_Ask Ashley McBryde about the sounds that inspire her, and she will start from the very beginning—from the bluegrass festivals she attended when she was “not even hip high” and the musicians who first taught her how to hold a chord. Her family home in Saddle, Arkansas, was filled with music and musical people. Her siblings practiced various instruments, and her mother encouraged an appreciation for a broad range of genres. Her father played the guitar, strumming tunes by Kris Kristofferson, Gordon Lightfoot, and John Denver. “So much John Denver,” McBryde said. “I can sing it in my sleep.”

The Arkansas native laments that people often seem to forget that some of the greatest musicians came out of her home state: Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Levon Helm, Collin Raye. Another seldom-discussed fact: the Grand Ole Opry, into which she was inducted in 2022, was inspired more than a century ago by an Ozark music festival held in Mammoth Spring, less than fifteen miles from McBryde’s childhood home.

McBryde honed her musical talents through high school, where she played the trumpet and the French horn in the marching band. She earned a full-tuition scholarship to Arkansas State University, in Jonesboro, and continued studying music until 2007, when she dropped out on the advice of a professor. “I walked with him to the Dean of Fine Arts, Dr. Tom O’Connor, and got in writing—on, like, a Post-it Note—that if I crashed and burned, he would give me my scholarship back.”

On May 10, the Grammy, CMA, and ACM award winner returned to Arkansas State, where she was recognized with an Honorary Doctorate in Music. McBryde spoke with the Oxford American over Zoom about this latest achievement, her time at Arkansas State, and how she works to stay connected to her roots.

How did your experiences growing up in a small Arkansas community—and in a large musical family—help you to find your voice as an artist?

I grew up going to bluegrass festivals, so from a really young age I had access to not just people who played the instruments I was interested in, but in the world of bluegrass, you have access to the masters of those instruments. And in one jam session there’s the best guitar player you will ever hear and the worst guitar player you will ever hear, and the best fiddler and the worst fiddler. I can remember being not even hip high to those guys and asking about a chord. And they’d be like, “Put your hands like this, and I’ll point to you when we get there.” So that had an amazing influence on me.

I started trying to play instruments when I was really, really small. I started off trying to play guitar, and I couldn’t, and so they gave me my grandmother’s mandolin, and I got to where I could kind of play that. I’m still really terrible at mandolin. As I got bigger, they would allow me to play a bigger guitar. They got me a three-quarter sized guitar. My dad played when I was growing up, and he really only played Kris Kristofferson songs, Gordon Lightfoot. Lots of John Denver. So much John Denver. I can sing it in my sleep. And Mom had all kinds of music going through the house, show tunes, classical music, mostly bluegrass. So Alison Krauss—and I would later learn that that was Union Station—had a mega influence on me.

One of the things that I learned not just from Alison Krauss but also from people in the country world like Pam Tillis and Patty Loveless, was that these themes and these types of songs live in me. And that there’s something else in here, that there’s a different sound. It doesn’t quite always sound right when I’m singing bluegrass. It doesn’t quite always sound right when I’m singing classical country. I would later find out that what that was—I guess we would call it Americana, and you maybe would call it folk rock. It was fantastic to first notice the difference.

Growing up, was there ever a place in Arkansas that felt like a home away from home for you?

There’s this little town up in the mountains in Northwest Arkansas, and I wouldn’t know until my forties how unique it was. I just knew that it felt cool to play there. It’s called Eureka Springs. I would play in a bar in the basement of a restaurant, and I would sleep in my truck, and then the next night, I would go and play in what sort of is a bar but looks like it might have been part theater at one time. There were lots of motorcycle people, and there was a drag show at the Mexican restaurant in town. [Eureka Springs] has always felt like a really warm, safe place. But really, when you're talking about the state of Arkansas, almost anywhere feels like home. You will recognize the dirt that made you almost anywhere, I think, in the state that that birthed you.

What shifted in your creative process and the way you thought about music as a vehicle for storytelling when you moved from Arkansas to Nashville?

I think that the storytelling was part of making the move. I was at Arkansas State. I was studying music education. “I know I’m supposed to do this. I have to play the French horn, and I’m going to learn everything there is to know about music history, because people respect that.” I was playing in coffee shops, and then I was playing in Memphis bars and still trying to go to school. And then I moved to Memphis and still tried to go to school. And then I was like, “I love doing this. I need to be in Nashville.” So I moved to Nashville.

I adored studying classical music. I thought it was necessary. I think it made me a better musician in some ways. But that music I wasn’t in love with. When I hear Vince Gill sing, that is different than when I hear someone play classical music on a French horn or a clarinet. It’s still beautiful, but the DNA pull of it isn’t nearly as strong.

At the time, I was writing songs about, you know, “One of these days I’m gonna get out of here and break away,” and then I did. That started writing the soundtrack to the things that I would do. I wrote songs about having a drinking problem way before I had a drinking problem. And it sort of makes me want to tell young writers now, “Be careful, because you’re writing what’s gonna happen.”

Which Arkansas-based artists have influenced your work? Are there any sounds that you feel are emblematic of the region or your upbringing that are still a part of your style?

Most of the people I grew up around, they never mentioned that Glen Campbell was from Arkansas, that Collin Raye was from Arkansas, that Johnny Cash was from Arkansas. I used to drive past Dyess, Arkansas, on my way from college to go play in bars in Memphis every week. And I would think about him being from Dyess. The plethora of musicians that came out of Arkansas—I don’t know why we don’t talk about it more as Arkansans. As a matter of fact, the Grand Ole Opry was born in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. I just talked to a guy about that the other day, and I said, “I lived there, and nobody talked to me about it.”

I would say that the influence that Johnny has had on all of us is deeply rooted in Arkansas, and it definitely pops back up. Conway Twitty got his name from Conway, Arkansas. There’s so much to be proud of. The Grand Ole Opry doesn’t exist apart from this journalist, George Hay, who got sent on assignment for a Memphis newspaper [in 1919]. And when he was getting ready to leave, a couple of guys from the Ozarks showed him their fiddle and their banjo, and they said, “We’re going to a hoedown. We’ll play music till the sun comes up, if you want to come.” So he writes this piece about how never has he experienced people having more joy. He called them mountaineers, the Ozark mountaineers.

When he moves to Nashville and becomes a radio personality at WSM, they have this three-hour show called the Grand Opera, and it celebrates classical music. Well, after this experience [in Mammoth Spring], he comes in and says, “For the next hour, we’ll be playing earthy music for earthy people, and we’ll call it the Grand Ole Opry.”

What stories were important for you to tell growing up, what stories do you still have left to tell, and how has your communication of these stories changed over the years?

I showed up [in Nashville] kind of like, “These are the ways I write songs.” And then you get here, and they say, “But it can’t this, and it can’t that. It’s got to do this, right down the middle.” That changed my storytelling. It changed what I was talking about and how I talked about it; and when I realized it, I got super offended. And so now, in the last couple of years, I’ve gone back and been like, “No. This whole time, the songs that made me want to write songs, none of it looked like this. None of it was down the middle.”

I like to tell stories about real things. I know we all say that, but it’s just real shit. Like, “Livin’ Next to Leroy” (2018). Leroy was a real guy, and he was a meth addict. He was also a cool guy who just happened to have a really bad addiction. And in that song, he, you know, goes through an overdose. That guy ultimately survived.

I’m glad that I went through the change that I went through, as far as trying to write things more mainstream for country radio, and I didn’t get a bunch of cuts. And I think that’s what offended me so much, was that I gave a little of my integrity for the bigger game. We do have meth heads, and we do have moonshiners—and not in the fun way. And we do have unwed teenage mothers, and not in the MTV fucking way. We have things that we need to talk about. It’s all a mirror. My dirty laundry is your dirty laundry. And so if I’m willing to talk about something that I’ve felt, chances are there’s a shit-ton of us that have felt that way.

The whole point of music, when it got in each of us, was that it made us feel less alone about even one thing. So as we’re telling the stories, even if you find yourself second guessing what you’re telling, like, “Does this even matter?” God, yes, it matters.

Your latest release, “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs” (2024), which you co-wrote with Chris Harris and Patrick Savage, is a revival of old country and points toward reconnecting in a disconnected world. How do you work to stay connected to your roots?

I assumed I would always stay connected to my roots. And it turns out it’s got to be intentional. The integrity that I was talking about giving on a little bit here and there—I moved to town as this curly-headed bourbon enthusiast, and I let them smooth an edge here and smooth an edge there. Right around the time “Cowboy Songs” happens in the writing room, I look at my hair, and it doesn’t curl anymore. And this is from heat treating it and doing all the things. But for me, it was a metaphor of, “I don’t even recognize my own head of hair. I took my eye off of my roots, so I need to do a gut check and see what is still true. What has changed? How do I mend it? Is it repairable?”

We sat down—all three of us were pretty frustrated at the time—and we sat down and wrote “Cowboy Songs” to make sure, without having to reference too many things, can we still get in touch with the sounds that made us want to make sounds? Can we still say things in a way that the songwriters that made us want to be songwriters would say them? You don’t say, “There’s a mason jar next to the stove.” You say, “It’s where mama kept the bacon grease.” Can we still do that?

We prove to ourselves in “Cowboy Songs” that we can. So even if the song never goes to radio—which, we have not offered it to radio—it’s one of our highest streaming songs to date. That tells us that that exercise of, “Are we still who we say we are?” is successful. That message being delivered is resonating with people.

Does the sense of having “made it” impact how you engage in your craft and the new pressures around success?

Pressure is a weird thing. I think having to be more intentional about everything kind of feels a little square and lame and boring. If I can just remember that all I’m doing is making shit up and playing songs with my friends, and the only criteria it ever, ever has to meet is, “What do I feel like singing about right now?” If I can take that pressure off of it, then we’re gonna get what we’re looking for. And we can keep the pressure on and build a bird house. We can just go, “Verse, verse, chorus.” We can do that. We all have to do it sometimes.

Right now—we’re finishing out record five—I’m glad you even asked the question, because it brings attention to the fact that if I walk into the room with that pressure on me, it puts it on Shelly Fairchild, who will also be in the room. And I’ve already shot us in the foot. If we can just go back to when we were kids and we were banging on a guitar—that spirit, not that skill level—that is where all the good stuff is going to be.

I grew into a woman who would hone the craft and bend phrases to my will and make mascara rhyme with Nebraska, but not in a pressured way, in a sock-puppet-with-my-friends kind of way. And if we can just manage to be complete goobers that look like we aren’t complete goobers, then we’re doing the right thing.

Tell us about your days at Arkansas State University.

I was seventeen when I graduated high school. My dad had just left my mom, and I got a full ride to Arkansas State. I got in the Fine Arts department and found out that each of those classes are only worth one hour of credit, which seems ridiculous because, every ensemble you’re in, you have to log so many hours of practice in the practice room. So, huge workload. But it kind of doesn’t matter, because I love being in marching band. I played the mellophone, which is like a French horn, and I loved it. And within one marching season, I became the marching instructor for the horns and saxophones. And then I wanted to be the drum major. I wanted to conduct, but there aren’t enough mellophone players in any marching band for us to have a mellophone player as a drum major. I didn’t care and I auditioned anyway and I got it. Sometimes when people say, “That’s not going to work,” it does work.

I’m a big advocate for music education, partly because I studied music education and partly because my peers went on to be those music educators that I now get to advocate for, that we get to celebrate through the CMA Foundation. And I’m noticing, while, yes, we do need to teach children to play clarinets and violins and pianos, we also need to be spreading the information that, if you love music but you can’t sing but you’re really good at organizing, we need you, and we need to educate you about that side. If you’re like, “I love music, but really I’m good at doing hair,” oh my God do we need you. If you are good at lighting or you’re in the theater program, but you don’t know how that translates to anything, we need you, and we should be advocating for that music education too.

Which faculty members encouraged you to pursue music full time?

Dr. Tom O’Connor was the dean of Fine Arts when I was there. Recently, I was asked to come and sing with the Arkansas Delta Symphony Orchestra, and Dr. O’Connor arranged my songs for the symphony. That’s what led to the chancellor coming to me and saying, “I’m nominating you for a degree.” But during my time at Arkansas State, Dr. Ken Carroll, saxophone player, he knows that I’ve made a record—I use that loosely—and that I’m going to Memphis and I’m going to Nashville and I’m playing these shows. And he goes, “I think you should drop out of school. It’s my job to make sure you don’t. But you’re skinny and you’re pretty and things are going to happen easier for you; and in five years, you’re going to be fat, and nobody’s going to care. So go make music.” And I walked with him to the Dean of Fine Arts, Dr. Tom O’Connor, and got in writing—on, like, a Post-it Note—that if I if I crashed and burned, he would give me my scholarship back. And I left. I dropped out right then.

What does it mean to you to receive an honorary doctorate from your alma mater?

I was raised that you address someone by their rank. It’s always Sir or Ma’am. If you are aware that someone is in the service and you know their rank, you should address them by that. If they are a doctor, you should address them by that.

My father would correct you. If you were to say Mr. McBryde, he would say, “It is Dr. McBryde, thank you.” That’s not a diva thing to do. You’re acknowledging a person’s life-long pursuit to the one fucking thing that they were like, “If I never do anything else, I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do it at the exact top level it can be done.”

That’s what I’m so touched about with this doctorate, is it is acknowledging a lifetime of searching for how to be better and how to be—not necessarily the best—but remembered in my community for always striving. The countless nights that some people spend in other fields—I was nineteen in a bar learning how to run sound and how to play different genres than I was used to playing, depending on the crowd. I did dedicate my life to it, and I learned things in bars you couldn’t have taught me in a book. So it’s actually quite special to be acknowledged as having completed the course, especially by Arkansas State.

In the home I grew up in, we were raised to be very submissive and very quiet, if you were female. So now I just cannot wait. When people are like, “Do I have to call you doctor?” I’m like, “No, Doc is fine.”

Editor’s Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.