Ashley McBryde is making some big changes during quarantine.
The Country songstress opened up to Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country with Kelleigh Bannen via FaceTime call about how her listening habits have changed in isolation and the differences playing solo while streaming from home.
“When I first started self-isolating, I was noticing that I was listening to records front to back. And normally I’m getting a minute and a half of each song and rarely do you have unless you are on the bus to listen to music from front to back. So of course I listened to Brandy Clark‘s record that way; I listened to Kelsea Ballerini‘s record that way the day it came out while I picked out something to make in the kitchen,” she says.
“It’s kind of cool coming out at this time because we have a chance as music lovers to really take albums in the way that they are supposed to be taken in.”
Since the Coronavirus COVID-19 hit the United States, artists around the country have been postponing in-person events and gatherings through the summer to help flatten the curve and promote social distancing. To make up for the lack of concerts, Ashley — along with others in the Country music community — have taken to livestreams to perform some of their biggest hits for fans on social media in the comfort of their own homes.
“I love my band and I would not trade them for anything in the world. You don’t realize how much you’re leaning into that until you go back and do it by yourself — which I do acoustic shows a lot — but I no longer play in bars where I do Lady Jukebox and you can name anything and I can figure it out,” she says. “It’s been really interesting.”
McBryde released her highly-anticipated sophomore album Never Will earlier this month, and its been praised by music critics and artists alike.
Produced once again by trusted collaborator Jay Joyce, Never Will is a risk-taking, range-reflecting triumph. The witty, confessional, detail-driven songwriting addressing a wide spectrum of blue-collar Southern women’s experience that fans and critics first fell in love with is still here, but perhaps even sharper. The music itself is stadium-ready rock-and-roll with a bluegrass wink or two, and country music’s storytelling heart––and McBryde, no longer new, is the music’s ordained and highly capable standard bearer.
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