Asha Banks talks about her songs the way an actor talks about scenes, which makes sense given her career is firmly rooted in both fields. In a recent discussion celebrating her EP “How Real Was It?” and what’s next, Banks kept circling one core idea. The most powerful work doesn’t come from dressing things up. It comes from being brave enough to say the thing you are tempted to edit out.
“As a songwriter, every day, I’m trying to be more honest and say the scary things,” she said in conversations with Juice Box Press and 1824. She’s taken that lesson from the writers she admires most, the ones who insist that vulnerability is the whole point. “The scariest thing that you have to say is the thing that people want to hear the most.”
That instinct shapes “How Real Was It?.” It’s a project that plays like a handful of late-night pages torn from a notebook, but with enough craft in the margins to feel cinematic. When asked if there was a lyric that felt especially vulnerable to share, Banks resisted the urge to spotlight a single line and instead pointed to one song as a whole. “It’s kind of a cop out answer,” she admitted, “but the whole of the song ‘Delay’ felt really honest.”
Even writing it felt like stepping onto thin ice. She described walking into the room nervous, not only because it was her first time writing with her collaborators Taylor (Mackall) and Mason (Stoops), but because she respected their work so much. “I remember being nervous and a bit scared in the room,” she said, and she’s learned to treat that feeling as a signal. If it scares you a little, it’s probably worth putting on paper. The goal, as she described it, is to get it “out of my brain and out of my mouth” and into the world where other people can carry it too.
That theme of releasing control came up more than once. Banks laughed about what the process has taught her: “These two EPs that I’ve made have made me realize that I’m probably a bit of a control freak, and I’m telling myself that that’s a good thing.”
Still, for someone who self-identifies that way, she speaks about collaboration like it’s the antidote and the upgrade. Looking back on the girl who started writing at six, Banks said the impulse has stayed the same. “I still am the girl that I was when I was six,” she said. Back then, she wasn’t even writing songs in the formal sense, she was “basically singing poems out loud.” It was more about needing to say something true, than crafting something specifically for an audience.
What changed was learning to build with other people. She talked about “getting used to working with other people that are amazing” and letting a team “flourish,” something she didn’t have when she was writing alone in her room. In the same breath, she named another kind of letting go that comes with becoming a working artist: accepting that some songs you love simply will not make the cut.
If her songwriting reads like a diary, her acting background explains why it still feels composed. Banks described her creative life as split between living inside other people and returning to herself. Acting has meant spending years trying to understand “somebody else’s psyche,” and it’s made it more important, not less, to come back and do that same work internally. “I can kind of character-analyze myself as a person,” she said. “It just grounds me.”
“How Real Was It?” reflects that inner process. Banks described the EP less like a clean storyline and more like a specific period of time, full of contradictions. “It was very healing for me to sort of come to terms with the fact that that’s very normal and okay, to not kind of feel linear in any way.” The songs act like real thoughts do: doubling back, second-guessing, and asking questions that don’t always resolve immediately.
“Head Start,” the closing track, is built around that uncertainty on purpose. Banks said it’s full of questions that never get answered. Even musically, she wanted it to feel unresolved, with no neat drop or summary, only tension that keeps building. For her, it lands “somewhere in the middle,” both an ending and a beginning at once.
Even production choices can reshape meaning, which is part of what makes the EP feel more than just diaristic. Banks pointed to “Half Built Bridge” as a track that started off stripped back and lyric-forward, then changed as it was produced. The final arrangement sounded “sunny,” almost ironically so, and that contrast gave the song a second edge. It made it, in her words, “more heartbreaking,” which she admitted is always the goal.
For all the introspection, Banks didn’t frame the work as solitary. If anything, she spoke most vividly about connection, especially after playing live shows. “The thing that I guess I’m looking for has become connection,” she said. “It’s wild how something that’s so yours can become somebody else’s so quickly.”
That’s the part she calls rewarding. Writing may be the scary step, but being in a room with people is where the point of it all becomes apparent. Performing, touring, and seeing lyrics come back at her is where it flips from private to communal. When asked what she wants fans to leave her shows feeling, she didn’t identify one emotion. She described the sensation of a great show: adrenaline, release, the afterglow you carry out into the night. “That sort of fizzy feeling,” she said. “The adrenaline.”
And when the conversation turned to what’s next, she kept it simple and honest: it depends on what happens. “The honest, probably unfortunate truth is that I’m constantly thinking about myself and constantly writing about myself,” she said, half-laughing. “We’ll see what happens, and then inevitably, you’ll hear about it.”
There was one more dream she tossed into the universe, half-joking but fully sincere. If her music ever lands in a film franchise, she already knows which one. She’s a lifelong fan of “The Hunger Games,” and she can hear her work living in that world. “That would be an absolute dream,” she said, practically waving at the music supervisors through the screen. Consider this our polite public nudge.
Featured Photo Credits: Louis Browne
Nathan Smith is a Providence-based music photographer and journalist focusing on capturing the special moments and unfiltered magic of live performances. Whether he’s shooting established artists at sold-out TD Garden shows or documenting the rise of emerging local bands, his goal is the same: to pull viewers directly into the heart of the moment.
His writing spotlights rising artists and local scenes, with a focus on telling the stories that often get overlooked. A lifelong music fan and musician himself, Nathan approaches interviews and portraits as conversations rather than transactions, building trust with artists so their genuine personalities can shine through. Whether he’s backstage, in the photo pit, or at home in front of the keyboard, he brings the same curiosity and care to every assignment.
Outside of his press work with Juice Box Press, Nathan works regularly as a photographer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous bands in the Boston and Providence area. Nathan also plays violin with a local orchestra, follows Celtics basketball almost religiously, and is an avid fantasy reader.