Singer/songwriter Taylor Ashton at Groton Hills

Imagine traditional old-time music with the humor and heartbreak of Randy Newman, the cosmic emotionality of Joni Mitchell, and the sage vulnerability of Bill Withers, and you have Canadian singer/songwriter Taylor Ashton, who performs March 11 at Groton Hills Music Center. Alternately accompanying himself on clawhammer banjo and electric guitar, Ashton croons poignantly clever lyrical insights while effortlessly gliding between a Bill Callahan-esque baritone to a Thom Yorke-like falsetto.

Ashton’s full-length debut album The Romantic was released in early 2020, followed by a companion EP “Romanticize” featuring remixes, reimaginings, and new songs. His songwriting appears on albums by Watkins Family Hour, the Brother Brothers, Benjamin Lazar Davis, and others, and he has released singles with Aoife O’Donovan, The Fretless, and Aerialists, as well as a moody acoustic duo record in 2018 with songwriter and guitarist Courtney Hartman.

Born in the last year of the 1980s, the singer/songwriter grew up surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and the old growth rainforests of Canada’s west coast. He spent the first half of his twenties on the road across Canada as frontman of the band Fish & Bird before moving to New York to work on a new set of songs and a new chapter of life. His songs are inspired by the primeval crookedness of traditional old-time music, the humor and heartbreak of Randy Newman, the cosmic emotionality of mid-career Joni Mitchell, and the sage vulnerability of Bill Withers.

TICKETS: $29.28 – $39.50, including fees