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THE BiTS INTERVIEW: Ally Venable

Although she is still only in her early twenties, Ally Venable is becoming a world wide
sensation. Born and raised in the ‘beautiful country of Texas’, she has already done a world

tour with the Ruf Blues Caravan and has had huge success with her musical output, including
the most recent album, ‘Texas Honey’. Ian McKenzie spoke to her on the telephone, at her
home.

BiTS: Let’s make a start then if we can. I’m going to ask you a very simple question to start off

with. Tell me something about yourself that people don’t know.

AV: I’m a pretty open book when it comes to
stuff. I recently went to Hawaii, and I went
skydiving [laughing], which was pretty fun.

BiTS: That’s wonderful. Actually, believe it or

not, I was going to ask you about that because
there’s a picture you put on Instagram of you
doing that. What was it like, was it exciting?

AV: Oh, yes, it was great. I’m an adrenaline

junky now. I just have to do stuff like that all
the time. No, I’m kidding [laughs].

BiTS: You started playing when you were
very young. Tell me how that came about.
How did you, first of all, hear blues anyway?

AV: I’ve always been able to sing. I’d sing in
church when I was really little and then I just
wanted to play guitar for fun, around my
family and friends, like gatherings and then I
started playing guitar when I was around 12-

years-old. When I first started playing guitar, I was playing country music and I still love country
music. I really love Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood, stuff that 12-year-old girls like
[laughing] and what got me into playing blues was Stevie Ray Vaughan and what drew me to him
at first, I didn’t know a lot about the guitar. At that time I only knew a few open chords and that
was it and what really got me into Stevie was his voice was so unique to me and it was just a very
unique sound, but it drew you in and I just really loved his voice. Then, later on, I found out that he
was known for his guitar playing [chuckling], so then I was like I want to see if I can play some of
Dallas, Texas, Night skyline.
his songs, just attempt them and that’s what got me into playing blues music. It was just a gateway
for me into the blues genre and that’s kinda what my goal is with my music is to kind of introduce
people that don’t know a lot about blues, people around my age into the genre, so they can discover
all the things I’ve discovered, like Albert King and B.B. King and Buddy Guy and all these really cool
artists.

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