From Ballet to Ballads: Ava Carter Does it All

Ava Carter comes from a musical family. Her father, frontman of the indie pop Americana band “The Looking”, and her younger sister Vella are both musical, and she credits them as her biggest inspirations. Some of her first interactions with live music were her and her sister sneaking into New York City clubs at eight or nine years old to watch their dad play. This past summer, her dad suffered a severe stroke that has left him unable to speak. “It’s coming back”, she says. “It’s a recovery process. So when I talk about him it’s like, he’s still a musician to me, but he can’t act on it right now. But he’s a huge inspiration and part of my life”. 

How did you find it growing up in a family of musicians? Was it more of a collaborative environment or could it get competitive?

Honestly it was really collaborative, and we still write music and sing together. Vella is a fantastic guitar player,  way better than me; and she has a beautiful voice and can sing too. We love to harmonize together, and write. And my dad has always, he never pushed us, but he was always there to cultivate a space. Like, I grew up with a huge grand piano in our living room, and underneath he has like 25 guitars that he’s collected over the years. 

When did you start making music for yourself?

When high school started I really started writing more for myself and kind of turning towards maybe wanting to go into music for college. But I was also a dancer, so I was kind of making the decision between music and dance.

When did you start dancing?

I started dancing when I was like nine, and I did all types because we had to in my preprofessional program, but ballet was what I focused on. When I was like twelve or thirteen then I switched to Ballet Academy East, which is just another preprofessional program at a higher level. So, at that point I was deciding whether or not to stop at regular school and stick with the preprofessional program and do home school. But then I decided like, well, Covid hit and I got injured. It wasn’t a horrible injury, just a bad sprain that took me out for a couple weeks so then I had time to be like, is this what I want? And then I decided I wanted to go to college. I just thought it would be limiting myself because, I did love dancing and part of me, like, did really want to go into a professional career in ballet, but then I had all these other interests that I felt like it would limit me from exploring. So I decided not to, and then I kind of stopped dancing. I still dance when I can, I do a lot of yoga now.

Do you miss ballet? From my perception it seems very rigid compared to your other interests like songwriting and poetry, how do you feel like you’re drawn to both in certain ways?

I do have moments where I’m like, oh my God, not did I make the wrong decision, but just like, I miss it so much. But yeah, I mean, it’s different. Like, ballet is very rigid, but I do think that it’s taught me a lot about time management and doing things when I need to do them because I had so much limited time when I danced because it would start after school at four and then I wouldn’t end until like 11 or 12 at night. I was like, very regimented, but it really has shaped the way I go about things. And I do also think that the fluidity of writing and writing poetry and writing music, like, for me it’s very connected to the body and movement. I think it’s something I hold in my body when I write, and there is some sort of connection there between my past and movement through, like, lyrics or singing. It’s not gone, it’s still something that’s a very large part of my life. 

In 2022, you released your single “Lover Boy”, what was the recording process like for that?

I have a friend, Nate D’Albert, who co-produced it with me. So, I went to his house and he just had a small production system, nothing crazy just like a kid in a bedroom. We were like 17, and I came in there with nothing. And so I was just like, okay I need lyrics. So I just really quickly wrote them down, like 20 minutes maybe; and I didn’t change those. Like, those are the lyrics. And then he just freestyled on the piano, and it was awesome and it worked well. And eventually we were like, we should release this.

Had you ever recorded music before “Lover Boy”?

My junior year independent project was writing an EP, which I didn’t release
and that was produced by my dad. That was produced on his equipment in our house, and it was really fun, but I never released it. He kind of just let me have the reins on it. He set up my microphone and I just had the songs written and he’d be like, okay, let’s record this one. Like, can we do this now? Like, I have free time now. So I would just go in and he would first show me some options that I could choose for the production, and then we would see how it sounded. So it was a very collaborative experience with my dad, he really wanted to help and he taught me a lot about production. He didn’t like, say anything about the lyrics. The lyrics were personal, definitely. But, I mean, he’s a songwriter himself, so I don’t think he would really pry on that. His song lyrics are also wild and crazy. Yeah. But yeah, it was definitely like a different experience to work with someone so close to me. So that was my first time really recording my songs, but I didn’t release them.

Since you released it, “Lover Boy” has garnered over 28,000 streams on Spotify. Did you guys promote it, and what was your reaction to people’s response?

We did a little bit (of promotion). Nick had a friend who just put it on a bunch of different playlists on Spotify. I didn’t really care if it got any listens. I posted it on my Instagram and I wanted my friends to listen, but I didn’t really care. I think maybe (the playlists) are what did it. Even if they were smaller I think people just saw it and liked it and added it to theirs and it just expanded. I mean, the streams kept going, and I was just shocked. I was just like, this is really cool.

What are your plans for releasing music in the future, and did you feel pressure after your first single got so many streams?

I felt a lot of pressure. Not immediately after, then I was just like okay this is awesome I’ll just let it be. Also, I was starting college pretty soon. But, I definitely want to release more music, specifically with Nick because it just went so well. I just kind of slipped in my writing and like specifically in music because I’m just so busy here. I do have songs that are pretty finished but I just haven’t pushed myself to the next step of releasing. I think there’s also a part of me that’s like, I could release another song and it just like plateaus, you know? Which is totally fine and that probably would happen because like, I don’t have a platform whatsoever. But I think, yeah, when I’m writing a song I’ll just start on my guitar or piano, I have my journal that I write in, and I take ideas from that. But right now I just haven’t really done it to the extent that I want to. I’ve been writing way more poems.

Any last thoughts?

I think I would just say, like, I want to get back to writing and releasing music. That’s my goal. But I do think that it’s such a big part of my life. I think music is so important for everybody, and I think that, everyone should write and I think it and it’s something that is a really important piece of like the way we interact with people and the way we are as humans and listening to music, writing music or just like writing in general, I think is so is so important. So I keep trying to remind myself of that because when I stop writing because I never like, I have stopped writing for a while, but it’s there. I’m just taking a minimal break.