Ashley Cleveland

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Ashley Cleveland is one of contemporary Christian music's most respected artists. She's earned three Grammys for Best Rock Gospel Album, a Dove Award for Best Praise and Worship Album of the Year, and regularly earns accolades from critics and peers. Still, Cleveland has never been a best-selling artist. Her new album, "God Don't Never Change," is a collection of vintage black gospel songs delivered in Cleveland's own style.

"I do love rock 'n' roll and at the end of the day, more than anything else, I'm a rock 'n' roll artist," says Cleveland in a call from her Nashville home. "This new record is black gospel, but in the hands of a white woman what comes out is rock 'n' roll anyway."

"She's incredible," said Third Day's Mac Powell in a recent interview. "She's a great example of what I consider one of the true artists. She's kind of the Emmylou Harris of our market. Everybody loves her and knows her music. She doesn't sell a lot of records, but everybody wants to sing a duet with her."

"The great thing about me is there's nobody like me and the horrible thing about me is there's nobody like me," says Cleveland with a chuckle. "But because the bulk of what I've written is faith-driven, I fall into the (contemporary Christian) bin."

Yet Cleveland's style has always come from outside that bin. Before establishing herself as a solo artist, Cleveland was a guitar slinger and backup singer for rock acts, including John Hiatt. Her powerful renditions of songs like Hiatt's "Riding With the King" and the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" opened up some very secular songs to spiritual interpretations. And Cleveland has taken some heat for it.

"People said I was promoting the 'music of the devil,'" says Cleveland. "The nature of great art is it takes on a life of its own. A great song can mean a lot of different things."

Cleveland was born in Knoxville and grew up splitting her time between living with her mother in California and her father in Knoxville. She moved to Knoxville fulltime during her senior year, graduated from Bearden High School and attended the University of Tennessee.

Cleveland remembers her first Knoxville gigs at a long-defunct restaurant on Kingston Pike where owners put up a plywood stage.

"It was all society ladies who came in for lunch," says Cleveland. "I knew five Neil Young songs and five chords and I'd play those songs over and over till somebody gave me a dollar to stop! I remember once when the plywood went cockeyed and I fell off the stage."

She later teamed with fellow fledging performer and UT student Pam Tillis to perform at Cumberland Avenue nightspots. Both ended up in Nashville.

In 1991, Atlantic Records' head Ahmet Ertegan personally signed Cleveland to his label. Her debut "Big Time" was a critical hit, cited by Billboard as one of the "most overlooked albums of 1991," an unfortunate honor repeated with her 1994 album "A Bus Named Desire." Both albums are now out of print.

Cleveland's 1998 live album, "You Are There," established Cleveland as too rockin' for Christian radio, but also as one of the most exciting artists in the genre.

She says she's happy with her level of success. She is still in demand for concerts and since she and her husband, A-list session musician and producer Kenny Greenburg, began having children, she hasn't pursued her career as hard as some other artists.

"When Kenny and I married and had children, we made a conscious decision to be there to raise them. There's no substitute for being there."

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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