Rosemary Ash made her singing debut at the age of 16 in the Café Why, a coffee house held every Friday evening in the Y building in St John’s Newfoundland. Raised in a musical family, singing has always been her great joy in life. Getting friends together for musical evenings turned into organizing musical events and over the past 15 years she has started up many community coffee house venues both in British Columbia and her home province of Newfoundland.
Rosemary's debut as a songwriter was as an invited performer at the Newfoundland Labrador Folk Festival in St. John's NL in 1997. Following that, coffee houses in BC and Newfoundland were her performance focus until Canadian Cabaret, featuring Canadian songwriters, at the Kamloops Convention Centre in 2010. Now it's back to developing and ssupporting community coffee houses, especially her very first one, "just down the road" in beautiful Barnhartvale.
Early influences of North American folk, Celtic, Country and Bluegrass and a love of harmony singing can all be heard in Rosemary’s original songs and choice of cover tunes. For many years she played the autoharp, but that has taken a back seat to the guitar. Her voice remains her “instrument of choice”.
Rosemary had a great wanderlust, having lived in three provinces and five US states until finally in 1982 she found her real home in the Kamloops area.