INTERVIEW: Ashley McBryde Joins Love Junkies Radio on Apple Music

“I was headed to a co-write with a guy that I’d never met before by the name of Jeremy Bussey. And I was excited to write with him. I didn’t know anything about him. He didn’t know anything about me. And like you’re not supposed to do, I was thumbing through Instagram, in the roundabout right there on Demonbreun and I saw that Goose Gossett had posted a photo of Guy Clark and the caption was, “Thank you for teaching me how to write songs, even though you never met me.” And I knew what that meant. I knew that Guy was gone and that’s one of my heroes, of course. So many of us have Guy as a hero, but he was on my bucket list, not to write a song with Guy, but to smoke a cigarette with him. I think that would be probably the best cigarette of your life. This is how I find out that Guy has passed away. By the time I get to where we’re going to write, I’m a mess. I’ve got, my mascara is everywhere. I walked into Bussey and I said, “Hi, I’m Ashley. I’m so sorry. I know I look like crap right now.” And he said, “Well, run to the bathroom, wash your face, get yourself together and we’ll chit-chat.” So I sat down in the room and we chit-chatted. He’s from Alabama, I’m from Arkansas and I was 24, 3, 23 when I moved to town and he was 33. We’re just exchanging these stories. And we both had similar experiences with saying, “I want to move to a city where no one knows me. And I want to make songs up for a living and I want to be paid for it.” And some people are, “That’s awesome.” And some people are, “Have you taken your meds today?” And you know how it is. And so we had those ideas floating around and he said, “Have you played the Grand Ole Opry,” and I said, “Not yet, but I plan to.” And this is about a year, year and a half before Opry ever knows who I am. And he said, “well, then all we have to do today is write what you want to say the first time he play the Opry and we have to write it in such a way that Guy Clark wouldn’t be upset if he had to listen to it.”

“I found out that Trisha Yearwood was going to cut Bible and a .44 via Twitter, and it’s not like that’s something we get on a lot, right?  For some reason, it came across like the little top of my phone, which I don’t have any notifications turned on or anything, so it’s like this is a little strange. I see that my name has been mentioned in something, so I touch it and it says something about Trisha Yearwood and Bible and a .44. I know she knows the song because Mr. Brooks called me a few years ago and said he wanted to talk to me about “Girl Going Nowhere” and he wanted to talk to me about “Bible and a .44.” He said, I want you to know that Jack Yearwood, that was Trisha’s father, and that song really describes him to a T, and that made me feel really good. I know the song is going to come out. I find out it’s coming out at midnight on this particular night. We are somewhere in Virginia, I think, and we’re opening for Brooks and Dunn. Now we’re looking at a period of time just to catch everybody up, where Eric Church has cut… He has put “Bible and a .44” on his live record. Garth Brooks has put “Guy Going Nowhere” on his live record. Now, Trisha Yearwood legit cut Bible and a .44, so we’re sitting at midnight in the bus, me and all the guys, and I said, it comes out at midnight, and I haven’t told you that Patty Loveless is singing the harmonies. We downloaded it at midnight. We listened to it, which it’s… I mean, with her singing harmonies is perfection. The song ends and everybody kind of sat there quietly, and I said, guys, we just experienced the most ’90s moment possible. We just got off the stage opening for Brooks and Dunn, and then Trisha Yearwood released a song that I made up. And Patty Loveless was the harmony vocal on it. That’s the most 1990s thing that can ever happen to anyone, and I mean, it couldn’t happen to a more appreciative ’90s kid.”