Amanda Ashley: pop chanteuse. Amanda Ashley: singer-songwriter. This 26-year-old Rochester musician embraces both of those seemingly diametrically opposed sounds with equal helpings of passion, moxie, and zeal, tying the styles together with a big, beautiful voice. And the dichotomy doesn't stop there. Ashley's classic beauty is countered by her poignant and at times biting lyrics. Picture Dorothy Lamour sporting brass knuckles.

Live, Ashley gigs around the region, hauling her keyboard from joint to joint to play her singer-songwriter material along with the occasional cover. In the studio, she wails over slick mainstream pop tracks infused with classic r&b, funk, and a soulful kick-in-the-pants that pop music used to have once upon a time. She's by no means a throwback, but this is how they used to do it - and this is truly her sound. Amanda Ashley is for real.

Born Amanda Ashley Rodriguez in Holtsville, Long Island, Ashley started on piano at age 6 and played violin throughout elementary and high school. Things got rolling when she picked up the guitar at age 10.

"I started writing music once I got the guitar," Ashley says. "I always made up songs. I can remember when I was a kid, I had this little recorder my parents bought for me, and I would record my voice and sing stuff. But I was really shy. I would never sing in front of anybody."

None of those early songs have survived. "Definitely not," she says, sounding a little horrified at the idea. "That would be embarrassing."

She started playing in front of crowds by going to open-mic nights when she was 16. "There was one at Starbucks on Monday nights," says Ashley. "All my high-school friends would come out and I'd play songs I wrote. And that helped me get over the fear of playing in front of people."

Ashley's musical pursuits continued into higher learning. She enrolled at SUNY Fredonia as a music major, only to change horses mid-stream; she couldn't truck with the long-haired stuff.

"At first I thought that I would be a music teacher," she says. "But it was really classically oriented. And I love classical music, but I didn't really feel like teaching music. It's kind of my own fault because I auditioned with classical piano."

She pursued painting instead, graduating with a fine-arts degree, and went the whole teacher route again. "I thought I'd be Professor Rodriguez at college, teaching intermediate painting and drawing classes," she says. "I started going to grad school and decided, ‘I don't want to do this,' so I stopped. Teaching, being confined to a syllabus, kind of took the freedom and the love away for me."

Ashley moved to Rochester with her boyfriend (now husband) in 2008 and dove into the local music scene. And though now she works alone for the most part, she cut her teeth in the band Reviving Ivory.

"It lasted for a year and a half," she says. "We had a lot of fun, I learned a lot. It was really my first real band experience."

It was also the impetus for getting her to fly solo.

"It was my band," she says. "But I didn't really mean for it to be my band. I originally wanted to do a Fleetwood Mac type of thing. I wanted to sing and do back-up vocals and sometimes be a front person, but I was writing the music and I was the only girl in the band, so naturally everything gravitated toward me. But that really wasn't my intention. When I noticed how it was becoming, I took on the role. I was doing everything - everything I do for myself now." The band put out one EP before disbanding.

With just her piano for accompaniment, Ashley's music is bold, visceral, and unapologetic. And in a display that is somewhat atypical to the form, it isn't couched in metaphor. Her keyboard attack is percussive, with occasional lush flourishes and hints of classical. It serves the songs but takes a back seat to her pipes; this lady can sing.

�Texas producer Frankie O. Solovely thought so too when he came across Ashley's music on the online music community Reverb Nation. All of Ashley's pop tracks have been created though this long-distance collaboration. The stuff is incredible, and a complete 180 from her solo material.

Ashley explains: "The pop stuff... My mindset writing for that type of music is completely different from my singer-songwriter stuff. My singer-songwriter stuff, people want to put in that angry female rock category. I think it comes off that way because when I sit down to write it, I'm emptying my soul. I'm addressing how I feel, what's around me." Meanwhile the pop stuff, according to Ashley, offers a respite from her more serious compositions, even with its intensity.

One album of her solo material - "Back To Me" - was released a year ago, and a pop CD with Solovely is in the works.

On top of her music and hosting various open-mic nights around town, Ashley still paints, though the urge to do so doesn't burn as hot as music. "I don't feel as passionate," she says. "There's passion there, but it's a different kind of passion. I get a lot of my satisfaction out of music...sanity mostly. If I didn't write music I'd be one of those crazy girls."

Amanda Ashley

Friday, December 9

Quaker Steak & Lube, 2205 Buffalo Road

9 p.m. Free. 697-9464

reverbnation.com/amandaashley