And you do need to do what's expected of you a fair amount of the time. I love the artist portion of my life, but it can be a little confining.
I think we should put them in the same ZIP code and give them some neighbors." It's like we were like a family on family vacation, trying to put a puzzle together. I'd written "Livin' Next to Leroy" with Nicolette, and she wrote "Shut Up Sheila" with Park Chisholm, and then Nicolette and Aaron and I wrote "Blackout Betty," and that's when I was like, "We've accidentally developed all of these characters over the years. And the best thing that could happen is we write a whole bunch of songs that are really good for this one thing that we have this idea about, and that's what happened. The worst thing that could happen is that we write a whole bunch of songs that we have to use for different things. The only agenda was we wanted to write stuff that felt good. For some reason, we kept the same seats the whole week we were there. Jewly Hight: There's this perception of the country songwriting community as a homey, close-knit world, but it sounds like the writing retreat you held in a lakeside cabin, where you came up with a lot of this material, took that to a whole other level.Īshley McBryde: Lindeville was all written around a kitchen table.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
She sat down with NPR Music to talk about why going all in on downhome personality studies was well worth a professional detour.
McBryde quietly ventured a little further into character-driven territory on Never Will with "Shut Up Sheila," a salty scolding of someone who drops self-righteous platitudes at the worst possible moments. She included "Livin' Next to Leroy" on her 2018 major-label debut, Girl Going Nowhere, but it got a bit overshadowed by broader fascination with how charismatically the title track reflected her own heroic underdog story. McBryde's own catalog has been peppered with memorably earthy personalities from the start, too. Fully half of the tracks she chose to sing lead on are riffs on old-school radio jingles, each pitching a made-up diner, pawnshop or funeral home.Įven if it's been largely forgotten in the two decades since " Goodbye Earl," there's a rich tradition of lusty, character-driven tales in country, folk and bluegrass songwriting - one to which the album's namesake, and the author of "Goodbye Earl," Dennis Linde, contributed for decades, as did Tom T. It's titled more like a grand, group production than a solo album, and for good reason: It's a heartily witty concept album about a fictional hamlet and the untidy intricacies of its working-class residents, performed by half a dozen singer-songwriters in addition to McBryde, who happens to be one of contemporary country's most sumptuously natural singers with a fine sense of when to make her gestures vivid or subtle. Another project had to come first: Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, a mischievous, and mightily pleasing, departure from the prescribed progression of a mainstream country career. McBryde did, indeed, complete the sort of album people now anticipate from her, but decided that its release could wait. That was only part of the reality, she clarifies: "You write all year and you make a record - in this case, we made two different ones." If she followed convention and continued the musical approach she'd made her calling card so far, presumably, she must be at work on a full-length elaborating on her consummate, red-blooded blend of country's tough and tender extremes. Two years out from her second major-label album, Never Will, McBryde was due for a third. She'd racked up five nods, one for female vocalist of the year and the rest for a chart-topping collaboration with a fellow star, all of it recognition of recent achievement according to her industry's established benchmarks. On the recent September morning when the Country Music Association announced its latest round of award nominees, Ashley McBryde awoke to texts from her team.