Glen Campbell's Daughter Ashley Campbell on Her Dad: "He Doesn't Pick Up the Guitar Anymore"

Ashley Campbell, the daughter of country music veteran Glen Campbell, says her father doesn't pick up a guitar anymore but can be found singing to himself quite often. In April 2014, news reports indicated that Glen Campbell had become a patient at an Alzheimer's long-term care and treatment facility.On March 10, 2015, NBC News reported that Glen could no longer speak for himself. 

When asked about her memories of her father as a musician, she doesn't miss a beat. "My earliest memories of being in awe of him as a musician was when he had a theater in Branson. I think I was in the first or second grade, and we lived there for a couple of months of the year. I remember that he would be doing two shows a day all week, and I always tried to make sure that I was there to see him do 'Classical Gas' and the Beach Boys medley. I wanted to see him play the instrumental part, because that was so exciting for me," she says, adding that while it's tough to pick one of his recordings as a favorite, she would go with a relatively obscure track. "I would have to say 'Ocean in His Eyes," she says of the track, which appeared on Reunion: The Songs of Jimmy Webb in 1974. "With most artists, I'm a big fan of the work that not many people know about. It's just this really cool production, open tuning on a 12-string, and the lyrics are still amazing." 

Meanwhile Ashley is following in the footsteps of her dad.  She has released her first single, "Remembering." The song also appeared on the soundtrack of the Academy Award-nominated film Glen Campbell...I'll Be Me, which documented the singer on his final tour and captured his struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

Ashley says she is touched by the impact the song has had. "It's been great to see the reaction that my single has had on people when I play it live. It's very rewarding to have people tell me they enjoy my song and it made them feel something in their own personal lives."

"Remembering" was a song that took several rounds to write, she says. "I had been touring with my dad since I graduated college, and we started his goodbye tour in 2011. We finished at the end of 2012, and then I moved to Nashville. I wrote the song with my friend Kai Welch. I started the song when I was living in Malibu, but I just wasn't able to finish it. If I'm feeling like a song is forced, I like to put it on the back burner. It just flowed out once I moved to Nashville and started working on the song with Kai. I made a demo of it, and we sent it to the filmmakers, and they loved it and put it in the movie."

 

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