I am the youngest of six. There's the smart one and the pretty one, and I am the loud one.
— Ashley McBryde
It's not a problem if 20,000 people heard my music for free, but it's a huge problem if 20,000 people never heard my music.
When I was 12, I wrote a legit song - about having my heart broken, of course, because I was 12 years old going on 40. I sang the song for my mom, and she asked, 'Where did you get that song?' I told her I wrote it, and she said, 'Really?' She looked at my grandparents and just said, 'Oh, boy.'
I haven't shut up, I think, since I was born. I tend to talk a lot, and I sing constantly, and I know that it can be kind of annoying, but I would say I sound a lot like my mom.
There's not a lot to do in a small town, but i grew up on a cattle farm... some people would say there's nothing to do on a cattle farm, but I'd say there's everything to do.
It's humbling when people sing back to you!
It turns out, the bikers and the truckers and people in dive bars are the nicest people in the world.
Nothing lights a fire under you like somebody saying, 'You're not going to be able to do it.'
I was lucky to grow up in the '90s, when we had just as many strong female artists as male artists. That's a world I would like to live in again.
Love songs are all about how I'll move a mountain for you and I'll never hurt your feelings. I've never been given a mountain, and if you love me, you should hurt my feelings sometimes. If I walk outside looking ugly in that shirt, you don't love me if you don't hurt my feelings a little bit and tell me.
In my musically formative years, I grew up listening to Suzy Bogguss, Trisha Yearwood, Terri Clark.
I do know where I'm from, and I'm proud to be an Arkansan and to represent country music.
I grew up playing bluegrass as a youngster, and I'm happy that I did.
When you see a chick that's not the skinniest girl in the room, covered in tattoos, you go, 'That girl wants to stick it to the man.' But we don't give a damn about the man. At all. We just want to make music.
I'm little. I'm pale. I'm not strong. But bad things are scared of me. I think it's because my dad was a preacher growing up, and I was raised in the Church of Christ.
A secret gets bigger and nastier the longer you don't talk about it.
Every 'no' I ever received was an inch closer to a 'yes.'
It's all been guerrilla warfare trying to get my name out there.
I listened to a lot of No Doubt stuff when I was in high school - or maybe it was middle school... I don't want to age myself too much!
I was a terrible student, but I never missed a music class. In fact, I don't even think I attended most of my gen-ed classes, but I never missed a single music class.
I've heard that the true love of country music is alive and well. That gives me so much hope and so much happiness.
You should read a crowd like you read a magazine.
There's always going to be people that say you're a sellout - anyone who knew you back when or who wants to begrudge you for having success. That's OK. Their opinion of me, and the box they want to put me in, is just simply none of my business.
The day Guy Clark passed away was the day we wrote 'Girl Goin' Nowhere.' It was the first day I had met Jeremy Bussey, who I wrote the song with.
I've been in T- shirts and jeans since I was a kid. I don't have to show you a bunch of my skin for you to listen to my songs.
I'm just going to do what I do, and people will like it, or they won't.
You have the most fun, and love is best, when it's just wrong enough to feel good.
Singing 'Family Tradition' with Hank Jr. was a pee-your-pants moment. Hank comes over while I'm singing and puts his arm around me, and my knees nearly buckled. You can put off the fact that this is reality, but when he came over, there was just no denying. I just lost cabin pressure.
In college, I was able to be the vocalist for the jazz band at Arkansas State.
If you've ever been in a bar with a bunch of old sailors and see a guy that has an eagle tattooed across his chest, that guy has seen some stuff.
Not everybody is going to like your songs. But you probably wouldn't hang out with those people anyway.
I have a soul the devil wouldn't buy.
Everything I ever needed came out of a radio and a dashboard. My Mount Rushmore of what was cool came out of a radio - Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless, Mark Chesnutt.
I get recognized more for my tattoos than my face.
I'm 5 foot, 3 inches. Even if I hit you, I'm probably not going to knock you down.
I started playing mandolin when I was three or four years old because I was too small to be playing guitar. As I got older and more responsible with holding instruments, I was allowed to play my mom's guitar that she had.
I grew up listening to an album start to finish, and you don't skip songs. You don't listen to a Paul Simon record and skip a song: you listen to it the same way you would eat a meal... the way the person who prepared that meal for you means for you to experience it. That's how you should do it before you add salt and pepper to it.
I'm kind of a squirrely individual.
I love to think on my feet, and I love to be able to feel from a close proximity how things are going.
When I was growing up, radio DJs were celebrities, not just the people singing the songs.
You don't change country music; it changes you.
You never know when the love of your life might just walk in.
Eric Church knocks down doors everywhere he goes.
Country music is - can be - a loving industry.
I keep a $2 bill rolled up in every pair of boots I own because one time, an older guy came up to me at a farmer's market I was playing in Memphis, handed me a $2 bill, and said, 'Stick this in your boot.' And when I stood back up, he handed me a $100 bill and said, 'Thanks for listening to me. Stick this in your pocket.'
I was lucky that my parents listened to really good music. My dad loved Kris Kristofferson.
You know me: jeans, T-shirts, boots, all the time.
In bluegrass, there's a lot of joke-telling and a lot of banter between bandmates. It's like improv or watching the 'Carol Burnett Show.'
As I got a little older, I discovered Lori McKenna and Patty Griffin and found out how many other tools we have as songwriters, that there's storytelling and there's ear candy, and that there is a place where they meet, too, and both of those women are really good at doing that.
If you can sing to a room of 60 people who don't give a damn, then if, someday, you're playing to people who really want to hear your music, that's not hard.
