Girl Going Nowhere - Ashley McBryde
Every year at C2C a very special breakthrough artist thrills everyone on the day stages. Last year it was Drake White, this year we think it is going to be this lady, the very talented Ashley McBryde. Playing her debut gig in the UK, Ashley was a revelation earning a well deserved standing ovation from a full house at The Indigo. We think this lady is definitely a LCM 'One to Watch' in 2018. Ashley is releasing her excellent debut album on 30th March and our LCM #SongOfTheDay & title track is the autobiographical and powerful 'Girl Going Nowhere'. This live and emotive version of the song is taken from Ashley's Grand Ole Opry debut in June 2017.
If you would like to see Ashley live, you can either catch up with her at C2C tomorrow or at The Borderline on the 12th March.
"I hear the crowd, I look around, and I can't find one empty chair. Not bad for a girl going nowhere" sings Ashley McBryde on "Girl Goin' Nowhere," the seminal title track from her forthcoming album. They're words built from experience: over the course of her life, Ashley's been finding her own way to fill those seats and sway those hearts since the very first time her teacher told her that her dreams of writing songs in Nashville would never see the light of day. Every time she was brought down, she persevered; trusting her timeless tone and keen, unwavering eye for the truth. It paid off. In April, Eric Church brought her on stage and called her a "whiskey-drinking badass," confessing that he's a massive fan. The rest of the world is quickly catching on, too.
Dubbed as one of Rolling Stone’s “Artists You Need To Know," citing she's "an Arkansas red-clay badass, with the swagger of Hank Jr. and the songwriting of Miranda Lambert," Ashley fearlessly lays it all on the line, and it's that honest all-in approach that has led to NPR critic Ann Powers to ask if she could be "among the first post-Stapleton country stars?" Ashley's album will showcase an artistic vision that will prove her to be one of the genre's keenest working storytellers, bringing unwavering honesty back into a pop-preoccupied genre. Pulling tales from every corner of her human experience, she sings with fire and fury, laughing and swigging that brown stuff along the way.
Ashley was raised in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. At three, she'd secretly pluck her father's guitar like an upright bass, and after about the 17th time being caught, her father bought her a guitar of her own. When she was twelve, she played her parents and grandparents her very first composition. It was at Arkansas State when, while a member of the marching band, She finally started sharing her voice with others, and finally moved to Nashville in 2007 where steadily worked a circuit of dive bars, biker hangouts, and colorful joints fighting to have her songs heard.
Her first EP, the self-released 2016 'Jalopies and Expensive Guitars' was just a taste of what she can do, and, on her full-length debut, she will meld her songwriting chops with the vision of producer Jay Joyce, peppering her tales with a touch of guitar-driven rock fury. Ashley isn’t afraid to tell the truth, get raw and real and use the spirits of country, folk and rock when it serves her greater purpose. And that's to tell the stories that shake us, make us and tell us a little more about what it's like to be human.