The Courageous Comeback of Ashley Strongarm

Last night Ashley Strongarm stepped on stage for the first time in nearly a year.

For the Brooklyn, by way of Charlotte, NC singer-songwriter her performance at The Bowery Electric was a triumphant moment, because at numerous points during her extended layoff she was unsure if she’d ever step on a stage again.

“I didn’t know if I was going to make music anymore,” she says, “It took an entire year to figure out who I even was again, because I didn’t recognize myself.”

Hitting A Wall 

For Strongarm, stopping, or even slowing down had previously never been a consideration. “I used to feel like I was one of those people – I’ve got a full time job, I’m (also) full time music, I can do everything, I have the energy. Enough coffee, and I can do everything I want to do. And I hit a wall where I couldn’t do anything.”

This affected every aspect of her life. “I couldn’t write at all,” she remembers, “I couldn’t really get myself out of bed. I was having a hard time.”

Being unable to make music was especially tough for Strongarm, who explains, “That was something I had always used to comfort myself, and understand what I was feeling, and what was happening, and how to approach something. I feel like I use music almost like a mental map – if I sing about it, then eventually I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’m sad.’”

Lyrics weren’t coming out, however, and her frustration grew. “There was no way to sing,” she says, “because I didn’t know what I was feeling.”

Two Years Of Hurdles 

Strongarm had been through a lot in the previous two years leading up to her hitting a wall. When the pandemic arrived in 2020, she says the combination of being immunocompromised, and living in New York City “was terrifying.”

Wanting a little more space, she went down to Baltimore to stay with her brother, but came back after a few weeks, noting, “I couldn’t put my life on hold to that degree.”

As the severity of the pandemic lessened, she says, “Everything started to lift, and I got a new job, and it seemed like things should be getting better, but I didn’t feel better at all. I actually felt worse. I suddenly felt like I wasn’t functioning in day to day life the same way as I was before.”

Then it finally happened – at the beginning of 2022 she caught COVID, and it was a nasty case that lasted 31 days.

She caught it a mandatory holiday event thrown by the company she was working for, and that company then let her go before she could get better.

Panic began to set in. “I suddenly didn’t have a source of income. I had no idea how I was going to pay rent.”

Although her relationship with her boyfriend was relatively new, they decided to move in together, with Strongarm bringing her foster fail cat named Chicken with her.

The Show Must Go On 

After fully recovering from COVID, Strongarm had a show celebrating the release of her Good Mourning EP at Mercury Lounge on February 16th of 2022. She was all smiles both on the stage, and in the crowd. Her smile, however, hid how she was really feeling.

While she says it felt good to be on stage singing, she admits, “That show was very difficult. You know when you see a deer … when it’s just born, and it’s gangly? That’s how I felt walking around, just very fragile emotionally.”

She adds, “Even after the fact, normally I’m so excited post-show, and I’m so excited for what’s next, and I was just like – I feel so depleted. I didn’t understand how even performing, which is like my favorite thing, it wasn’t giving me the joy. Nothing really was, so I had to stop, and figure out what was going on, and come to terms with how scary life can get, I guess.”

Strongarm notes she still had big goals, “I wanted to perform, and make music, and release music to the same scale I was before all this happened. I just did not have anything in me.”

It might seem odd to think of someone who just stepped off the stage from their EP release show being in need of a personal comeback, but that was the case for Strongarm.

Strongarm, however, is one tough former tarheel, and while fighting this battle she could draw on her previous experience overcoming a major hurdle in life.

Cruel Summer 

The summer before going off to college is supposed to be filled with fun with high school friends, and working seasonal jobs to put some extra cash in your pocket.

Strongarm spent the summer before her Freshman year of college in doctors’ offices having a plethora of tests done on her.

This stemmed from a time during her senior year of high school, back in 2008, when she’d been home sick for a few days with something she thought was relatively mild, as it had little affect on her, just enough to allow her to sit at home and watch The Price Is Right rather than have to deal with math, or history class.

After a couple days of daytime TV she felt she was well enough to go back to school. Her body, however, violently disagreed before she could even make it out the door.

“I ended up having a seizure, and woke up on the ground, and my mom and everyone’s freaking out. They called an ambulance, and I took an ambulance to the hospital, but the guy tripped over my IV while I was in there. It didn’t come out, but that’s an unpleasant experience.”

Her high school graduation came and went, she earned her diploma, and was accepted at colleges, but as all this was going on her entire summer was spent having tests done on her, while concerns rose about her rapidly losing weight. The latter was something she’d been dealing with for a little while, but didn’t realize it might be connected to something. Other things were off, too – “Never really feeling well. Being really fatigued. I would jam my joints all the time all of a sudden. Things just weren’t working right.”

Right before she was set to begin college her doctors figured it out – she was living with Crohn’s disease.

For years after her diagnosis Strongarm let as few people know about it as possible. “When I first got it I was really embarrassed because it is in your intestines. I used to say that I wish I had something where you just delicately faint when you’re overwhelmed. That would be like the ideal feminine illness.”

Keeping all this to herself, however, had social ramifications. “It made me seem like an unreliable friend to not be able to tell people why I wasn’t coming out, or why I was flaking. It made me feel really distant from my friends because I didn’t want to tell them what was going on, therefore they didn’t know a big part of my life.”

After college she decided it was time to stop keeping her illness a secret. “When I moved to New York, I think that was a big change that happened – I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Having the strength to let people in, Strongarm found, not only created closer bonds, it helped to make her stronger, as well.

Sweet But Dark 

Strongarm’s move to NYC was fan-funded after she met two other women via the now defunct social media platform Vine, and they decided to form a group together. The group, named Dear Ears, had two full-length releases, and an EP before the members went their separate ways.

This is when Strongarm began developing what has become her trademark style of sweet, but dark tunes.

“It’s no secret I struggle with anxiety and depression,” she says, “but I also grew up in a place in the south where being polite, and being presentable was very important. I think it almost shaped me to want to play off that idea where the presentation of the song is pleasant, and on the surface seems presentable and nice, but underneath that is something that isn’t quite right, or is a little bit darker. I see myself in a lot of that.”

She continued, adding, “I’m a happy person, but I really enjoy writing music where there’s that contrast where you’re like – this feels really pretty, but why does this also make me so sad?”

This songwriting style is part of the backbone of Strongarm’s Good Mourning EP (2022), which was produced by Justin Craig, and features five songs, each representing one of the five stages of grief.

“When I first started writing the music I was going through a breakup,” she explains, “it wasn’t until a little bit later that I turned around and realized I could see every phase of grief in the music … you’re almost able to see the healing process take place throughout these songs.”

A New Plan 

Strongarm’s successful return to the stage at The Bowery Electric has her excited to be working on music again, but don’t expect her to move at quite the same pace she did previously.

“I’m taking it slower than I took it last time,” she says, “because I don’t ever want to hit a wall the same way.”

She continued, adding, “I think I’m just, right now, really focusing on making sure that I’m mentally good, so that I can write to my best ability, and I can perform, and I can do the things I moved here to do, but also feel proud of myself once I’ve done them, because I think that was suddenly something that I stopped knowing how to do. I had lost all context for ‘Hey, you used to live in Charlotte, and now you live in New York, and you’re making music with these people, and you have friends here to support you, there are so many reasons to be excited.’ Instead I would just come back and be like, ‘I should be doing more.’”

Whether she releases singles, an EP, or a full-length album, new music is in her future, and after all she’s overcome, she isn’t going to let herself get lost in the process.

“I want to do this again,” she says, “but I want to really do it right.”

For more Ashley Strongarm, check out linktr.ee/ashleystrongarm.