Tragic Details Of Ashley McBryde's Life
Ashley McBryde doesn't take her successful music career for granted — she knows what it takes to make it in the industry. Her success is hard won and the fulfillment of a dream that was born when she was three and picked up her dad's guitar for the first time. When she was 17, McBryde penned her first song, and she released two albums independently in the years that followed. Her eponymous debut album saw the light in 2006, and her sophomore album, titled "Elsebound," was released in 2011 after McBryde made the move from Arkansas to Nashville, living hand to mouth, and playing at bars across the city.
When she released her first album via Warner Music Nashville, she was shoved into the spotlight. Six Grammy nominations (and one win) later, McBryde is one of the most prominent names in country music these days, and even she finds it hard to believe at times. "It's just pow-pow-pow," a delighted McBryde told People, referring to her Grammy win and the numerous awards she'd been nominated for. Getting to where she is wasn't easy, however. "You've got to want it more than you want anything else," she told People. "You have to want it in a way, like, 'I might die if I don't do it." While she's incredibly successful now, McBryde's dealt with plenty of ups and downs to get to where she is today, and she's proof that you can accomplish whatever you dream of if you want it bad enough.
Ashley had to navigate her parents' dysfunctional relationship
Ashley McBryde doesn't write songs about things she hasn't been through herself, and in her song, "Learned To Lie," she gives listeners a peek inside the dysfunctional relationship her parents had when she was a kid. McBryde's father cheated on her mother, and even though she was very young, she understood exactly what was happening. One of the lyrics in the song goes, "He said he was working late, but he was working late fogging up the windows of an '89 Sable." Thanks to his infidelity, it appears McBryde never managed to fix her relationship with her father. She told Variety that she didn't receive the kind of love from him that she came to know from her stepfather. "My father never really referred to me as his daughter or his baby or his princess or anything even remotely close to that. And my stepdad has always done that," she told the outlet.
McBryde also didn't take a liking to one of her dad's girlfriends after her parents called it quits, so much so that she dedicated a song to the woman, which she titled "Martha Divine." While this serves as a pseudonym for the person's name, McBryde says everything else in the song is true. "The song, and what I did to that person in the song, was based off one of my dad's girlfriends. I really wanted to hit her in the head with a shovel," she told The Associated Press.
One of her teachers told Ashley her dream of becoming a songwriter was stupid
Ashley McBryde was a dreamer from a young age, but some adults weren't exactly appreciative of that. While speaking to the Grammys in light of her first nomination, she recalled how she was sharing some of her life story with fellow songwriter and musician, Jeremy Bussey, when the story of her algebra teacher came up. McBryde filled him in on how the teacher stomped on her dreams when she asked the class what career they wanted one day. "I told her I was gonna write songs. And she told me that that was stupid, and that wasn't gonna happen," McBryde recalled. Well, ma'am, look at her now.
When asked what she would say to that teacher now, McBryde thinks a little differently about the incident than she did when she was a kid. While she used to fantasize about how she would cut the teacher down to size, she would take a different approach now. "I think now, the only thing I could say to her would be thank you. I was a stubborn kid. She gave me hell. I gave it right back," she said, adding that she eventually got kicked out of the class because she didn't hold her tongue. "But now, I would say thank you because nothing lights a fire under your *ss like somebody telling you they don't think you can do it."
Ashley's brother died by suicide
In June 2018, Ashley McBryde and her family's lives were forever altered when her brother, Clay McBryde, died by suicide. He was a member of the U.S. military and served for four years. In the aftermath of his death, McBryde took to Instagram to thank her band for standing by her during the difficult time. "This week my guys have held me up through something I couldn't even imagine," she wrote in the caption. "Thank you for getting me to my family as fast as we can do it. My love for you is unmeasurable," she concluded the post. Later that day, she called on her followers to donate to Mission 22 in her brother's honor.
During an interview with the Associated Press in 2020, McBryde opened up a bit more about how hard her brother's death was for her and how she was struggling with a lot of anger. "In my brother's suicide, in the wake of that, he has left me my nephew, who is 26 years old," she said. "When he gets married, I gotta be there because you won't be there. When he has a baby, I've got to be there because you left me this huge mess," she said. Mixed with her anger was pain. She explained that she never realized how much she took after her brother. When he died, she started noticing small things about herself that reminded her of him. It was this realization that led to McBryde writing the song "Stone."
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Ashley dealt with very bad anxiety after her brother's death
When Ashley McBryde got news of her brother's death, she was smack in the middle of doing several back-to-back shows, and she showed up to all four of them, not knowing what had happened. For her, going ahead with things as planned was a coping mechanism. "You keep your feet moving or you will completely fall apart," she told People. "As women, we don't allow ourselves the falling apart time nearly enough." When McBryde had her first anxiety attack, she had no idea what was going on. She was in the middle of doing shows and realizing her wildest dreams, but her body was letting her know that it was time to take a step back and deal with what happened.
"I developed anxiety really, really, really bad right after Clay [McBryde} died," McBryde admitted. "I mean, they were bad panic attacks. They are under control now, but I didn't understand what was going on." McBryde even found herself questioning her career and whether it was worth going on during the nights her anxiety was at its worst. "I had to pull my head out of my *ss and be like, 'Yeah, this is what it is. You are built for this life," she said, explaining that she started focusing on the people she was helping with her music instead of just focusing on her own pain. "I said to myself, 'It's not about you, so get over yourself,'" she said.
Ashley doesn't appear to be close with her two older siblings
When Ashley McBryde sat down with Taste of Country to discuss the song she wrote as a tribute to her late brother, she was asked what her siblings thought of it when they heard it for the first time. She responded that Daniel and Aubrey McBryde, who are just a little older than her, "took it really, really well." But then, when she mentioned her two oldest siblings, McBryde said that they had never heard the song.
When the interviewer asked whether they were going to hear it at some point, McBryde replied, "That's up to them, really." When asked whether they even knew the song existed, McBryde quipped, "I don't think so. They don't know I exist." She then explained that she and her oldest siblings were never close and that they were more annoyed by her than anything else. "They stopped paying attention to me when I was, like, four or something," she laughed. "It was like I was a house fly they just kept trying to let out the window. They just didn't like me. They never did." Sobering up, she said, "But I was like, that's cool, I'll just play by myself." She then swiftly directed everyone's attention back to the song they were initially talking about.
Ashley sustained serious injuries after falling from a horse
In September 2021, Ashley McBryde went horseback riding and nearly died after taking a very bad fall. She had to cancel all her upcoming shows to recover but initially remained pretty private about her injuries. While making an appearance on "CBS Mornings" in 2022, however, she was ready to talk about what happened and admitted that the fall was "pretty bad."
McBryde told Taste of Country that the accident happened when her horse, Jenny, took off on a wild run unexpectedly, throwing her to the ground. McBryde hit her head and lost consciousness. She told "CBS Mornings" that she almost didn't make it. "Life-saving measures were taken," she said, adding that the people who were with her performed CPR in the aftermath of the accident until she could be taken to the hospital. "They put breath into my lungs for me so that I would live," she said.
Luckily, she made it through. McBryde sustained a concussion and suffered a broken pelvis. Six days later, she was back on stage, even though doctors had advised her to take at least a month to recover. She admitted to "CBS Mornings" that, in retrospect, she should've listened to her doctor. While speaking to Taste of Country, McBryde admitted that she's still experiencing some lasting symptoms like vertigo almost two years after the accident. Now, she's trying to take better care of herself.
Ashley McBryde used to be in the habit of drinking too much
When Ashley McBryde started out as a young musician trying to make her mark on the industry, she easily fell into the lifestyle of bar-hopping and drinking till dawn. After all, bars were where she made her money, and she quickly adopted the lifestyle that came with it.
By the time 2017 rolled around, McBryde was dubbed a "whiskey-drinking badass" by fellow singer and songwriter Eric Church. McBryde lived up to the moniker. She even ended up creating an alter-ego for her drunk self called Blackout Betty (she wrote a song about this too). "I would be like, 'I am ready to go home. I just have to figure out where Betty put my keys," she told People. Eventually, McBryde decided that she didn't like Blackout Betty all that much, and she realized that she was going down a dangerous road. "I wasn't hurting anyone. I wasn't unreliable. I wasn't embarrassing my band or my business. But I was close enough to know that that was the next thing that would happen," she admitted. "[I realized] that maybe part of being the 'whiskey-drinking badass' is knowing when to set it down, knowing when it's costing you too much," she explained.
McBryde knew she couldn't kick her bad habits on her own, so she started going to therapy and got treatment. It was only when she completely abstained from alcohol that she realized she'd had a drinking problem.
One of Ashley's bandmates was in a near-fatal accident
In 2022, one of Ashley McBryde's bandmates, Wes Dorethy, was in a very serious UTV accident. Dorethy had to undergo emergency surgery, and McBryde took to Instagram a few weeks later to share the news with fans, telling them that she'd waited that long because she hadn't been sure whether Dorethy would make it out alive. "I haven't said much about it yet because I'd been holding my breath waiting to hear that he's 'out of the woods,'" she started the post, telling fans that he was finally in recovery but that he had a very long road ahead of him. On his own Instagram page, Dorethy posted a snap that showed him in a wheelchair. In the caption, he revealed that he had to learn how to walk again but that he was incredibly thankful to be alive.
In her Instagram post, McBryde asked fans to help chip in to cover Dorethy's medical bills if they felt called to do so. "The life we live as musicians often means we don't have health insurance," she said. Speaking to Taste of Country the following year, McBryde said that, in the aftermath of her horse riding accident and Dorethy's car crash, she and her band had made a conscious effort to take better care of each other. "We have to take better care of ourselves. So, right now no one's riding as much as a scooter. No ATVs, no skateboards, no horses," she told the outlet.
Ashley has often felt like she doesn't belong in the music industry
When Ashley McBryde signed with her first publisher, she hated every single second of the whole ordeal because they tried to tell her who to be. "It was like, 'Here's who's cutting records — so there can't be any cursing, and it can't be about drinking or staying the night with anyone,'" McBryde told Billboard. "What am I going to write about, corn dogs? That was really challenging, and the songs were terrible," she said.
McBryde pretty much continued to be herself, and this is what landed her a record deal in the end. Still, her songs didn't land on the likes of the Billboard chart at first. By the time she'd been sticking it out in the music industry for over 10 years, she had a grand total of one song on Billboard's Country Airplay chart, which was a collaboration with Carly Pearce.
"It does p*ss me off when someone walks out of their mother's womb into headlining arenas and releasing songs that go number one instantly, 1,000%," McBryde admitted. "Because if I put that person who skipped all the steps in a single bar I played in North Little Rock that's full of bikers and truckers, they couldn't catch anyone's attention." Now that she has everyone's attention, McBryde still deals with insecurities, wondering if she belongs, but it's clearer than ever that she's exactly where she needs to be.