“I was kind of feeling a little bit lost and having some impostor syndrome because I hadn’t been playing music that I loved in a very long time,” said Asano. “And so during the pandemic, out of desperation, I started posting covers on TikTok secretly, just to pop music and trends for fun … just get myself out there.”
Advertisem*nt
Her first video to go viral was a cover of “Roses” by SAINt JHN. Anyone who spent hours on TikTok during lockdown would recognize the punchy dance remix, as well as the myriad trends that went along with it. Asano’s take — an electric violin version — garnered millions of views overnight.
“And then ‘The Wellerman’ sea shanty rolled around, the biggest trend of a few years ago,” said Asano. “This was the first time I did a Celtic cover publicly because my Celtic love was a secret.”
When Scottish singer Nathan Evans posted his rendition of the New Zealand sea shanty in late 2020, Asano duetted the TikTok, adding her own fiddle arrangement to the piece. A number of musicians expanded upon the harmony with their own choral and instrumental parts to the tune, including Ally Crowley-Duncan, an award-winning bagpiper known as Ally the Piper. Piper and Asano noticed each other immediately and struck up a virtual friendship.
Crowley-Duncan, who used to play the bagpipes with the Boston area’s Stuart Highlanders Pipe Band, returned for a 2021 St. Patrick’s Day show at The Wilbur, and she thought to herself, “‘I’m not going to waste this opportunity. I’m going to reach out and see if my newfound internet friend wants to make some collabs,’” she said. Asano agreed.
“We squeezed my bagpipes into her apartment in Allston and recorded six videos, and most of them went viral,” said Crowley-Duncan. “A lot of them we turned into full-length covers that we put on our album that we released in October.”
Advertisem*nt
Their first album, “Mia x Ally: The Viral Hits,” contains all the songs that made their social media engagement skyrocket. It opens with a cover of Dropkick Murphys’ “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” a song widely known as Boston’s sports anthem.
“It’s such a fun song,” Crowley-Duncan said of the Celtic punk classic. “I feel like it really lends itself to the kind of energy that we naturally have together.”
Asano and Crowley-Duncan filmed a music video for the cover when they released it as a single, and in every shot, they can be seen playing their instruments against Boston backdrops.
“The music video was supposed to be kind of a love letter to Boston because both of us have such special ties with the city, obviously. And so we went to all of our favorite locations around Boston,” said Asano. The duo filmed the video at the Museum of Fine Arts, along the Boston Harborand Charles River, and at Quincy Market.
While they both have an affinity for Celtic-inspired music, Asano and Crowley-Duncan play everything from classic rock to dubstep. The album features songs that highlight their instruments like “Iridium” by the Sidh, it also includes covers of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “Free Bird.”
“When you think of bagpipes, you think of Ross Geller from ‘Friends.’ You think of a funeral scene in a movie, or things like that,” said Crowley-Duncan. “It’s a pretty stigmatized instrument … I am trying to bring the bagpipes out of their box of existing in this one style and this one key and soundscape.”
Advertisem*nt
Asano’s instrument is out of the ordinary, too. Her electric violin can play notes lower than those of a cello, said Crowley-Duncan, and the pair has had to get creative when creating their arrangements.
For their cover of “Roundtable Rival” by Lindsey Stirling, Crowley-Duncan had to carve her own chanter, the pipe part of the bagpipe on which the melody is played, so that she could play in the right key. But according to Crowley-Duncan, the outcome is worth the effort.
”It’s the connection you get with an audience when you’re playing something like that on your instrument, versus the things that they’re expecting to hear, which is probably ‘Scotland the Brave,’” she said.
“We’re trying to break the boundaries of everything that people think our instruments are capable of,” said Asano.
Mia x Ally, The Devil Went Down to Georgia Tour. Brighton Music Hall. Jan. 5, 7 p.m. $36. concerts.livenation.com
Get The Big To-Do
Your guide to staying entertained, from live shows and outdoor fun to the newest in museums, movies, TV, books, dining, and more.
Elena Giardina can be reached at elena.giardina@globe.com.
