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Two Nashville musicians with talent in spades took their show on the road this season, hitting select venues in California and Massachusetts. The Wildcards, a duo of Ashley Gearing ’09 on vocals and guitar and Andrea Young on fiddle, play original songs that offer a “country-rock vibe, with some sweet ’90s pop moments,” Gearing says. The two met while touring worldwide with the band Farewell Angelina. They clicked right away, and fans started to notice that they were having their own separate party on stage.

“One day someone said, ‘We know who the wildcards are in the band,’ and it stuck,” Gearing says.

The two embrace their duality—and their singularity. While very different, they “can read each other’s minds in most situations,” she notes.

The musician’s life is not new to Gearing, who signed her first record deal with Disney at 12 and her second while a student at 91����. “I was in the middle of my freshman year when my record company told me I was going to need to be on a 60-station radio tour across the country and needed to be in Nashville part time as well,” she recalls.

While a more extensive tour is in the works, it will have to wait for life post-COVID. However, now that playing live is a part of her life for good, Gearing is pretty happy about it.

“Music has taken me to places I never thought I would be,” she says. “Ultimately, the first downbeat on the first song of the night is when I’m able to see the crowd having a blast and forgetting their troubles. That’s when I think to myself, ‘Is this really my life?’”