Ash Bowers

Ash Bowers, a country singer and songwriter born in Jackson, Tennessee, discovered his life's direction at age eight after watching the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic Great Balls of Fire. That experience locked in his resolve to pursue music as a performer, and he held fast to the goal without wavering. He began on an old keyboard, later gaining access to an out-of-tune retired church piano that his mother brought home. By studying country acts he caught on television, he moved over to guitar and started appearing wherever local stages or open mikes would have him. At twenty he put together his first band, then landed a Pacific tour booked through Armed Forces Entertainment the next year. After a month and a half of shows on military bases in Korea, Japan, Guam, and the Marshall Islands, the ensemble—Forty5 South—came back to the States as a tight and polished unit, booking gigs from California to Alabama at a rate of some 200 dates annually. Forty5 South put out its debut album, Too Much, Too Fast, in 2003, then followed with the Bret Michaels-produced We're Country So We Can. Working as a solo artist and songwriter, Bowers signed to Stoney Creek Records and released Shake It Off in the spring of 2013.