It might be a million degrees outside, but Ashaine White serenely floats above it all. She’s just got offstage at 2000Trees and is full to the brim with festival spirit. “It's my first Trees, so I'm a baby. I've just been born at Trees, and it's been very, very good. I've had my show at the Marshall Stage, and it felt like home. Maybe it's in the air. Maybe I walked in and I've just breathed the festival air full of festival magic, obviously. Do you know what? The sound was amazing on that stage. We had this like power line of us, our little trio… We had that bravado and we're ready to go, so yeah, we came out swinging.”

One of the highlights of her set was ‘Let Me Down’, which was released last year. “‘Let Me Down’ is really fun song,” she explains. “It was on an EP called ‘Look What You Made Me Do’. It’s kind of one of the first songs that we wrote that really goes from the most sultry kind of soulful confessional lyric all the way up to this drum and bass-esque -but it’s not drum and bass at all! –  rock drop at the end. I’m literally screaming at the end of the song, and it’s so cathartic and really fun to play. It is a really special song, and I think it was a kind of a tipping point to where the album is and what you’ll hear on the album. It’s kind of become our flagship song. I think it’s become the song we end the set with, it’s become the song that we show people if they want to hear the music and what it sounds like and where it can start and where it can end. So yeah, it’s definitely signs of what’s to come.”

Her debut album on Marshall Records is due in the very near future, and White has just finished her recording sessions. “In some way, I feel really settled in the idea that I’m releasing an album. I thought I’d feel a bit more nervous or anxious about it, but I’m just like, ‘this feels like the right time’. It feels like I’m nice and worn in and I’m ready to go for miles, and that’s what I’ve been dreaming of. So I had to remind myself that like I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time, and I’m here.

I listened to ‘Okay Computer’ when I was twenty one, and I feel like if I had heard that album when I was fourteen years old, my whole life would have just been on a different trajectory. Maybe I heard it at the right time, but it absolutely blew my mind. And the same thing with ‘Grace’ by Jeff Buckley, PJ Harvey’s albums, Breeders, Nevermind, Nirvana, Brand New Eyes, Paramount, all of these albums were like… I love this, I love it so much. But also, I want to put Dolly Hathaway in there, and I want to put Sarah Vaughn in there and Nina Simone in there, and I want to put my experience as a black working class woman from London into this music, and those albums, especially ‘Grace’, I think really put me on a trajectory of where I am today.”

Nina Simone especially is a hero for the vocalist. “I think she’s just a true punk. She doesn’t care. She’s doing what she feels that she should do. She was relegated into jazz – even though she’s a classical pianist –  because she was a black woman, and we love jazz, and I think it’s really important as a genre. It’s the original punk music. I felt so much in her story and my story, and I was being put into these boxes that were RnB and I wasn’t that. I wasn’t even being put into a jazz box that I wanted to be in. She kind of taught me that you get in wherever you are and you exist as yourself and you do it until it’s it’s your thing and then it’s everyone’s thing.” 

Simone’s influence on White is most obvious in her touching tribute, ‘Wasting Away’, which combines her soulful vocals with some serious rock energy.  “It’s been something that has been within me, in my discovery of understanding myself as a musician and as a vocalist. I’ve loved alt rock so much since I was like twelve or thirteen years old, and I saw myself in it, like a ball of anger that I hadn’t really figured out how to get out and release through music and craft, but then I discovered that the beauty of a crooner and of a jazz vocal and the depth in emotion that these vocalists could bring through their voice, and I wanted to be that. How can I take these two things that are within me that aren’t surgically sewn together and just do them? ‘Wasting Away’ is a song that I was able to.., I don’t know, the universe opened and gave me what it gave me and it’s kind of brought that those two worlds together in the lyric and the melody writing, but also in the harmony of the song and the sonic that me and Jibby have built for the song.” 

Thanks to Marshall Records, and dream support slots, White is on her way to making her teenage dreams come true. “Marshall has always been iconic brand, and I used to think and I used to manifest, ‘oh, I’d love to be signed to somebody with a heritage in rock music because it’s taken so long for me to make people allow people to believe that I can be a jazz singer that makes rock’. Do you know what? I just need to be where somebody believes me. The Nova Twins invited me on tour and Marshall, obviously, are The Nova Twins’ record label, and they heard me and they saw me, and they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘make an album’, and here I am, I’ve arrived, and we’ve recorded the album, and it’s gonna come out in the new year. It’s magic because I kind of asked for it. Here I am. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

The Nova Twins are incredible in what they’re doing for Black female-presenting artists in the alternative scene. It’s bold and magical and inspiring, and it felt good to be on that tour doing my version of that with them on their stage. Big up the Nova Twins girls every day!”

Before she disappears into the Trees crowd (“The plan is to go and find bands that I’ve never heard of before and go and get stuck in!”), White has one message for the world. “Just get out, support live music, support your favourite band, support your favourite artist, show your friends what you’re listening to, take them to a gig, take your kids to a gig, take your mum to a gig, keep live music alive! That’s what I say!”  

We can’t wait to see where her Trees adventure, and her debut record, takes her. 

KATE ALLVEY

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Ashine White’s debut album will be released early 2027 on Marshall Records.