Ava Carrington’s first musical instrument was a fence in her grandmother’s backyard.
“I’d get two sticks and I’d play on her old rusty metal fence,” she says. “I thought that sounded like I was making music, and I would sing along with it and make up little songs.”
Sixteen years later, Carrington, 18, is a recorded singer-songwriter. She played her version of “Canon in D (Pachelbel’s Canon)” by ear at the age of 4.
Carrington picked up the guitar at 7 and began writing songs the next year. “I’d never been in love. I’d never experienced that. But at age 8 I was only writing love songs. The lyrics are very funny.”
But, she says, “I had a pretty hard childhood. There was a lot of stuff going on. Fighting around me a lot of the time, which was stressful as a child. I took it upon myself to try to fix everything and be a people-pleaser. And I got lost in that. Because of that I missed out on a lot of my childhood and a lot of things I wish I would have experienced.”
Carrington began writing prolifically when she was in a treatment center for anxiety at 14. “Dragon Fly” was “about stuff I went through the year prior, which was one of the reasons I was sent there.”
She had gone to a Connecticut boarding school. “There was sexual assault,” she says. “And a lot of people didn’t believe me or do anything about it until it was happening to other girls at that school. I was barely 14 when I went there.”
“Dragon Fly” is about “going through it and processing it and wanting to get away or fly away from it.” Writing that song after “going through that shock at a young and impressionable age” gave her a lot of closure.
“That experience kind of made me lose myself a little bit. I didn’t feel I knew myself. And being able to have pieces of dialogue between myself and I helped me realize that sense of self — of who I am as a person.
“I do remember one line from it. It’s: ‘You sit and wonder why your head hurts when you cry/But, darling, that’s just life/You live until you die.’”
Treatment center residents sat outside her room and listened to her play guitar and sing. “The amount of people grew and grew and grew. I felt I was inspiring people, in a way. And I was able to connect with people in a creative and musical way.”
Carrington realized she wanted to “create music that people can relate to and experience life through.”
She then went to St. Mary’s School, a boarding school in Raleigh, North Carolina. “It was kind of a big breath of fresh air. Being somewhere where I had a sense of freedom.”
Carrington moved back to Memphis in 2021 and began recording with Elliott Ives and Scott Hardin at Young Avenue Sound.
The track “Messed Up Man” is based on experiences at that first boarding school, she says. “How the person that did that stuff to me and all the people screwing me over a little bit were supposedly mature people. But they really acted like children.”
Says Ives: “Ava is extremely talented at such a young age. She has a unique self-taught unorthodox guitar style that only she can execute. She’s not afraid to venture into different genres with her songwriting and production. Her voice is so pure and balanced. The mic loves her full range. She reminds me of a female Kurt Cobain, which I have not heard anyone of the like since Nirvana.
“All these elements combined with her real-life experienced subject matter set her apart as a songwriter and performer.”
Carrington, who is working with California producer Adam Castilla, says “loss of childhood” is a theme running through a lot of her new songs. “And wondering whether I’m grieving the passing of a simpler time or mourning the loss of something that was never given a chance to exist.”
To hear Carrington’s music, find her on Spotify.
