My father still hasn’t listened to my music, reveals country star Ashley McBryde as she opens up on Arkansas childhood
IN northern Arkansas on the banks of South Fork Spring River in the region known as the Ozarks, you’ll find a tiny settlement called Saddle.
Today, it comprises a modest Baptist church, an old timber-clad general store turned events venue (now up for sale) — and very little else.
Not so far away, out in the wilds, is the farm where country star Ashley McBryde grew up.
It is the place where she first picked up a guitar and discovered her passion for music, the starting point of her journey to the world stage.
Along the way, she rebelled against her strict preacher father, sang in biker bars, acquired the striking collection of tattoos adorning both arms and fought alcohol addiction.
Yet her inspirational climb has taken her to country music’s spiritual home, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and the O2 Arena in London for the C2C festival.
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And next month she will support a titan of the genre, Garth Brooks, at Hyde Park in front of 65,000 people.
Since becoming sober in June 2022, Grammy-winning McBryde is making some of the best music of her life, and she’s doing it by returning to her roots.
On one of the rousing songs on her fifth studio album, the aptly titled Wild, she sings these lines with mighty conviction…
“It’s in my throat, it’s in my bones, it’s on my boots and in my blood. That Ozark streak sureе runs deep and it sticks to me like that Arkansas mud.”
I tell her that my only experience of her childhood stomping ground is the TV series Ozark about a Chicago family who decamp to the area, for money- laundering reasons as you do, where they encounter small-time hillbilly criminals.
“Yeah, I’ve known some characters like those,” says McBryde with a knowing smile. “They did a great job on Ozark.”
She is one of a new breed who has learned to accept “the Nashville machine” while remaining true to themselves.
“I’ve done a good job, not a perfect one, of being inside the machine but also sticking to my guns,” she affirms.
“It’s an industry that asks the brunette to be blonde and the girl that’s 5ft 3in to be 6ft.”
At times, McBryde felt she was “falling short of being shinier, blonder, skinnier” but, she adds hand on heart: “You’re just not getting rid of what’s in here.”
In the same bracket, you will find two big bearded male artists keeping it real — Luke Combs and Chris Stapleton, who are among America’s biggest selling artists right now.
These are the natural successors to the original country “outlaws,” who include McBryde’s hero Kris Kristofferson, fellow Arkansawyer Johnny Cash and last man standing Willie Nelson.
She delivers kick-ass songs, drawing on rock and roll as much as anything, but she can also turn her intuitive talents to tear-stained balladry or a country-pop masterclass like recent single What If We Don’t.
I’m meeting the vivacious 42-year-old during her whistle- stop visit to London, and we find ourselves beside a picture window overlooking Kensington Gardens filled with people catching the glorious spring sunshine.
I can’t help sensing the contrast between the swish hotel suite in a teeming capital city and Ashley McBryde’s isolated upbringing that is, in part, the inspiration for her new album.
Taking my cue from the name of her album, I ask her if she was a “Wild” child.
“I think I was a good kid but I was also in trouble a lot,” she replies.
“I asked a lot of questions that people didn’t want to answer. They didn’t care for a child who wanted to know why things had to be a certain way.
“But I was always out in the woods, dreaming up this or that. I would be one of the X-Men, making swords and guns out of sticks.”
The youngest of six, she paints a picture of her childhood that conjures up classic American literature — Little Women, Tom Sawyer or Little House On The Prairie.
In fact, every night her “angel” of a mother would read her a chapter of the latter book as well as one from the Bible.
“I didn’t own shorts until I was an adult,” continues McBryde.
“Because my legs would get so ate up with tick bites from being out in the briars and thorns. It was a very physical existence.
“We worked real hard. We had cows, chickens and horses but my favourite thing about it was I could go wherever I wanted.
“I could go out walking for a whole day. I remember one time I asked mom if I could camp out for the night.
“She said, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ And I said, ‘I just want to cook my soup on a campfire’.
“She was like, ‘Well, knock yourself out’.”
But there was a duality to life in this rustic idyll because McBryde’s farmer and preacher father, William, imposed his strict religious beliefs at home.
This perhaps explains why she has been singing the late Randall Clay’s storming Rattlesnake Preacher live for several years and why, finally, her studio version opens Wild in such uncompromising fashion.
“There was freedom even though we lived in a very, very rigid household,” says McBryde.
“It was all right as long as what you wanted to do was within the parameters of what was considered to be right.
“So there was nothing wrong with going for a walk or riding a horse or digging a hole or learning to play a guitar. Those things were totally OK.
“But it was very much a case of the man being the head of the family, the way Christ is the head of the church — and anything that went against that could go to hell. There was no break.”
Although she was generally expected to attend church on “Wednesday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night,” sometimes even that was off-limits “if they were doing something that my father deemed not in alignment with his book”.
This brings McBryde to an extraordinary revelation: “To my knowledge, my father has still not listened to my music.”
That said, she admits that he had to hear one of her songs, Bible And A .44, written about him and appearing on her debut EP in 2016, Jalopies & Expensive Guitars.
It includes the lines: “He taught me how to hunt and how to love the Lord/He carried a Bible and a .44/And they just don’t make ’em like that no more.”
McBryde says: “I sang it to him after I wrote it. He told me, ‘You painted me in an awful nice light. I wish all of it could be true.’
“And I said: ‘You don’t see what I see because you’re not looking at what I’m looking at.’
“It was a nice way to give him a break from being the villain because a lot of the time he was. There were really great qualities about him, too.”
As for her beloved mother Martha, she says: “She’s an absolute angel. I don’t think she’s ever done anything wrong.
“She can make you an outfit right now while she’s making you a casserole while she’s praying for someone who has lost a limb.”
It was in this old-school world that McBryde developed her love of making music, becoming enchanted by the songs of the rugged Kristofferson and the more polished John Denver.
“I knew I wanted to be a singer and a songwriter from a really young age, even before I was a teenager.”
She knew she was on the right path when, after leaving home, she “started making enough playing in bars not to wait tables anymore and to keep the lights on in my apartment”.
A rebel at heart, McBryde recalls playing biker dives and, like the clientele, she got tattoos, wore leather and drank heavily.
As she tried to get a foothold in the country music scene, there wasn’t much hope “for a non-blonde who was covered in tattoos”.
“I did meet a lot of friction,” she says. “Some labels were not in any way interested.”
But her irresistible talent was spotted by, among others, Eric Church, another country star who likes to say it how it is.
“He was a great champion,” says McBryde. “A great name to be associated with because of the way he makes records and the way he approaches music.
“For him to say, ‘I like this songwriter’ does open a door.”
Evidence of that door being opened arrived in 2018 when McBryde’s major label debut, Girl Going Nowhere, was released on Warner Nashville, including one of her signature songs, A Little Dive Bar In Dahlonega.
It’s about resilience in the face of a break-up and, among its references to drinking is the line, “We’ve all got a number we don’t wanna drunk dial.”
I guess it alludes to another aspect of McBryde’s life because, running parallel to her early years in the business, was a dependence on alcohol, which she’s finally coming to terms with.
One of her new album’s most captivating songs is the beautifully sung ballad Bottle Tells Me So.
“I didn’t want to have a problem with alcohol but, like it or not, it’s part of my story,’ admits McBryde. “And I didn’t want to talk about it for a long time.
“I was either drinking, drunk or hung over at all times – and that’s really tough.”
In 2022, matters came to a head when, on the advice of her team, McBryde went into rehab.
Now proudly four years sober, she says: “Writing Bottle Tells Me So was a way to acknowledge it without saying, ‘I’m sober and you should be too.’
“You don’t want to preach but life is so much better for me now that I don’t drink.
“In that song, I’m not saying I’m never going to drink again. There’s no shame involved.”
In explaining why a habit that began while “acting cool and hanging with friends”, McBryde says: “I’ve heard it said that the addicts of all types aren’t addicted to any substance.
“They’re addicted to not feeling their feelings. I would say that is spot on for me.
“Not consuming alcohol anymore is probably the simplest part of becoming sober. You have to completely re-meet yourself and rewire everything.”
McBryde says she feels “1000 per cent” better, both physically and mentally. “I look better and I feel better. Despite still feeling anxious, I’m stronger than I knew and that makes me happy.”
She recalls her first show after leaving after getting sober: “I left treatment on Tuesday, got in the bus on Wednesday and was on the stage on Thursday.
“It was my first time being more than 30 days dry and it was the most terrifying, coolest thing I will ever experience.
“I was worried and asked myself, ‘What if I can’t do this?’ But I got out there and was spot on. Bullseye! Now I’m at the top of my game.”
McBryde is undoubtedly dialled in on Wild, produced with sparkle and empathy by John Osborne of country duo Brothers Osborne.
“John’s magical, playful and curious,” she says. “When I try something, he will say, ‘If you love it, we keep it. If you hate it, we toss it.”
It’s a healthy state of affairs for an artist who is increasingly cherished by the country music establishment in Nashville.
She says: “My friends and I always joke, ‘You can never change where the machine is headed unless you climb inside the machine.’
“I want to make music that people will hear. I like being able to make your guts hurt.
‘And the only way to get it heard is to abide by certain rules.”
One her proudest achievements is becoming a member of Grand Ol’ Opry, showcase for the greats from Hank Williams (even if he did get banned) and Patsy Cline onwards.
“I love it,” says McBryde. “Just thinking about it now, I smile so big. My face is complete cheese.”
And there we have it. Ashley McBryde, force of nature, born and raised in the Arkansas Mud but reaching for the stars.
ASHLEY McBRYDE Wild
4.5 STARS
