Singer/Songwriter Ayla Brown joins MyFixitUpLife to talk about her music, volunteering at the Building a Healthy Neighborhood event, how doing what she loves everyday has made her life more exciting.
Mark: You’re inside MyFixitUpLife. I’m here with my wife Theresa.
Theresa: And my husband Mark is here next to me.
Mark: And next to us …
Ayla Brown: Is your child Ayla.
Theresa: Oh, I’ve missed you all these years. I’m so glad that we’ve been reunited in Nashville.
Ayla Brown: I know that that’s Jenn Bostic
Theresa: I know.
Ayla Brown: I love Jenn, she’s one of my really good friends, and she and Tim were the ones who actually brought me on board to be a part of this whole thing today.
Theresa: Oh, that’s so nice.
Ayla Brown: Had it not been for them I would not be sitting here.
Theresa: That is awesome.
Mark: And I want to get to your music, and all the things that you do, but I first thought when I saw your hands and your knees that you were actually cut, with scrapes and stuff.
Ayla Brown: This is war paint from today. I mean, really, I’ve been … It does look like blood, though, doesn’t it?
Mark: It does. It looks a little …
Ayla Brown: I’ve actually had, like three people ask me if I’ve gotten cut on the job already.
Theresa: So were you like wrestling alligators or something today?
Ayla Brown: Pretty much, yes. I have one Band-Aid to prove for it.
Theresa: Wow.
Mark: That explains the tourniquets around all your limbs. Excellent work.
Theresa: Is there a warrior walk that you have to do in order to be initiated?
Ayla Brown: It’s more of a dance. I won’t show you, because you have to be on the site for it.
Mark: Oh, you have to be out there, there’s like mud and stuff, and fire?
Ayla Brown: Yes.
Theresa: And we need to have the ambulance sitting right next to us here, just in case. Just in case.
Ayla Brown: Absolutely.
Mark: Oh, yeah, without a doubt.
Theresa: Safety first, safety first.
Mark: I have to say one word of congratulations. Congratulations from being from the best state in the Union, Massachusetts, the Bay State.
Theresa: Oh, lord. Really?
Ayla Brown: Thank you. That totally warrants a congratulations for being born there.
Mark: Yes, I mean obviously you planned it.
Ayla Brown: No, thank you. Yeah, I grew up in Mass and I moved down to Nashville three years ago, so I’ve been a Nashville resident officially for a few years. It’s awesome.
Mark: And you’re playing all over the country, though.
Ayla Brown: Yeah, it’s been a very exciting summer, and I guess Fall as well. All right, Fall’s coming up, isn’t it? I guess Spring and Winter.
Mark: The artist’s approach to the calendar. Very good.
Ayla Brown: I don’t even know what day it is, truly. Yesterday I thought to myself, “If someone paid me $500.00 right now would I be able to tell them the date? I don’t even know. I just, my days are so different than someone who has what I would consider a real nine to five, real job. Yeah, I wake up every day and I get to sing for a living and write songs and go on tour and, I don’t know, talk to you awesome people. It’s a fun life.
Mark: I have a question.
Theresa: Of course.
Ayla Brown: Uh oh.
Mark: As someone, by the way thousands of times of respect that you write and perform your own music.
Ayla Brown: Thanks.
Mark: I’m like a huge, huge admirer of that.
Ayla Brown: It’s so fun.
Mark: Do you have your own personal favorite song or lyric or sentiment that you’ve been able to capture in music that you’re particularly proud of?
Ayla Brown: Yeah. There’s this one song that I co-wrote with two other people in town at the time, and it’s opened up so many doors for me. It’s called Pride of America, and I’ve gotten to sing it on the Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman Auditorium and on Fox and Friends, Huckabee Show with the Boston Pops Orchestra last Fourth of July. It’s enabled me to do some really incredible things, but also go overseas and perform for the troops, so I’m going in a couple weeks to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt for a two week July 4th tour. It’s like a part of me is so grateful that I wrote a song that’s so patriotic because it just, it’s great when you get to go and perform for these military groups and you can say, “Well, I have a patriotic song that I pretty much wrote just for you.” It’s opened up a lot of doors and I’m probably the most proud of that one.
Theresa: So every time you perform that song, is it different?
Ayla Brown: Every time I perform that …
Theresa: Does it feel different?
Ayla Brown: No, but every time I perform the National Anthem it does because I never know what version it’s going to be. Depending on the crowd and the energy that I feel sometimes I’ll switch up the end or I’ll do something different. That’s the one that my mom always asks me, “So, what version are we going to get today?” I’m like, “I don’t know, it depends when I get out there. We’ll see.”
Mark: Now being a singer/songwriter going up on stage in front of big crowds, small crowds I’m sure you’ve played a million bars and big things and stuff like that. Someone told me this once, that a performer he was reading about could carry himself through hard shows because he knew he was signing to that one person out there …
Ayla Brown: Oh, that’s really awesome.
Mark: … Whose, you know their eyes lit up and came back. The room’s full of people but they’re not paying … ugh (groaning sound), you know what I mean? Have you had that experience and willed your way through tough shows?
Ayla Brown: There have been so many tough shows that I’ve had where it makes me appreciate the really great ones. I think I remember one time I had just performed on the Grand Ole Opry and then I did something in Nashville in town, like two days later or something, and there were like five people there or something. It’s like, wow it makes you appreciate those really, really incredible shows, and in a way it prepares you for those shows as well.
I remember when I went to Afghanistan in 2010 I got really sick and lost my voice, like the first show where I was singing for the troops, and so for two weeks I went from 19 songs down to like 15, down to 10, then by the last show I was only doing nine songs and just having the band play really extended long solos because I had no voice. But it made me learn that if I could do it and get through that experience then I can do it now. You know what I mean? Just good stepping stones.
Theresa: So being here today with Rebuilding Together and the Building a Healthy Neighborhood event, are you gathering up the faces and experiences of being here and seeing all the volunteers and seeing this happen here in Nashville?
Ayla Brown: I love it because it is my new home state and my new home city, and in a way it makes me feel extra connected to the community. I don’t get to come to East Nashville a lot, I don’t know why
. It’s becoming one of the coolest neighborhoods to be a part of and to come and eat and come and socialize and drink and all that stuff. But seeing it from this angle is a lot better, it’s a lot more powerful.
I actually wish that I was working more. I feel like we’ve been visiting a lot of homes to see what’s going on and I just want to get to work. I love helping and I’ve been painting, hence the war paint that’s on me right now, but yeah I can’t wait to spend all day here just helping one family at a time. It’s been really cool.
Mark: We love it, Ayla Brown. If you don’t know who she is, listen up because she’s awesome. Follow her on Twitter …
Ayla Brown: Aw, thank you.
Mark: … @aylabrown. She puts on an a rockin’ show. She’ll change your life, now go change somebody else’s.
Ayla Brown: Oh, yeah. Woo!
Mark: But not right now. Stay with us, we’ll be back with more of MyFixitUpLife.
Ayla Brown: (Music playing) Go Jenn, Go Jenn, oh! Oh! (Music continues)
