“my first ever christmas project is yours to unwrap nov 6,” Ashley Cooke wrote on Instagram in October.
Today is that day. Her holiday EP, “wrapped,” is out now on Big Loud Records. It has five songs. Two are new originals, the title track and “secret santa.” The other three are old favorites: “have yourself a merry little christmas,” “jingle bell rock” and “silent night.”
That last one is the family song. The label lists it as “silent night (with the cooke family).” Big Loud’s announcement says it “features vocals from several of Cooke’s family members,” but it hasn’t said which Cookes made it to the microphone.
If you only know Ashley from the radio, she’s the 29-year-old singer behind “Your Place” and “Never Til Now,” her duet with Brett Young. She’s out on her Baby Blues World Tour right now, and it runs through Feb. 25 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Her family learned to stick together early, partly because they had to. Ashley was born in Wisconsin, and her dad’s corporate job kept them packing boxes. Billboard and MusicRow both reported that she lived in 19 different homes before she turned 18.
“My dad’s job moved us all around the country, but music always stayed the constant in my life,” she told SongwriterUniverse in 2023.
The family spent her middle school years in Pleasanton, Calif., east of San Francisco. “I had multiple hometowns growing up. But Pleasanton was always a place that felt homey and so beautiful,” she told RIFF Magazine in October.
Not every move was for Dad’s work, though. Billboard reported that the family also moved to Los Angeles to support her older sister Jenn’s dream of acting. Jenn, who went by Jenny back then, told the Pleasanton Weekly in 2011 that she won “a full paid scholarship to Hollywood” when she was 9. Ashley remembers tagging along. “She loved acting and pageantry and all of that. I was kind of dragged along, the little sister,” she told Billboard with a laugh.
The little sister didn’t stay on the sidelines for long.
In June 2011, the Pleasanton Weekly wrote about “Jenny and Ashley Cooke” before they played the Alameda County Fair. Jenny was 15. Ashley was 13 and played acoustic guitar. The two sisters had a debut EP called “Songs About You,” and they had just played shows in Kentucky, Ohio and Florida. Their mother, Beth, traveled with them.
Jenny explained how they split the singing. “I do a lot of melody and Ashley sings harmony,” she told the paper. “Since we’re sisters, our voices mesh so well together.”
Ashley said she simply followed her big sister. “I was there for the ride,” she said. “When I saw her, I wanted to do it as well.”
The sisters later called themselves the Lockets. Their old YouTube channel still has a short clip of them on stage at The Wilderness Lodge in the Smokies, where the video’s description says they sang for a sold-out crowd.
Jenny and Ashley Cooke sing together as teenagers
Jenn stuck with acting, and Ashley headed to Nashville and a record deal of her own. Her sister still finds her way into the songs. Talking about her song “excuses” with RIFF Magazine, Ashley said, “In that first verse, we added a lot of stuff about my mom and my sister.”
Now the Cookes are on a record together again, this time for Christmas. Before you get to “silent night,” start with the title track. Ashley’s lyric video for “wrapped” puts her beside a Christmas tree with a long roll of ribbon.
Ashley’s lyric video for her new Christmas song “wrapped”
The whole EP is streaming now. When “silent night” comes on, listen for the harmony parts. Fifteen years ago, Ashley was the one singing them behind her big sister at a county fair.