Ashley McBryde will be the first to admit she’s not the stereotypical woman working in Nashville. She favors grit over glam, hard truths over easy cliches.
But that didn’t stop Music Row from trying to change the Arkansas native when she moved to town. Her appearance, she says on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, was particularly dissected.
“How do you feel about being blond?” McBryde recalls being asked. “I’m not tall like the other options in country music at the time. I’m not blond, I’m covered in tattoos — not as many then as there are now, and that’s how I met that advice when they were like, ‘Stop getting tattoos.’”
McBryde says everything from wearing fringe to tucking her pants inside of her boots was suggested to her at one point. She played along to a degree, but says she didn’t have to point out the styling didn’t work for her. “I don’t have to tell you it looks ridiculous. You can see it looks ridiculous,” she says.
“I have a gift for, if something makes me that uncomfortable… you will be as uncomfortable as I am,” McBryde says. “You’re giving me terrible advice. Why should you not feel the effects of this?”
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The Grammy-winning songwriter goes deep into her family lineage on Wild, her new album released in May. On Nashville Now, McBryde talks about her desire to be “fully seen,” her journey to sobriety, and what the word “redemption” means to her — it’s not only the name of her mocktail-forward bar on Nashville’s Lower Broadway. Watch the full episode below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Shania Twain, Shaboozey, Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Brothers Osborne, Maggie Rose, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Kings of Leon, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, Braxton Keith, Carly Pearce, Amy Grant, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Aaron Raitiere, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Michaela Anne, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, Love on the Spectrum’s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
