think fame and celebrity is getting demystified especially in the era of TikTok where “normal” people have a somewhat algorithmically level playing field and we as media consumers are feeling more drawn to each other as creators and people VS the overproduced and polished content of Hollywood and big corp. There’s something that I think we all find really refreshing in that shift. Also, because the pandemic was a really sobering experience for media consumers – as we would watch celebrities try to act relatable from their mansions. Meanwhile, there was just a collective of creatives finding community on platforms like TikTok, sharing fashion, recipes, music, art, blowing people up who really worked hard for it, creating careers for people who dreamed of doing their art. I think there’s a growing hunger for unpolished realism in the artists we idolize, it’s charming, it’s relatable, it’s a window of opportunity for artists with really important things to say to be heard and it’s exciting.
Contact Info:
- Email: aushasmyth119@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themaxpowers/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/aushamusic?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AushaSmyth/videos
Image Credits
Ausha Smyth Clayton King Richard Balderas
