He began recording music and releasing it on SoundCloud in early 2020, as a 15-year-old in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a city outside Asheville with a population around 14,000. I don’t really care if anybody else sees me as that.” But between the formal outfit (for a teenager usually caught wearing T-shirts or hoodies) and the expressive touches (for a free-thinker rarely caught without his nails painted), the message seems clear: Yes, this is a special occasion for Gutierrez, but no, he’s not going to reverse course on what got him here for it.Īfter such an exclusively online rise over the past year-and-a-half, it’s striking to hear Gutierrez, at all of 16 years old, put so much stock into his live performance. “As long as I’m able to show myself an artist, that’s really all I care about. “Everything, to me, has a meaning, even if it doesn’t have any meaning to people that are watching it,” he says. This isn’t for the crowd, though - this is for Gutierrez. A voice comes from the couch in his tent, crowded with a posse of musician friends: “It looks good, man. He’s sitting on the ground in a white button-down shirt and black pants, parting the curly, overgrown mop on his head so his mother, Rebecca, can touch up the makeup. “All this is very artistic,” he tells me minutes before, flashing his hands, black-and-white X’s drawn on top and nails painted to match. He’s meticulously planned his on-stage look, and this is the final touch. Less than an hour before his first official performance as glaive, Ash Gutierrez is arguing with his mom about mascara. Photo: Lyndon French for Vulture/Lyndon French I don’t really care if anybody else sees me as that.” ![]() ![]()
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