SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Jan. 31, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — If you’re looking for a live concert this New Year showcasing a sound that is absolutely unique, you might want to check out Mia x Ally, who are playing the State Room March 11 as part of the duo’s “Viral Hits tour.”
Mia x Ally is the electrifying project of electric violinist Mia Asano and bagpiper/multi-instrumentalist Ally the Piper. With a combined following of over 8 million people on social media, the musicians officially joined forces in April 2022 after discovering their love of performing together, and a number of their videos resulted in viral online demand for their continued collaboration. Playing both original songs and covers of pop rock and metal music with a Celtic twist, Mia x Ally made their debut in Boston in August of 2022, playing two sold out shows, and later went on to tour the East and Midwest on the “Shipping up to Boston tour,” named after their viral cover of the Dropkick Murphys’ classic.
The two released their full length album “Mia x Ally: the Viral Hits” in October 2023, charting at No. 6 on the Billboard Classical Crossover Charts and launching their southern U.S. “Devil Went Down to Georgia tour.” The pair have been recognized by DragonForce, The Charlie Daniels band and Metallica for covering those artists’ music.
“Finding a shared desire to bring their unique instruments to the forefront of metal, rock and pop music, Mia x Ally care deeply about breaking boundaries encircling two instruments rooted so deeply in tradition,” their bio says. “Both being classically trained musicians from a young age, the two share a dream of showcasing the vast range of their instruments’ capabilities that span multiple genres and techniques.”
We spoke with Mia, who was in Los Angeles, and Ally, who was in New York, over the phone before they kick of the tour on Feb. 13 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, touching on subjects including how the duo was formed, going viral, their dream collaborations and their plans for the future.
The two first told us about their paths to becoming professional musicians.
Mia, originally from Denver, moved to the East Coast to go to school at Berklee College of Music in Boston with a dual major of violin performance and professional music with a concentration in business and songwriting. She developed a love for alternative styles of music early on and plays a variety of genres on a seven-string electric violin. She graduated from Berklee in August of 2022.
“We have very similar origin stories,” Mia explained. “For me personally, I’ve been playing violin since I was five; classically trained, and then discovered alternative styles of music, specifically electric violin, when I was 13. And then did that all the way through college, accidentally went viral during the pandemic, and started making social media content and that led to where we are today. Obviously, met a lot of amazing content creators and then I met Ally, which we’ll get into later, and then we started touring together, and here we are.”
Mia also talked a little more about going viral by mistake.
“I was just feeling very lost, musically, because I was going to the Berklee College of Music and there was a big push for me to play jazz music there, which I loved,” Mia said. “But there were other styles of music that I liked; pop/rock, Celtic and metal music basically, I just started kind of posting on TikTok secretly, just in an effort to find my love for music again, it was the pandemic, so all the gigs got cancelled. So then within like three days, one of those videos went viral overnight. I woke up the next morning with 100,000 followers. And now it’s my full-time job.”
Mia added that there was a TikTok trend involving the song “Roses” by Guyanese-American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer Saint Jhn. “It was like, use this song in your video with your small account and it’ll make your video go viral,” she said. “And it was like, stand there and do nothing and it’ll make you go viral. And I was like, I’m not gonna stand there do nothing, I’m going to cover it. And now that video has like 10 million views. It really launched the TikTok thing. I probably wouldn’t have preferred TikTok as much if that hadn’t happened at the beginning, so it was really cool.”
Ally began her career as a competitive bagpiper, and won the 2012 World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow as a member of a youth pipe band. She continued to compete solo and was consistently ranked at the top of her divisions in the Eastern United States.
She told us about her start in music.
“I started playing just music in general when I was really little; I always had a gravitation toward making noise. A neighbor gifted us an electric keyboard when I was like 4 and I just started doodling on it non-stop and my mom saw that I had a lot of interest. So I got into piano lessons when I was about 6 and that was my first instrument. I cycled through a lot of instruments trying to find the one, and I still love all my instruments dearly, but when I was 12 my stepdad legally adopted me and his heritage is Scottish; [his last name is] Duncan. I wanted to connect with my culture through music because it was my love. And I found the bagpipes that way. And I just became immediately infatuated. I couldn’t figure out how they worked just by looking at them.
“And so I wanted to kind of dive deeper into it, understand them a bit more, and started learning from a local bagpipe band that actually is four kids. And so we were all 18 and under; I was 14 when I started learning. And that got me into competitive bagpiping which is kind of like a little sub niche of the bagpiping world. And I traveled all over the world to compete. I went to the World Championships when I was 16 with that band and we won. And then I went on to place sixth in the world solo in a contest over in Scotland as well. And it just became the center of my life for a long time, and I stopped competing in 2017 when I wanted to kind of pursue the more professional side of performance and teaching. So I focused on teaching for a while and then the pandemic hit; all the gigs got canceled. And so I started posting online on Facebook Live just for free recitals and concerts and things like that. Just as a sense of community because I realized how much everybody was really missing out on it, and did a tune on TikTok and it didn’t go super viral but I got 150,000 views which was quite a lot for me at the time considering I’d never posted any bagpipes on social media like that before, and the requests started coming in. And then today [Jan. 29] is actually the three-year anniversary of my first viral video.”
She added: “So viral being over a million is how I usually quantify it, but that was ‘My Mother Told Me,’ and that was trending on social media a couple of years ago, three years ago, and a musician who I really admired at the time, his name is Cullen Vance, and he becomes part of our story later. He had added a bunch of instruments to it. And so I added bagpipes and I didn’t have any recording equipment, I used my iPhone earbuds as my microphone and things have really grown since then. It evolved. But yeah, that was my first viral moment.”
The two then discovered each other on TikTok.
“The Wellerman Sea Shanty was trending on TikTok, and Mia had added strings to it, and then it made its way to our mutual friend Cullen , and he added all of his instrumentation to it,” Ally said. “And then I found it because of Cullen and I added bagpipes to it and all of those videos started to go viral as well. And so Mia and I followed each other and we just became fans of each other almost immediately.”
Mia added: “Ally came and visited me in Boston shortly after that, and we filmed a bunch of videos together. Again, many of those went viral, and that’s when we decided maybe we should start touring together. There was this really magical chemistry between us. And we experienced that a little bit at some live shows we did as guest artists at our friends’ shows, and it was really special. It’s something that we don’t really experience with other collaborators, just because we have such similar lives, as like playing a very traditional instrument in a very non-traditional way. And so we thought, hey, maybe we should start touring together. So last April, we made our debut as like the supergroup that is Mia x Ally and it’s only grown from there. And we’ve had a lot of amazing adventures and opportunities ever since.”
The two have since embarked on three tours together.
“It’ll be within a calendar year, from the start of our first tour to the end of our third tour will still be within a year, which is crazy, but we love it,” Ally added. She also explained what fans can expect from this current tour. “Well, our show is over two hours. We have a 15 minute intermission. And so the whole thing runs about two-and-a-half hours from the start until you leave. It’s jam-packed full of a lot of genres. We have some Celtic, but it’s predominantly rock, metal and video game and TV theme music. A lot of the stuff that you can find on our social media, especially the things that we’ve covered together. And those kind of add support to of course the core of the show, which is the album and that’s the viral hits.”
Mia added: “We also have some original music thrown in there throughout everything as well. It’s something for everyone and it’s an all-ages show so you can bring your family to it. You know, it’s that type of a show.”
We also asked Mia and Ally what their favorite part of touring is, and what, if anything, they find challenging.
“We’re really lucky because our band and our team are really wonderful people and we feel very close with them,” Mia told us. “So it’s kind of just an excuse to travel around with our friends and have a really good time and see some new places. And that’s my favorite part. And also finally getting to you know, we grew on the internet and so we don’t know, our fans, they’re all usernames to us; actually getting to meet people at the meet and greets. We’re getting to see people, we’re getting to experience responses, not just numbers. And that feels so good to actually be able to connect with music again and why we’re doing this, which was kind of taken away from us during COVID.”
I also commented to them that as well as having great chemistry, they seem to have a lot of fun when they’re on stage.
“Yeah, it’s like any bad feelings and bad vibes from being cramped in a van for seven hours; because it doesn’t make anybody happy to do that,” Ally said. “As soon as we get on stage, though, without fail, we could have had the worst traffic or somebody had bad food on the way and it’s just normal stuff, but as soon as we get on the stage, it’s gone and we’re just all having fun again. And that’s kind of the magic of the show as well is that it’s different and fun every single night.”
We also asked Ally specifically how demanding it is to play the bagpipes for a two-hour plus show.
“The show is very physically demanding,” she said. “I think at this point, just because of how long I’ve been playing, I could probably stand still very comfortably and play that show every night. But it’s mostly being active at the same time. It is a lot of air and it can be very challenging; some more than others, but we also have kind of balanced the show. So we have moments where I get to step away, and I have a break, and Mia as well, she’s headbanging with the violin. And so she also has moments where she gets to step off stage and the show’s still happening and it just features one of us. We try to interject that in so that we both have a moment to breathe.”
One of the platforms that Mia and Ally feel strongly about, and talk about at their shows, is mental health.
“We just actually had a meeting with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention this morning; that’s one of the organizations we’ve partnered with,” Mia told us. “Throughout this touring, there’s a few different organizations that we’re making donations to that support mental health. It’s really important to us. And so we talk about it every night at our shows, just mental health awareness, because it’s something that everyone struggles with, and we don’t think it’s discussed enough, especially not in an open and honest way. And so we just try to let our audience know that they’re very loved and we try to point them in the direction of resources if they are struggling or they know someone that is so they can get help. We also made a sticker together that is a 100% donation to various mental health organizations, called the ‘You Are Loved’ sticker and that’s linked on our website as well. And we sell it at the merch table.”
Mia and Ally also talked about what’s next for them after they get off tour.
“We also had a call earlier trying to plan our next tour, it’s hopefully going to be happening at the end of this year,” Ally said. “And then in the middle we have a lot of conversations to have in terms of what the next music is going to look like and things like that. So we have a lot of things that are in the works. But we’ve been really putting everything that we have into the last few months and to the the upcoming tour. We’re really excited to kind of let all the hard work come to fruition.”
Mia also explained that the tour they are going into is similar to the show they’ve just finished touring. “There’s a couple of small changes but mostly this is an excuse for us to get out to the West Coast of the U.S. because we’ve never been out there as a band before. So it’s very similar show. So it doesn’t need a lot of rehearsals because at this point we’ve already done it like 30 times or more. Obviously, if we go out again, at the end of this year, it’ll be a different show. And that’s part of what we’re going to be planning but we always do have rehearsals just to make sure that it goes well, and we have a bunch of special guests who will be joining us on this tour as well. Yeah, we’re not gonna give anything away just yet. But do keep your eyes out for some of that. So, you know, we’ll have to have some rehearsals with them of course, but it’ll be really fun.”
Ally added: “We’re having a few different people in different locations come in and jump on as guest artists. And then we’re having conversations with somebody else to maybe do something a little bit more significant.” Mia said: “We’ve always had special guests who come and join us like on our last tour. We had some young Irish dancers come and perform on stage with us. And then we’ve also just had our friends from TikTok come join us on stage for a song here and there in the past. So we’re going to try to continue that down the line.” The two will be announcing their guest opener for this tour tomorrow, Feb. 1.
We also asked Mia and Ally what their dream collaboration would be.
“Collaboration is hard, just because this is technically a collaboration come to fruition,” Ally said. “I would love to see, I think it’d be great if we open for some bigger bands in the future. And maybe that could be a fun next step. We do have a co-headlining show on this tour in Wisconsin, a band called Talisk. And that’s really exciting and I think maybe some fun co-headlining shows in the future could be really nice with some bands that have a similar feel.”
Mia added: “One thing that has happened is that like our album, the ‘Viral Hits’ is a cover album. And a lot of the artists that we’ve covered have expressed support of us covering their music; DragonForce and The Charlie Daniels band. And then we’ve also received support specifically, Ally’s received a lot of support from Metallica.” Ally added: “So yeah, if anybody’s interested, you know, we’re here.”
For tickets to Mia x Ally at the State Room on March 11, or for more information, click here.
