Ashley McBryde Shares Haunting Rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’ at the Ryman for Easter Sunday

Ashley McBryde is the first to admit that she wouldn’t normally sing the classic hymn “Amazing Grace,” but she did just that on Friday when she visited the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville to record her version to celebrate Easter Sunday. The iconic venue was nearly empty save for McBryde and her camera operator, which made the singer’s stirring performance all the more haunting. Holding her acoustic guitar, McBryde sang the hymn a cappella, starting the song several times after becoming overwhelmed with emotion.

“I had the opportunity to honor all we’ve lost at @theryman this week and I tried my best…7 times in a row. I really tried…⁣,” McBryde wrote on Instagram. “Some things just can’t be healed. Some losses can’t be reconciled and some wounds will never heal. Sometimes we don’t get closure the way we want to. All we can do is honor our predecessors and hope that we touch the hem of heaven sometime in our lives. I wouldn’t normally sing this song but we all may need this right now and there isn’t a better place to sing it at than the Ryman. The mother church pulls things like that out of you and will tell you what to sing and when to sing it…even if you can’t. Happy Easter, love to you all.”

Along with other artists around the world, McBryde has had to delay several shows due to the coronavirus pandemic, though she did perform to an empty Grand Ole Opry in Nashville early this month alongside Lauren Alaina and Terri Clark in a live broadcast performance. Speaking to PopCulture.com last month just after the coronavirus made its way to the United States, McBryde called the situation “really strange.” “What sucks is, is there a pandemic? Absolutely. Should we be as careful as possible? Absolutely we should,” she said. “What we shouldn’t do is panic because panic causes this entire other emergency.”

The ACM Awards, which were scheduled for April 5, were among the numerous events postponed due to the crisis and will now be held in September. McBryde is nominated for Song of the Year for “Girl Goin’ Nowhere” and joked that “they’ll do anything” to keep the song from winning before noting that she “can’t argue” with the decision to postpone. “I can’t argue with it,” she said. “Whatever we have to do to keep it from becoming a really, really, really bad emergency is what we’re going to have to do. And if I can’t work, that’s okay. I’ll just try not to spend so much money on Amazon’s movies.”