MSM Morning Mindset: Ashley Brown

8/7/26

By Monica Collier

Sunday’s Muscle Shoals Meets the 90s rehearsal with the Shoals Strings was a veritable revolving door of Shoals superstars, friends. We started the session with Gary Baker, then we had Carla Russell followed by Bay Simpson. Then, Mr. Blue Skies himself, Russell Mefford, casually stepped to the microphone.

Russell sang a song I haven’t heard in ages, friends. Mitch Mann was singing backup, too, y’all. It was super chill and really, really nice. It was A+. It was 100%. It was fire but I’m calling an audible … the details of this one are going to stay in the vault for now. Yep. Trust me, for all you lucky folks who got tickets to the show Saturday week, it’ll be a nice surprise. How’s that for a 90s attitude?

Once the song that won’t be named (right now) wrapped, Russell turned toward the door and said, “You’re right on time.”

PS: Have I mentioned I worship Ashley Brown?

Ashley walked into the room smile first. Gotta love that, friends. She exuded a little bit of that sort of magical nervous energy and made a bee line to the microphone stand.

She asked the room, “Do I have to stand and look at him?”

Y’all, she was talking about Mike Dillon. His drum kit was positioned pretty much directly in front of the microphone stand. It was so funny. The whole room laughed. It’s so cool to me how a room can be so light and yet super professional all at the same time.

It was obvious that the room was a nice mixture of people Ashley performs with on the regular and those of us who are simply megafans.

There was a little bit of a false start but in a blink, Mike Dillon and the Shoals Strings had the beautiful iconic sounds of the opening of “Nothing Compares 2 U” filling The Nutthouse.

Then, Lord help us all, Ashley started singing: “It's been seven hours and fifteen days since you took your love away.”

I promise you, the world stopped spinning. It was as if her voice was filling the room in a way that was literally penetrating the structure. It was as if the studio couldn’t contain her voice. Does that make sense?

Hearing Ashley sing is very much an ethereal experience. It’s about so much more than just her amazingly rich and naturally perfect voice, it’s about her essence, y’all.

Ashley had the room frozen in time. We were all living in the moment in this shared experience sort of way that had us milking every single second. At one point, Mitch looked over to Cindy Walker and Carla Russell and did this sort of knowing nod as if to say, “Wow!”

The song ended and there was a second of stunned silence. It was like that moment of reverence after a prayer ends. We were all quite literally gobsmacked.

Get this, Ashley asked, “Is that right?”

Girl. Is that right? Please.

Mike Dillon simply said, “Next!”

Stay tuned. More to come.

Dig Worms.