Remember Ashley McBryde — after a decade, Nashville is finally paying attention
IT’S ALWAYS hard to name an album, but there could not possibly be a more fitting, tongue-in-cheek title for Ashley McBryde’s debut major label album: “Girl Going Nowhere.”
The name comes from the first track, “Girl Goin’ Nowhere,” inspired by McBryde’s high school teacher in Arkansas who scoffed at her dreams of being a singer-songwriter. Then, this past year, after more than a decade of rejection in Nashville and struggling to get people to hear her independently released songs, she’s become one of country music’s most promising breakout stars.
“I was kind of always the underdog,” McBryde, 34, said recently in an interview. Now that she’s had some success, she figures she may as well lean into her less-than-auspicious beginnings: “Here’s a record by a girl who was never going to make a record.”
Even now, after she’s garnered widespread industry support, with stars from Garth Brooks to Miranda Lambert proclaiming their fandom, playing “Girl Goin’ Nowhere” (co-written with Jeremy Bussey) live can make her cry. “Don’t waste your life behind that guitar/You may get gone but you won’t get far,” the haters tell her in the first verse. But by the chorus, she’s schooling them: “I hear the crowd, I look around, and I can’t find an empty chair/Not bad for a girl goin’ nowhere.”
McBryde, who has earned much critical acclaim with her gritty, rock-tinged country music and vivid, cutting lyrics, got her first mainstream boost last spring. After years of playing small bars and clubs, sometimes just to get gas money, she signed with the same Nashville manager who represents Eric Church. In April, Church asked the manager to invite McBryde to his arena tour stop in Chicago. McBryde thought she was just going to watch the show until she showed up and Church’s assistant told her, “Hey, I don’t want you to panic, but Eric wants you to sing tonight.” And as she soon discovered, Church wanted them to duet on one of her songs, “Bible and a .44.”
At first, McBryde did panic — she had never sang in front of that many people, and didn’t even know how to work the inear monitors to hear herself onstage. The actual performance was a blur (McBryde refers to it as “trial by fire”) but she caught Church’s introduction before she walked out: “There’s a young lady here whom I have become a massive fan of, and you guys are gonna be a massive fan of her real soon. She’s just starting this journey of a career and she’s unquestionably my favourite artiste out right now that’s not out yet . ... she’s a whiskey-drinking badass, that’s what she is”
The YouTube video of their performance made the rounds, and now has nearly 700,000 views. “I don’t want people to say, ‘Eric took you under his wing and that’s why you’re successful.’ Because the songs stand on their own or they don’t,” McBryde said. “But that was such valuable and priceless experience.”
Things happened quickly after that. In May, satellite radio’s Sirius XM The Highway started playing McBryde’s “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega,” cowritten with Nicolette Hayford and Jesse Rice, a searing ballad about getting through a very difficult time. Or as the chorus puts it, “Making the best of a worst day kind of night.”
It hit a nerve with listeners (one woman sent McBryde a message and said the song saved her life, because it stopped her from taking a phone call from an abusive ex) and soon it was one of the most popular songs on station. In June, McBryde made her Grand Ole Opry debut. By August, after a bidding war among major labels, McBryde signed with Warner Music Nashville.
Her album mixes the heartfelt, including “Tired of Being Happy”; a track about friendship, titled “Andy (I Can’t Live Without You)”; and explorations of rural life, as “Living Next to Leroy” looks at drug use in a small town. Part of the groundswell reaction to McBryde’s music in Nashville is that it doesn’t quite feel like anything on contemporary country radio, which needs some diversity.
And McBryde is well-aware of the pressures that come with being a new female artiste in country music, which routinely only has a handful of women on the charts. “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega” is currently in the mid-30s and climbing.
“It’s not like, ‘We’re angry! Play us on the radio! It’s more like, ‘All right, let’s open the game a little bit,” McBryde said, ticking off names of new artistes who are starting to break through. “I’m really hopeful and excited because there are so many badass women right now, and they’re all making really good music.” — WP-Bloomberg