Six Things You Need To Know About…
Ashley McBryde
The ‘kindness first, but take no crap’ country rocker might be shy, but you’d best not piss her off – especially if there’s a shovel around.
“I’ve been doing a lot of TV, which hasn’t been good for my brain,” says Ashley McBryde, guiltily, of her lockdown thus far, “but yesterday I started reading a book on Tammy Wynette called Tragic Country Queen. And I’ve gone back to records like [The Brothers Osborne’s] Port Saint Joe.”
Raised in Arkansas and now based in Tennessee, the Grammy-nominated country rock singerguitarist has just released her fourth album, Never Will, a moreish mix of roots, heartland rock’n’roll and tales of human nature. Think Loretta Lynn and Lucinda Williams drinking bourbon in a dive in the Deep South. We caught up with her…
Her new album came from real life. “The only thing that didn’t happen is I never actually hit anyone with a shovel!” the 36-year-old laughs of Never Will, which plays like a collection of enveloping short stories about grief, love, infidelity and more. The shovel-wielding girl is the star of one album highlight Martha Divine.
“I knew a lady that eventually married my father at one point,” McBryde says of the song, which comes with such deliciously wicked lyrics as ‘It ain’t murder if I bury you alive’. “But when I first knew her, that wasn’t the case, and I just wanted to see her fall down a flight of stairs. All these years later, that dark teenage fantasy was able to play out.”
Family tragedy played a part. In 2018 her eldest brother, Clay, a veteran of the Iraq war, took his own life. It left Ashley and her family shattered, and ultimately fed into the deeply cathartic Stone. She recalls writing sessions with Nicolette Hayford: “We talked and smoked cigarettes until I laughed, and when I laughed it was like this big cackle, and I was like: ‘Damn, I sound like my brother when I laugh…’ In one sense it’s really sad that I never noticed how alike we were till it was way too late. But it’s also a happy thing, cos though I lost my brother I didn’t lose all of him.”
A drunken night on the tour bus was a turning point for her. The idea to link various characters and storylines in the record – including a pair of Thelma & Louise-esque videos based on Martha Divine and the sweet, bigsisterly country rock ode Hang In There Girl – came one night on the bus, fuelled by a lot of Jim Beam.
“I couldn’t see them giving me the okay to hit someone with a shovel on country music television… And dragging the body out of the hotel room? I couldn’t believe they let me do it.”
She had a rural, religious upbringing. McBryde’s father was the local preacher, which meant that she and her five older siblings were “required to be there, front and centre” in church. At school, meanwhile, McBryde played flugel in the symphonic band, and sang church hymns and Billy Joel songs with her friends during recess. “I grew up on a farm. I lived in a rural area, so it wasn’t that weird for you to be wearing wranglers and boots and stuff. But the affluent kids… they just liked to find reasons to say mean things to you.”
Her motto is: ‘Kindness first, but take no crap’. McBryde’s friendly but bullshit-free attitude reflects an incident from her school days: “There was this really mean boy. He was a little bit older than me, and he was picking on… well, how do I say this in a nice way… we called him Cockadoodle John, because John liked to walk around and crow like a rooster. He was kind of an odd fellow. One day the mean boy pushed John’s face down into the water fountain. And then he went to get a drink, and I walked behind him and I shoved his face in the water fountain.”
She’s shy, but not on stage. Living in “stab ’n’ shoot” complexes in Memphis and Nashville as a young singer-songwriter, McBryde found solace in the biker bars she performed at – pulling up a bar stool and having a beer with the regulars. Her confidence (only a problem off stage) grew, although it still dips sometimes.
“I don’t think I’ve admitted this to anyone, because when you live in crappy areas and you’re shy by nature, you feel you have to stay in your home a lot. So when we first started visiting the UK I’d stay in the bus or hotel room. Eventually [hair/ make-up artist] Dana came and said: ‘The sun is shining, there’s a garden full of flowers directly in front of the bus, and you’re going for a walk.’ So we did, and I had the best time.”
Never Will is out now via Warner Nashville. McBryde is due to tour the U K in September.