Cashavelly Morrison

Cashavelly has been immersed in art since her upbringing in West Virginia, and with all its permutations, it has always been a catalyst for transformation and spiritual reckoning. She studied ballet from the age of 3 until she left home at 15 to study with legendary ballerina Melissa Hayden at the North Carolina School of the Arts (now UNCSA). She went on to dance in Texas, Massachusetts, and Virginia before suffering a broken vertebra that left her confined to a bed in a back brace for a year. During that year of isolation, she sang to herself making up lyrics and melodies as a means for comfort. She wrote dozens of songs that she kept secret, not confident enough to share them.

In the summer of 2001, craving stimulation and her back mostly healed, she moved to New York City to study acting at Stella Adler Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. There, she was given her first formal training in singing. During her studies, she had the fortune to befriend Kurt Vonnegut’s daughter, who introduced her to her father. He first spoke to her about following her passion for writing. Inspired by his encouragement, Cashavelly immersed herself in writing screenplays and more songs, which eventually led her to move back to North Carolina to study at Salem College, and then on to Virginia to study with writer Richard Dillard at Hollins University, where she received her Master’s in Creative Writing.

Her writing and love for music led her to create her first album, The Kingdom Belongs to a Child. Focusing on the roots music of her native West Virginia, she recorded the album with her collaborator and guitarist husband Ryan MacLeod. It released in 2015 and won an Independent Music Award for Best Alt. Country Album. No Depression gave rave reviews; Huffington Post called it “honest, evocative, and intoxicating”; and The Boot described it as “haunting and timely”.

The next year, Cashavelly wrote and recorded her second album, Hunger. After its release in 2018, Rolling Stone named her an “Artist to Watch”, calling the album “the atmospheric soundtrack to late-night fever dreams.” Glide said Hunger “paints an ominous portrait of the dark underbelly of American privilege”. She returned to West Virginia to perform in front of her family on NPR’s Mountain Stage.

That same year, Cashavelly had what she calls a spiritual crisis. “I suddenly realized nearly all my decisions in life had been based on fear. What was my life if fear had always defined my choices?” She began to follow her fears—camping alone, running at night, and showing the most vulnerable parts of herself in her personal relationships. Covid was raging. Her children were stuck at home. “I failed over and over, as most parents probably felt. It was too much. I felt like I was pushed to some soul level way of being, out of sheer necessity.” She joined a wilderness immersion program and learned friction fire, hide tanning, basket-weaving, flint knapping, and plant medicine, satisfying a longing to be connected to the wilderness.

What emerged was a new record, METAMORPHOSIS, created amidst this transformation, morphing into a stirring indie Americana that released in October of 2021. She began to dance for the first time in many years, listening to her body in a new way. She wrote a screenplay and co-produced, co-directed, choreographed, starred and danced in a feature film to accompany the album. All the artistic skills she had learned over her life came to fruition. Her feature film Metamorphosis won awards in the LA Independent Women Film Awards, the Montreal Independent Film Festival, the Women’s International Film Festival, and was an Official Selection of RiverRun International Film Festival, the Boston Independent Film Awards, the Berlin International Art Film Festival, and the Toronto International Women Film Festival.

Cashavelly now considers herself a multi-disciplinary artist. She is currently at work on her next project. In 2022, she received a North Carolina Arts Council Grant to complete it. She is also the founder of The Center for Female Sovereignty. For more info, click here.