St. Pete songwriter Chasing Jonah details 'Canyon' release show at Hideaway Cafe

When asked how she felt when she completed her EP Canyon, local indie musician Ashley Dudukovich, otherwise known by her artist name Chasing Jonah, said, “Raw. Vulnerable. Honestly this is the most terrifying record I’ve ever released in my life.”

She plays an intimate, cellist accompanied performance of the new four-track record this weekend at St. Pete’s Hideaway Cafe on Jan. 22 at 8 p.m. What makes the show even more special is that the Hideaway is Dudukovich’s main reason for moving to St. Petersburg.
“That was one of my first experiences of going into a room full of people who cared about music,” Dudukovich said. “I felt wanted as an artist and a musician.”

She says Canyon was so difficult to write due to prior mistreatment in the music industry. While the album references personal relationships and healing accompanied with those types of experiences, it coincidentally parallels career tribulations in her life.

“I had been burned by the music industry, so I had taken a break for a while,” she said. However, because music was her vice, she found it difficult to move forward without it.

“The whole record is my attempt at healing. It was very therapeutic for me,” Dudukovich mentioned that when she sat down to write Canyon, the story unfolded in one breath. “As if I had been holding in all those feelings. And that was a moment for me to process everything.”

The album opens with the hypnotic ode, “Forgive Me,” where striking piano melodies accompany Dudukovich’s haunting voice as she croons about falling out of love. “It hurts just as much to leave someone that you should feel something for.”

Dudukovich emphasizes the album’s specialty, saying it’s, “Definitely the first time I haven’t had anybody over my shoulder telling me, ‘Dumb down your lyrics, or you need to change this and make this more likable.’ I just did what I wanted to do and actually, it’s the first time I made something I actually liked, which never happens.”
Local Sarasota artist, Cari Robaldo, designed the album art: A woman's torso with a gaping “canyon” where a heart should be. But, trees grow from the crater, representing healing and growth. An evocative visual of the double-edged sword of leaving old relationships to heal yourself and the eventual terror of experiencing new relationships.

“And that's why I also love the artwork because in that void that is a result of sometimes how life hits you. Whether it’s heartbreaks, whether it’s career disappointments, any emotional growth in general, you always lose a lot first before you can kind of reexamine yourself,” Dudukovich explained. “That’s kind of what this record is, it was a moment for me to take years of examining and reexamining what I wanted from music and also approaching it and following my internal instincts toward creating.”