Some form of Ashlee and the Longshot Revival has been around for more than 20 years.

It started when Ashlee Brauer was a 12-year-old kid growing up in rural Peyton. She and some friends, two sets of brothers, formed a country band called Longshot. They donned cowboy hats and played covers of The Chicks (formerly The Dixie Chicks) at county fairs and graduation parties. The fathers of the boys were in a band called Hindsight, so Longshot got some opening gigs that way, too.

After a couple of years, the teenage band broke up.

And Brauer took years away from music, even though she realized her love for singing after her first choir solo in second grade. It took winning a popular and local karaoke contest for the singer to get the itch again. She bounced around in some Colorado Springs bands before getting an idea about five years back. What if she got some of the old band back together?

It’s at this point that Brauer says it might be tough to follow along.

The younger band included Donovan Mitchell, who played guitar, and his brother who played drums. Now, Donovan plays the drums in the Longshot Revival. His brother does soundcheck and is married to Brauer. As far as the other set of brothers goes, just one of them, Nikolas Slothower, stuck around town and plays in the band’s new iteration.

“Yeah,” Brauer said with a laugh. “It’s like you need a diagram.”

This is what makes the band stand out, though. They’ve known each other their whole lives, aside from guitarist Russ Spaeth, who’s catching up after playing with the band for five years now.

“We go back so far together,” Brauer, 34, said. ‘We’re just like family. There’s the camaraderie that we have that we carry on stage.”

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And, together, they’ve been able to play stages of all kinds since forming again. They play dive bars like Mill Hill Saloon, a favorite venue of Brauer’s, as well as The Whiskey Baron and Freedom Fest Colorado. One of Brauer’s favorite memories was opening up for singers like Morgan Wallen and Lauren Alaina.

On stage, the band is known for playing a range of country music favorites, from “Jolene” by Dolly Parton to newer hits by Miranda Lambert or Luke Combs. They’ll always throw in pop or party songs by Bruno Mars or Miley Cyrus to mix things up.

But Brauer says they gravitate toward the genre they grew up with.

“That’s what we did as kids was play country,” she said. “Growing up in a small town, that’s what I listened to or what I was allowed to listen to.”

There are some songs on the current set list that Brauer and the boys played together as teens, like “Let It Rip” by The Chicks or “Flowers on the Wall” by The Statler Brothers.

Along with an obvious chemistry on stage, the band’s history helps them behind the scenes, too. They have a similar outlook on how the band fits into their lives.

“We all kind of have that understanding of work and life and family balance,” Brauer, who works full time as a dental hygienist, said. “We all want to keep this fun and easy.”

And they want to bring that fun to people in the crowd, which often includes familiar faces from the past. That’s something Brauer and the band have missed over the last year or so.

“It’s been really nice to get back into the groove of normal,” she said. “We’re so happy to be back to live music and you can tell everyone else is so ready for it, too.”

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