Moved by everything from the latest hit makers to her Appalachian roots, Cashavelly is a whirlwind of musical wonder that just so happened to make one of the must-listen albums of the year. 2024’s ‘Meditation Through Gunfire‘ is a can’t-miss that delivers therapeutic anthems, girl power moments, and more. We discussed all of that and then some, including ice cream! Find out why we got into frozen treats below, and don’t forget to check out Cashavelly’s new album, ‘Meditation Through Gunfire,’ out everywhere on October 18th.
Kendra: When it comes to holding back, you did the complete opposite with ‘Meditation Through Gunfire.’ Packed full of instances where you travel back into your childhood trauma and how it correlates to who you are today as well as these feminist bursts of goodness, for someone like me who loves to be steeped in music this personal and revelatory, I’m for it. I’d love to know what female artists initially inspired you musically, and which current women in music do you find yourself enamored with?
Cashavelly: My influences are all over the place when it comes to the women who’ve captivated me. In high school, I was immersed in the music of Liz Phair, Sam Phillips, Fiona Apple, and Sarah McLachlan. By the time I was 23, I had some profound, life-shifting moments listening to Björk—especially her work on ‘Vespertine’ and ‘Medúlla,’ where she delved into a psycho-spiritual realm that completely disoriented me in the best possible way.
In my late twenties, while in grad school, I was trying to prove to myself that I could be a novelist. The book I was writing was set in 1917 West Virginia, which led me to explore the Appalachian roots of my birthplace through the ‘Anthology of American Folk Music.’ During that time, I became enchanted by Jean Ritchie—her voice haunted me. That fascination opened the door to Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams, whose influences are deeply embedded in my first two albums.
But the most pivotal influence, the person who really pushed me to make my own music, was Patti Smith. At the time, I was teaching undergraduate writing and was introduced to her memoir ‘Just Kids’ by a colleague. That book is the reason I make albums today. Patti didn’t train in music—she always considered herself a poet—but she became one of the most iconic voices in rock. That gave me the permission I needed to follow my own instincts even though I had no formal training and to trust my intuition as I made music from just a soul-longing ache.
Before recording my third album, ‘Metamorphosis,’ I was absorbing a lot of Jenny Lewis, Lana Del Rey, AURORA, Big Thief, and Agnes Obel. Those artists opened up new possibilities for what I could do with my own songs. ‘Metamorphosis’ was a major leap into the unknown for me. I began to come into some pop sensibilities yet with an experimental, almost disorienting wash of sound that mirrored my life at that time. After hitting rock bottom, I craved something more radiant, more intentional. That’s when I fell in love with pop music—its craft, its structure, its ability to change someone’s energy within seconds. I realized that pop music represents the pinnacle of songwriting as a craft.
I hadn’t really listened to Taylor Swift before, but then I dove deep and didn’t listen to anything else for two years. I played with melody in a new way and felt free to say everything I had held back or thought I wasn’t “allowed” to express. I went back to Kate Bush and Annie Lennox too.
Creating this album took four years, over 300 pages of writing, 1,400 voice memos, and multiple versions of each song. I’ve never been able to write songs quickly, and for this album, I wanted to challenge myself to go even deeper.
Lately, I’m completely taken with Chappell Roan. Her songs are like little gems—transformative within seconds, pure magic. I also love The Last Dinner Party, Paris Paloma, Anna of the North, Sigrid, and Kelsey Lu.
Kendra: Childhood trauma, who here doesn’t have a bit they’re carrying around years later? Mine differs from yours but I do think when you ask, “How many girls are like me?” in “Rewrite,” the answer is far too many. With that, did it ever cross your mind how therapeutic this song would eventually be for those who had similar experiences? Does that put any pressure on you, to be someone people can lean on, not physically but mentally when they listen?
Cashavelly: I hoped this song would be therapeutic after it was written, but at the time I wrote it, it was from intense heartbreak. I had never felt that kind of heartbreak. I thought it would kill me. This song is a hard look at myself, that my own complicity and patterns I learned in childhood led me to my suffering and rock bottom. Now that it’s out, I hear from a lot of women that it is therapeutic for them. That’s really cathartic for me, knowing that we are in this together, to recover from and transcend. A lot of women are conditioned to believe our love can rescue someone else, yet also that being chosen by that person will also rescue us. So we hang around, giving away parts of ourselves, trying to convince someone who mistreats us to treat us better, to love us, until we’ve bargained away so much of ourselves, we’re nearly dead.
I don’t feel any pressure actually. I maybe would have when I was younger. But I’m 43 now. I want the pressure–I want to show girls and women it’s such a lie what we’ve been told. We need a sisterhood more than a romantic partner. We are actually hotter, stronger, and wiser the more we age. We’ve been convinced we’re of no worth precisely when we reach our fullest power. This isn’t by accident–it keeps the hierarchical structures in place that privilege men and oppress women’s advancement. If women are busied and distracted with trying to stay looking young and hot to keep a man’s attention, believing our worth lies solely in our desirability to men, how convenient that is to the current systems in place that value men’s contributions and time far above women’s.
Can I be a 43-year-old breakout pop star? Hell yes. Why the hell not? The world needs to see women destroying these limiting beliefs and challenging these unspoken rules. We can express ourselves to our heart’s content outside of any gender, sex, religion, or power construct. Why not make impossible goals to visualize a new world? Lead with our ideas, rather than do what’s been safe and tested. We have to be brave enough to lose, fail, anger people, and be rejected. It takes a lot of self-love to be the first of something. Women just get wiser, stronger, and more powerful the more we age, yet we discard them as soon as they fall from the pedestal of youth and male dominance capitulation. Because of this, change requires women to take massive risks to upend it or burn it down to remake it.
I’ve had people tell me the work I’m doing has saved their life. There is nothing more affirming than that. I finally know who I am and know what I want to say. I’ve been through so many shitty circumstances that nearly destroyed me, but I survived because I had helpers, teachers, friends, and guides to lead me back to my inner knowing. I’m ready to be that tether for others…I am already in my community in North Carolina. If it remains that way, I’m the most fulfilled person on Earth because I feel my medicine is being given and it’s being received.
Yet, I feel ready to take it on, on a wider scale. I want to have a conversation with the world’s women (and men), which is what this album is. Women are full of liberatory power, not dominating power. Men have been infantilized and enslaved by it. They’ve been hurt by patriarchy as much or more than women. I know this more than ever because I’m witnessing my son traverse it. I want to free him as much as my daughter. I truly believe the feminine, yin energy that is within all of us, not just within women, but all humans, holds the antidote to the world’s suffering and divisions, and it’s time we amplify it in massive ways like we’ve never seen. It’s already happening.
Kendra: There’s another part in “Rewrite” that stuck out for me and it was about making ice cream for the boy who doesn’t even treat you great, or even like you. Now that is something I can 100% relate to, and it brings back up my embarrassing situationship of 2014! Stupid dumb boys…but let’s forget them and focus on you – what ice cream flavor would you say would pair best with this album as a whole? If you need to, go ColdStone with it and have add-ins.
Cashavelly: Ha! I love this question—it’s such a fun one. I know exactly what this album would be if it were ice cream. It’s two flavors. The first is the chocolate ice cream from Tamarack in West Virginia—it’s hands down the best I’ve ever had. It’s made by Ellen’s Homemade Ice Cream in Charleston, WV, and every time I visit my hometown of Beckley, I go get some. The rich, deep chocolate flavor represents the unconscious fragments I tried to pull out on this album—the love and innocence hidden in the parts of ourselves we’ve labeled as “bad” or “wrong.” Those fragments are often our greatest gifts, and I wanted to explore that.
Then there’s the element of transmuted suffering, love, and hope on the album, which, without question, is Tillamook’s Malted Moo Shake. I eat it at least four nights a week—sometimes with a spoonful of peanut butter. It connects me to my childhood because I used to mainline Whoppers as a kid.
Kendra: One song I kept going back to was “Prom.” There was something about the way it was delivered that gave me big Baby-Sitters Club vibes. I loved the imagery and the sort of celebration of girlhood, and friendships. It made me nostalgic and miss those slumber party days because as we age and life gets busy, it’s harder and harder to not maintain friends – but, at least for many I’ve come across, actually make friends. Do you have any advice for adults looking for a friendly connection to make a new friend?
Cashavelly: It’s tough, especially once you become a mother. During the making of this album, I found myself craving the company of women. I had this deep need to heal, carrying so many sisterhood wounds—wounds that I believe patriarchy inflicted. It’s this scarcity mindset, this false idea that there’s only room for one woman at the table. It isolates us and makes us judgmental, and competitive, like we’re all fighting for the same “woman slot” or falling for the same misogynistic alpha type.
But I believe we’re in a time of rebuilding the hearth—a space that draws people together. If we lived in villages, we’d gather around the fire at night, sharing stories, supporting each other. I had to create my own communal fire, a safe space where women could come together, share their stories, and realize that we are not enemies or rivals. I raised my freak flag high to find those women who were craving the same thing. That’s how Songbird Supper Club was born.
It’s one of the most nourishing things I’ve ever done for my soul. It’s a monthly performance series at a local public house where I feature 3-4 women. We talk about their creations, their struggles, their thoughts. We get vulnerable, sharing things you wouldn’t normally hear in public. And men are invited too. It’s been transformative, healing not only for those who attend but for me as well. I’ve met some of my closest friends through it.
I also started Soulbirthing, where I meet with women online and in the woods on weekends. We’ve even taken international trips together, led purely by intuition. We’re practicing our trust in this inner knowing that we all have. The first year, we went to France; this past year, we went to Switzerland. There’s only so much we can do alone. We heal in community.
Everything I’ve created—music included—is beginning to merge into one cohesive vision. I want it to represent what the name Cashavelly stands for. Cashavelly was my grandmother’s name. I took it on to transform her story. She was nearly murdered by my grandfather, surviving his attempt but losing so much in the process. She was never the same. I want Cashavelly to symbolize the resurrection of her spirit and the spirit of all women. A symbol of women’s sovereignty, of women rising into their power, of turning our suffering into medicine. I want it to be a force that channels our rage into love—a love that helps men wake up to what they’ve been blind to. Their need for domination has robbed them of the nourishment that only true Love can give.
Kendra: This album made me think of a chapter I recently read in ‘One in a Millennial’ about ‘90s feminism and Jessie Spano from ‘Saved by the Bell’ and how the show (and those like it and around that time) often placed the feminist characters as the butt of the jokes or as the “bitchier” characters. Thinking back, do you recall being swayed to think like that by the mass media?
Cashavelly: I definitely felt most of my life that I would lose connection with people if I spoke my mind. So I stayed quiet until the last ten years. I lost some friends and family, but in the end, it protected me and helped me expand to be around people who could see me fully and appreciate my take on things. As a kid, I always found myself drawn the most to characters who were outspoken, wishing I could be that way. I’m thinking of Rosie O’Donnell in the film Beautiful Girls and Martha Plimpton in Music from Another Room. They were both the butt of the joke in those films, yet I was still so inspired by them and would have preferred the film to revolve around their characters. I think the films that were most permission-giving for me to be outspoken and authentic were A League of Their Own, Erin Brokovich, and Steel Magnolias. Recently, I feel Hidden Figures is a major one. As for books, I was so taken with Jo in Little Women. I wanted to be her. But also, in college, reading The Color Purple was particularly moving for me and helped me own my feelings, having internalized the forces around me to dismiss them.
Kendra: Time for a side note – With us entering the fall months, I’d love for you to share a song that puts you in an Autumn state of mind…
Cashavelly: This is 100% my Autumn song – “Fever to the Form” by Nick Mulvey.
Kendra: Lastly, with ‘Meditation Through Gunfire’ out on October 18th – what can fans be on the lookout for as we inch closer to 2025?
Cashavelly: A book! This album was a deluge of what I want to say, so I’m needing to go into more detail. I’m working on a lot at the moment, so I’m juggling a lot. I had the most fun doing my album release show earlier this month at The Ramkat in Winston-Salem. It was very theatrical and I had four costume changes on stage.
At first, I was Queen Elizabeth I, then Medusa, and it went on like that, telling a universal story of what women have endured. The audience was encouraged to come dressed as queens, which I defined as someone unto oneself, sovereign, someone who owns their own story. It was so connective and bonding for everyone, I was told. I have lots of ideas for how I want to continue concerts like this.