CALI DREAMING

For songwriter Priscilla Ahn, moving out West meant making it big
By Cristina Black

Priscilla Ahn speaks just like she sings, in a voice that’s sweet, hopeful, and full of life. The singer-songwriter is home in the L.A. apartment she shares with her boyfriend, taking a break between road gigs to promote her breezy debut album, A Good Day. The set of mellow, acoustic guitar-laden, love-and-life songs just came out on Blue Note, the legendary jazz imprint that nurtured Norah Jones to blockbuster status. Though it’s the one label Ahn always thought would be perfect for her, the contract, the tours, and the press are all a big surprise. “I didn’t expect anything at all,” she says modestly. The 24-year-old beauty is just happy to be making a career of music. “I feel really lucky that I’m able to make enough dough to just do this,” she says.

Ahn might feel like life is charmed at the moment, but it’s not as though her recent streak of golden opportunities came about purely by chance. A theme in Ahn’s back story that also emerges in her gentle music is that of perseverance in the face of self-doubt. Her first single, “Dream” paints a picture of a child imagining her own bright future: “I’m just a little girl/alone in my little world/who dreamed of a little home for me.”

That fictional child and Ahn herself seem to have quite a bit in common. Once a small-town Pennsylvania girl, Ahn wagered a college education against her desire to be a musician. A guitar player since age 14, she originally thought she’d parlay the hobby into an academic pursuit. Ironically, a professor at the state college music program where she’d auditioned encouraged her to put college aside and get serious about songwriting. The decision was devastating to her mother, a school district employee. “She was so pissed about it,” Ahn giggles. “She wanted me to go to school and be, like, smart.”
While her peers settled into dorm life and enrolled in 101s, Ahn bought a stack of books about the music business and drove 90 minutes into Philadelphia to hit the open mic circuit nightly. Soon, she hooked up with like-minded musicians, scored a regular gig, and landed an internship at the studio where Blue Note artist Amos Lee was recording his first EP.

“I slowly started to feel cool for the first time in my life,” she says. But coolness wasn’t the only fringe benefit. Besides the free catering and new friends, Ahn had the chance to record some of her own stuff on the side. The songs she demoed were a long way from the Ani Difranco-influenced stuff she’d written as a teenager, and they laid the foundation for a stunning debut album arranged with syrupy strings and ukulele flourishes to frame her honey-drenched vocals. Ahn knew that it would take another leap of faith to get her tunes heard by a wider audience, so when Lee’s record was finished, she joined his producer, Barrie Maguire, on her first trip to L.A. “People back home were hating on L.A., saying it was phony,” she recalls, “but I loved it. It was so warm and dry compared to Pennsylvania.”

A few weeks later, Ahn threw a couple of guitars in her car and hugged her (now super supportive) mom goodbye. She was heading to California, and she wasn’t coming back.

Though she quickly blended into the SoCal songwriters’ circuit, there were trying times still to come. Bouncing through a series of rundown apartments, she took a job as a waitress at Sunset Boulevard spot Cheebo. “A lot of yuppies came in there,” she recalls, “and they were really miserable.” The vibe took a toll on her spirit and after a year, college back in Pennsylvania began to look awfully appealing. “I was depressed and lost,” she says. “But then I had a talk with a friend I respected. He convinced me to continue. I thought, well, if he believes in me this much, I have to try.”

Sure enough, things began to look up, and they haven’t stopped since. Through a subsequent gig opening for fellow singer-songwriter Joshua Radin, Ahn hooked up with drummer Joey Waronker, who produced an EP for her, and, later, A Good Day. It was her old friend Lee who encouraged Blue Note to get behind her debut. “Every person I’ve met has pushed me along in some way,” says Ahn, her charming humility popping up once again. It’s a chain of good fortune that she hopes will continue, but she’s wildly happy with her current situation. Though Ahn’s career is really just beginning, to her, it already feels like a dream come true.