Interview: Ashley McBryde

One thing Ashley McBryde will never be is boring. But there have been times over the past three years, where she has caught herself thinking she had become just that.

That fleeting feeling is a function of what McBryde, 41, has been through during what can only be described as an eventful chapter in her life.

In this recent phone interview, McBryde opened up about it all, with the same candor, insight and humor she shows in her song lyrics. 

This period of change can be traced back to September 2021, when McBryde went horseback riding with friends at a ranch in Montana. The mare she was riding got spooked and McBryde’s right foot slipped out of its stirrup. She lost her balance and fell from the horse, hitting her head, suffering a concussion and a head wound that required stitches. 

At least that was the account McBryde gave immediately following the accident. It turns out, things were much more serious – in fact, they were downright dire.

“Initially we didn’t release as much information to the public because we didn’t want to startle my family and we didn’t want to scare everybody,” McBryde said. “It was bad. It knocked me unconscious and I wasn’t able, I wasn’t breathing on my own. They did CPR and took life-saving measures.”

In addition to having to revive McBryde at the scene, it was soon discovered she had also suffered a broken pelvis. She was advised to do nothing for 14 days, but McBryde didn’t follow doctor’s orders.

“I waited six or seven days to get back on stage and I stopped taking anything that was, I was only taking the dizzy medication so that I wouldn’t be too dizzy on stage and I was only taking Tylenol to control the pain,” she said. “I would joke and I would get off stage and be like find me another female country artist that’ll do that. And I really, I think, was trying to prove something to myself. And my band and crew have since told me there wasn’t anything to prove to us. You’re doing that for yourself. And now I know how dangerous that was.”

McBryde said she still has bouts of dizziness, although such episodes have become less frequent.  

And as she returned to health, McBryde, in June 2022, made another major decision to better her well being. She had already been going to therapy to help deal with the suicide of her brother, but concluded another change was needed.

“Since the loss of my brother back in 2018, I really tried to stay on top of therapy, not realizing the whole time that my drinking was at a point where both in fitness and mental health, no matter how hard you are working to be better, trust this one thing is making it impossible for things to be exponentially better,” she said “One of these days I’ll tell the story of how I ended up getting up one morning and saying I’m going to have to have help, and I’ll be able to tell the story of walking into the living room and who was standing there, and me going I know exactly what does this and you are so right.”

In addition to setting aside her much-loved whiskey (and other types of alcohol), McBryde also began working on her physical fitness, finding boxing to be a favorite way to get more fit. 

Being sober has transformed McBryde’s daily life on and off tour.

“I’ve noticed that I get up really early, and that has freed up, I used to think how do people ever have time to write on the road or to work out on the road?” she said. “It turns out if you’re not nursing a hangover until 2 p.m. every day, you have lots of time to journal or meditate or shadowbox, in my case, or get up and write songs with your bandmates.”

Changing her life wasn’t all that McBryde was doing once the pandemic started to ease. 

She was also busy making music, completing in September 2022 not one, but two, albums. The first, “Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville,” arrived at the end of that month. It was an ambitious, occasionally bawdy theme album that centered around the characters that populated the fictitious small Southern town named Lindeville.

For that project, McBryde teamed up with songwriter/producer John Osborne (of the Brothers Osborne) and recruited a variety of singers, including Brandy Clark, Caylee Hammack and Aaron Raitiere, to help voice the characters in the songs.

“Lindeville” earned McBryde one of her seven Grammy nominations, which go with the multiple nominations and awards from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association that she’s amassed since coming on the scene with her lauded 2018 full-length debut album, “Girl Going Nowhere.” That album won McBryde best new artist honors from both the ACM and CMA, and set the table for her acclaimed follow-up album, 2020’s “Never Will.”

Now she’s back with the second of the albums completed in 2022 – “The Devil I Know.” Perhaps more introspective lyrically than her other albums, on a musical level “The Devil I Know” is McBryde’s boldest album yet. Songs like the title track, “Made For This” and “Blackout Betty” – the latter an unvarnished yet compassionate look at self-destructive drinking – are unapologetically rock. Meanwhile, the country material (“Coldest Beer In Town,” “Light On in the Kitchen” and “Single At the Same Time”) sounds organic and suitably rootsy.

McBryde agreed that she, producer Jay Joyce and the musicians didn’t play it safe on “The Devil I Know.”

“I think we’ve been so careful on our first couple of records to make sure that we didn’t alienate (anyone), like we have to do something that’s very much for radio,” McBryde said. “Then with this record we made the decision together to not let any of that have any effect on what we think we need to do. So we’re being more bold.”

Fans can expect to hear some of the 11 songs from “The Devil I Know” on McBryde’s current tour, along with key tunes from “Girl Going’ Nowhere,” “Never Will” and “Lindeville.” It’s also likely McBryde will play “Rattlesnake Preacher,” a song she’s played going back to early in her career that she finally recorded in the studio and released as a single at the end of June. McBryde has also been able to bring out her own stage set and visual production.

“It feels good to be in a spot where we’ve earned the right to fight for stage production,” she said. “As charming as all of our road cases have been on the stage, I feel like we’ve grown past that as a band and we’ve definitely grown past that musically, sonically. It’s nice to see this represented behind us in a way that we feel is fitting.”

And McBryde is also looking forward to seeing how songwriting goes now that she’s clean and sober. She’s co-written a few promising songs recently and realizes her new life isn’t as boring as she first worried it might be. She thinks she’ll find plenty of lyrical inspiration.

“I had to step back and go ‘You don’t really do anything?’” she said. “Look at the last two years of your life. You died, you came back. You drank yourself to a point where you’re still not willing to talk about it publicly and you came out of it, and you’re boxing and you feel better then you’ve ever felt. Your skin looks fantastic. What do you mean you’ve got nothing?”