ABOUT THIS ICON

Born in Hobbs, NM, near the oil fields on the Texas-New Mexico border, Ashley relocated to Newnan, GA with his dad as a small child. “Growing up, my parents listened to Alabama, Ronnie Milsap, Kenny Rogers. I was always around country music as a kid,” Jared recalls. He received his first guitar at the age of five and it proved a constant friend to him throughout childhood. The Ashley family later returned to Hobbs during Jared’s sophomore year in high school and, not knowing a soul his own age, he began honing his guitar playing and writing music as a way to pass the time. “That’s when I really sat down and got serious about writing songs and playing the guitar,” he says. “I was really just trying to consume my time with things other than being bored out of my mind,” he says. Inspired by the revitalization of country music in the early 90’s by artists like Travis Tritt and fellow Newnan native Alan Jackson, Jared came to claim country music as his own.

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