Ali Sperry

Ali Sperry & the Family Vacation are a Nashville-based conglomeration of friends, roommates and lovers whos music combines elements of indie-pop, folk and rock. And you might as well go ahead stir it all up with some soul. The songs in their simplest form are stories of love, of hearts broken and healing, and explorations of human relationships with ourselves and one another. In layers of lush string arrangements, of rock & roll electric guitar with tender finger-picked acoustic, and drum tones that run the gamut from Ringo to tribal, these simple stories become evocative and visceral musical landscapes.

Ali had the good fortune in this life to be born to two musician parents who encouraged her innate desire to sing and create music from the time she could speak. The first "official" song of Ali's was written and performed at age 7 in front of 2000 people at the Golden Dome in Fairfield, Iowa. These are the lyrics:

"It's in the sky, I see it fly

It's in the air, everywhere

I know that love has come, peace has come, a song has come to everyone.

Lighting the light of everyone everywhere."

Music has been a constant in Ali's life. Her childhood soundtrack was her moms singing and her dads cello playing, in addition to being well-steeped in their favorite music of the 60s and 70s, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor. Once Ali discovered her moms vinyl copy of Song to a Seagull in 7th grade, she began to sing and harmonize her way through the whole album and then flip it over and do it again.

Her love of music, combined with a passion for theatre, brought her to Syracuse University where she studied musical theatre and got her BFA in acting. Writing songs as a hobby during these years, she spent some time in New York after college to pursue acting. At a point when she had relocated to Chicago, and the music-creating side of her was gaining traction, Ali had the opportunity to audition for a band in Nashville, Tennessee. Family friends of hers were putting together the all-girl group Sweetwater Rose. Ali literally drove the U-haul from Chicago straight to the first SWR rehearsal.

Now, over four years later, she has released her debut solo project Storybook and she and the Family Vacation play regularly in Nashville and on tour. The band loosely formed in January of 2012, when this group of friends gathered together in the studio to record Storybook. When Ali was first preparing for the album, she had no plans of putting together a band, she just asked her most trusted and dear musical compatriots to get involved with the project, and they did. It was the force of their combined energy and creativity that made these songs what they are, how they are meant to be heard.

"I cant think of anything more joyful", says Ali, "than the act of making music with people who I love as friends and deeply admire as musicians. There is no company I would rather be in."

Ali has been working on a new release that will be coming out this spring and tours are in the works for spring and summer.