Ashley McBryde

Ashley McBryde blends rock & roll swagger with a honky tonk heart as a vocalist and songwriter whose lyrical delivery gives classic country themes a contemporary edge. She issued her self-titled debut on her own imprint in early 2006, then moved from Arkansas to Nashville, where a decade of persistent club work preceded the 2016 appearance of her EP Jalopies & Expensive Guitars, which drew notice from Eric Church. Warner Nashville soon signed her, and her first proper album, the widely praised Girl Going Nowhere, arrived in 2018, securing New Female Vocalist honors from the principal country organizations along with two Grammy nominations. Her resilient, emotionally direct brand of country kept building with the 2020 release Never Will, whose single “One Night Standards” reached the country Top 40. After she and Carly Pearce topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart with their duet “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” McBryde explored a side route via the star-studded Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, a set of vignettes set in an imaginary small town, before tightening her approach on 2023’s The Devil I Know and issuing the 2024 single “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs.”

Born in Waldron, Arkansas, and raised in Mammoth Spring, McBryde showed an early fascination with music at age three by attempting to play her father’s guitar. Her parents eventually bought her an instrument of her own, and she continued playing until, at seventeen, she composed her first original song. Shy about performing publicly at first, she only began sharing her material outside her family after enrolling at Arkansas State University, where she also marched in the band.

McBryde recorded enough material for a full album in 2005 and released it herself the following year as Ashley McBryde. Long intent on reaching Nashville, she finally relocated there in 2007, formed a band, and performed wherever clubs would book her. Victories in the Colgate Country Showdown followed in both 2009 and 2010, and that same period brought a statewide battle-of-the-bands win in Tennessee. Her second independent album, Elsebound, appeared in 2011, after which she kept touring the South, headlining clubs and supporting acts that included Willie Nelson, Chris Stapleton, Chris Cagle, and Hank Williams, Jr., who once joined her onstage for his signature “Family Tradition,” resting an approving arm around her as she sang.

The eight-track EP Jalopies & Expensive Guitars surfaced in 2016 and helped generate wider attention; Eric Church publicly championed her, labeling her a “whiskey-drinkin’ badass” and duetting with her on “Bible and a .44.” The breakthrough single “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega” gained traction on streaming platforms and led to her Grand Ole Opry debut in June 2017. A year later Warner Music Nashville issued her major-label debut Girl Going Nowhere, produced by Jay Joyce; the project featured the earlier hit and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album. Early in 2019 the title track became the album’s final single, drawing further nominations for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. “One Night Standards” launched the campaign for her next record, climbing to number 11 on Country Airplay and anchoring Never Will, again produced by Joyce and released in April 2020. That album peaked at number five on the country chart and included “Martha Divine,” which reached number 59 on the airplay tally. McBryde remained on radio into 2022 with the chart-topping Carly Pearce collaboration “Never Wanted to Be That Girl.”

Also in 2022 she partnered with producer John Osborne of Brothers Osborne for Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville. Drawing inspiration from Dennis Linde, whose catalog includes Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” and the Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” the album focused on character-driven vignettes of small-town life and featured guest appearances by Brandy Clark, Aaron Raitiere, Caylee Hammack, and Brothers Osborne. Several months after the 2023 Grammy win for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” McBryde returned with her fourth album, The Devil I Know. Reuniting with Jay Joyce, she smoothed some of her earlier rough edges while co-writing once more with Osborne as well as Bobby Pinson and Aaron Raitiere. The set reached the upper half of the Billboard 200 and number 28 on the country chart. The ballad “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs” closed out 2024.