Ashley Suppa, bassist for the all-girl rock band Plush, talks about life on the road, her favorite bass players, and how learning isolated bass tracks translated into a successful career in a rock ‘n’ roll band: “What is happening with my life? How did this end up this way?”

As seen in Guitar Girl Magazine Issue 23 – Fall 2023

Where fashion meets funk in one fell swoop!

You can’t miss Ashley Suppa rocking her colorful Fender Meteora bass on stage with the all-girl rock band Plush. Clearly, her melodic bass lines and high-energy stage performances are a delight to experience. Like many of the great female bands throughout history, Plush is proving they have what it takes to rock with the best of them, and impressively paving a new path in the music world. After releasing their self-titled debut album in 2021, they have consistently performed on high-profile tours, and their latest single, “Left Behind,” is a huge success and getting played everywhere. The band is fronted by singer, songwriter, and guitarist Moriah Formica, and along with Suppa, is rounded out by lead guitarist Bella Perron and drummer Faith Powell. Their debut album featured the Billboard Top 40 charting singles “Hate” and “Better Off Alone,” and the band opened for major acts such as Kiss, Alice In Chains, Evanescence, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators, and more.

Holding down the groove in Plush, Suppa has a cool rock history, being from a musical family and a great all-around singer, musician, and solo artist. We caught up with the bassist, who is originally from the Hudson Valley area of New York, and dug into her background from singing on Ace Frehley’s solo record at six years old to touring seemingly non-stop in a working band — and what’s on the horizon for the powerful young group.

The band released their debut, and you were touring everywhere. It seemed like a whirlwind.

It was really crazy. I had just graduated high school, and we were working on the album at that point, I believe. Actually, right after I graduated, we played our first show opening for Daughtry, which was crazy in itself, opening our first show for an act we all had looked up to so much. Then, the album came out that fall. We went on tour with Halestorm and Evanescence, and then we just kept touring and trying to build this thing from the ground up.

Are you from a musical family?

I am. My dad is a guitar player, and he’s jammed with people like Mike Star from Alice In Chains, Ace Frehley from Kiss, and a couple of others. But I grew up with my dad being very close with Ace. Ace would come over to my house. They would go motorcycle riding together. I just always knew Ace. And when I was six years old, I actually had the opportunity to sing backing vocals on his solo album Anomaly, which really made me fall in love with the idea of becoming a musician and doing music because the experience was so positive. Ace was so welcoming and showed me what a good professional experience should be like. So, that’s what kickstarted my love and passion for music. Ace had written the lyrics and it’s on a track called “A Little Below the Angels” on his record Anomaly. It’s just a little background part that we’re singing. Ace is an amazing person.

Your dad must be so proud that you’re in a band.

Yeah, my dad’s my biggest supporter and one of my best friends out there. I honestly looked up to him so much when I was a kid. He’d always be playing guitar, and there would always be music around the house. He would listen to, specifically, Alice In Chains and Tears for Fears. Those were the two bands that made noise in my house at all times. Those became two of my favorite bands, and they still are to this day. So, I have a lot to thank my dad for.

Then what led you to play bass?

I actually had started on guitar. I went to the School of Rock, and I played guitar there and just did a couple of shows on guitar. That was what I did, and one time we were doing a show, it was the Ramones versus The Clash, and my teacher at the time was like, “Ashley, do you want to play bass on this?” And at the time, I had no idea what a bass looked like. Other kids were playing bass, but I didn’t really pay attention. I was just paying attention to learning the guitar and all that because I was, what, 11? So I was like, “Sure, maybe we have a bass back home.” And knowing my dad, of course, we did. The first song that I ever learned was “Death or Glory” by The Clash, and after that, I ended up sticking with bass throughout the program because I was just drawn to it. But I always tell people a lot of bass players don’t really choose the bass; the bass chooses them. You just end up a bass player, I think.

RELATED STORY: Plush: the All-Female Rock Band Ready to Take the Music Industry by Storm

Bass is so versatile in many ways like the bass lines in disco songs are amazing.

There’s something very magnetic about those baselines. It’s rhythmic, funky, and groovy, and I don’t know if guitar can capture that as well as a bass can.

I love Bootsy Collins.

Yep, absolutely. Do you like any funk players?

Yes, I’m a big funk fan. I love Bootsy Collins. Everything about him, his work in Parliament Funkadelic. His style, his fashion. I guess you can call Gail Ann Dorsey from David Bowie an influence. She’s good at the funk thing because David Bowie has a lot of pretty funky stuff, so she’s amazing as well. You can hear a song and just tell that it’s her playing. She’s incredible. And you can’t forget Paul McCartney’s work in Wings, too. That stuff is iconic. He is so versatile, between the Beatles and Wings and even his own solo stuff.

And Chris Wyse is the bass player for the Hollywood Vampires, and he is one of my favorite bassists ever. He is crazy. I knew him because he played bass for Ace Frehley, and when I was growing up, I used to go to the Ace shows with my dad. I’d be backstage, and I would not really know what to do a lot. I would just be there and look around like a little kid. Chris would always talk to me and make me feel comfortable. I would watch Chris’s bass playing when I was growing up, and he was insane. He has this bass solo where he plays a standup bass.

Did you take lessons at the School of Rock, or did you already have that musical foundation from guitar?

At the School of Rock, when you do the show program, you take lessons along with it. It goes hand in hand, but what I would do is I would be so eager to play the bass every week. Before my lesson, I would learn the whole set list for the shows, and my lessons would be more of a review between my teacher and me. It would be, I don’t know, we would go over the song because I’d already learned them the week before. I would look up the isolated bass tracks, which is an incredible tool for anyone just learning bass. That was what I did. I just listened to everything, and I would learn the song before my lessons. I don’t know, the lessons were fun, but I think when you really love something, that’s what you have to do. So I just took it upon myself to do that.

What was your first bass?

My first bass was a Fender Squier. It’s the red one I actually played in the “Hate” music video.

I’m playing a Fender Meteora right now, and I love them.

What basses are you playing now?

I’m still playing Fender, which is a dream for me. Ever since I had that Fender Squier and I was playing it, my dream was to become a Fender artist and be supported by that company, and it actually came true, which is pretty crazy. They are amazing. I’m playing a Fender Meteora right now, and I love them. I love their look. I love the feel of them. And yeah, they come in amazing colors. That’s why I was drawn to them at first.

The song “Left Behind” is huge. Did you guys write that together?

We worked with a production team down in Nashville [producers Zac Maloy, Blair Daly, and Kile Odell], and we spent about a week down there recording that and another track. It was a super fun process. It was so relaxing; it was so easy to work with them. They made us feel so comfortable when it came time to track our parts. We were at a studio down there with them, and they’re a production team. They’re amazing.

Typically, what’s your writing vibe been?

We all throw ideas back and forth. Moriah takes the lead usually. She’s an incredible writer. We’ll all throw ideas around, and then we’ll go to the studio. We’ll work with the team that we did. That was actually our first time working with them, and it was, honestly, it was just perfect. It was great. It’s really important to have a comfortable environment in the studio where you feel you can be creative and free without any barriers or judgment. And they were so great at creating that for us. With the parts, it was if you want to try out adding a little run here or try something a little different there, you can definitely try it. It would be listened to and heard, and it’s amazing.

Many of your songs have a heavy, rhythmic element. Do you feel like you really lock in with your drummer? Do you ever practice together, just the two of you, or anything like that?

I don’t think I’ve ever locked in with another human in general as much as I’ve locked in with our drummer. Faith is incredible. She is an amazing person and an amazing player. She actually has a similar story to when I first joined the band; she just graduated high school, and she is out there crushing it, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. I feel like she’s my long-lost sister. I can’t explain it. I can’t explain why, but I think that’s true. Yeah, musically and also with any other thing, I just feel she is the best. She’s the only other person that I would ever want in the rhythm section. So she’s amazing.

Oh, that’s great. It can be hard finding the right players and putting a band together.

It really can be. I have friends that live near me that are always wondering how to put together a group of people to play music with. And it’s difficult because in my area, at least, I feel like there’s not a big scene for it, and even when there is, there’s only a specific amount of people that play this specific instrument. You might have a conflict of personality with this person. Then you can’t be in the band with them to begin with. It’s pretty tough. But with social media and things like that, it might be a little bit easier to find people in ways you wouldn’t normally.

What is happening with my life? How did this end up this way?

So you just get out of high school, and then you’re in a band hitting the road. Were you scared at all? What were you feeling embarking on this journey so young?

I wasn’t scared. I was so surprised because I guess I had spent my whole life trying to make this dream of mine come true. And I know the other girls felt the same way, too. We all had this dream since we were tiny. This had been what we wanted to do forever. So I guess the fact that it came to me so soon when I was supposed to. I had enrolled in college and everything. I was ready to go on with my life, but then this all happened, and it was like the best thing that could have happened, and I knew that doesn’t usually happen. So I was just pretty surprised. I still am. I still wake up every morning, and I don’t literally pinch myself, but maybe sometimes I do, and I’m like, “What is happening with my life? How did this end up this way?”

What is touring life like? Do you wake up on the bus in a different city every day? Is it like that sometimes?

I’m sure it’s like that for some people. And I’m sure it’ll be like that for us eventually. We usually have “drive days,” whether we travel by van or by RV sometimes. It’s a little less glamorous than what a lot of people make it out to be, but I think that’s what makes it real, and what makes it raw, and what makes it, most of all, fun. Sometimes, I think if we were to get a bus, I would miss certain things about [touring] in a van, and I don’t know if I’d be ready to give that up so soon. I love the van. It’s probably like the transition from childhood to adulthood all over again.

It’s cool that young girls have you to look up to because the music industry wasn’t always the way it is now for women.

Yeah. No, completely. And I remember when I was growing up too, even all the rock stars that I looked up to, it was Led Zeppelin and the male artists, and obviously, there were female artists that I had also looked up to, but it just seemed like an overwhelming amount of them were men. So I’m hoping this whole revolution of female artists can turn in a direction where, at least, young kids can have an equal amount of female and male inspiration.

There was definitely a shift in the nineties of more women in rock bands if I could pinpoint it.

Yeah, maybe with the whole grunge thing becoming popular. It was the years of revolt, and let’s do something different.

Yeah, it’s true because I remember seeing bands in the nineties with all these cool female bass players.

I guess we have grunge to thank for a lot. Grunge was all about counterculture and doing something radically different. So with that comes changes, I guess women being more accepted in the scene of music. Rock and roll wasn’t seen as a feminine thing, and I think that weighed a lot on people back then. So, when women showed they could be feminine and still be raw and aggressive, it turned things around a little bit.

Are you going to put out another single or a new album in the future?

Yes. We are going to be putting out some more music. Album two is in the works. We do not have an exact date for that yet, but it will be out sometime next year, most likely. I’m really excited. Super-duper excited. Working on it has been so much fun. Even just working on these past little bits of music has been amazing, and yeah, that’s something I’m looking forward to.

The wildest thing just happened . . .

I see you guys on social media meeting Aerosmith and others, and it’s just very cool to see.

The wildest thing just happened, I think, two weeks ago. We went to the Hollywood Vampire Show, and we got to meet the Hollywood Vampires and Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, Joe Perry, and Tommy Hendrickson, all those people. I mean, at that, it’s just crazy to meet all those people. So it’s very cool, and the fan in you never dies. I feel like I can say that I’m a fan first before I’m a musician.

That was ultimately the reason why I became a musician because I was such a fan of music, but I don’t even know what to say about it. It’s just really cool. They’re incredible. They’re amazing. And I have to say, I’ve never met a more personable person than Johnny Depp. He was so sweet. He was so kind, and it was just amazing getting to talk to him after seeing him in so many movies growing up and looking up to him my whole life. He’s a very kind person, and he can do it all. So I feel like if he were to be not humble, I would understand it, but it’s the complete opposite. He is the humblest person ever, and he can do literally anything.

Wow, that’s really nice to hear. And Alice Cooper, he’s been very supportive of having women in his band.

Yeah, he has. And he’s also another one of the people that, they’re just a good person all around. He’s funny. He is nice and relaxed, and like I said about Johnny, super talented, crazy talented. Alice, he gave me a hug, and he was so kind, and it was just cool. He was so nice. And I actually had met him when I was 12 at a convention. There’s no way anyone remembers this but me. But I even remember then; he was so nice and just so — I was obviously very nervous because I was 12 — and he knew how to make the situation calm and nice, and he was great. He’s always been great.

Oh, wow. That’s a full-circle moment. Now, you’re in a band meeting him.

It was wild. I couldn’t believe it.

You have solo music, too, right?

I do. Yeah. I released a solo record. I think we’re going on two years ago now, but I’m working on new material. The new material, I think, is all going to be self-produced. I’m excited to do the production myself and get more hands-on with that. So it’ll be really cool.

How does that differ from what you do in Plush? Is it a different vibe?

It’s definitely more of a pop vibe than Plush. So I thought that was cool because, I guess, two of my earliest influences, one being Alice In Chains and two being Tears for Fears, they’re both very different. One is very rock, and the other is a lot more synth-pop, eighties stuff. So I thought that it was cool to be able to express myself in one way, being rock with Plush, and another more poppy way, being my solo projects.

What do you feel is the best part about what you’re doing right now in music?

One thousand percent — meeting people from all over the country or wherever we play. I think that’s the whole point of it; to allow your music to reach people and touch people because I grew up heavily influenced by the music that I listened to, and it helped me through a lot of difficult times. So I think the most rewarding part of it for me is when our music can do that for someone else. Or when we meet young children, and we see some of ourselves in those children and think about where we were at that age and who we looked up to—and hopefully, we can be that to someone else.

Three Key Takeaways:

1. Early Exposure and Musical Heritage: Ashley Suppa’s journey in music was significantly influenced by her early exposure to the music industry and her family’s musical background. Singing on Ace Frehley’s solo record at the age of six and growing up in a household filled with music, particularly from her father who was a guitarist and played with notable artists, laid the foundation for her passion and career in music. This early start not only gave her a love for music but also provided a unique insight into the professional world of music at a very young age.
2. The Path to Bass: Suppa’s transition from guitar to bass was a pivotal moment in her musical journey, showcasing the organic and somewhat serendipitous nature of finding one’s true instrument. Her story of how the bass “chose her” during a School of Rock performance highlights the importance of openness and flexibility in the early stages of a musician’s development. It also illustrates how diverse influences and opportunities can guide young musicians toward their niche.
3. Community and Influence: The narrative of Plush and Suppa’s individual experiences underscores the significance of community, influence, and mentorship in the music industry. From performing with and being supported by established artists to the band’s collective songwriting process and Suppa’s solo endeavors, the story is one of collaboration, mutual support, and the passing down of musical legacies. The band’s success, including high-profile tours and chart-topping singles, exemplifies the power of combined talents and shared vision in creating impactful music.