Ashley McBryde Reflects on Journey to Headlining Her Own Tour

Ashley McBryde has had a banner year — she released her debut album, Girl Going Nowhere, to critical acclaim and is now headlining her Girl Going Nowhere Tour, which finds her traveling the country and across the pond with her band and opening act Dee White.

“It’s really interesting,” McBryde told PopCulture.com of being the top name on the bill. “I’m learning more things than I even knew I would learn.”

“We love being a support act and we’re good at it,” she added of herself and her band. “It’s a really cool thing, plus we have a good opener. We have the opportunity to be good, to be the way our headliners were good to us.”

McBryde has years of touring experience and recently wrapped up a trek with Miranda Lambert, who the “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega” singer praised for her generous spirit.

“Miranda Lambert is in every single possible way a class act,” McBryde shared. “She just makes you feel really at home.”

McBryde also recently toured with Luke Combs, calling the “One Number Away” singer “great.”

“They never treated us as though we were any less an act,” she revealed. “He was wonderful to us as well.”

The Arkansas native has also toured with Jon Pardi and shared that her experience opening for him inspired her to choose White as her own supporting act.

“The first person that ever took me out to play clubs and at the time he was on his way up was John Pardi and he was like, ‘Man you know what you should do? You should come play some clubs with me,’” she recalled. “But he let me come and do some dates with him. So when it came time to choose an opener for this club tour we wanted to grab somebody that was kind of in the same position I was in.”

Thanks to her rising star, McBryde has now played at some of Nashville’s most famous venues and is set to headline a show at the city’s Marathon Music Works on Thursday, Sept. 27.

“It’s really gonna be hard to ever beat the first time I played at the Opry, or the first time I played at the Ryman,” she noted, though “as far as something that’s not a sacred national landmark,” Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre marks her favorite show she’s ever played.

When it comes to her favorite part of performing, McBryde cited “the exchange” between the artist and their audience.

“We call what we do songwriting but we’re just making stuff up,” she explained. “And you make stuff up and then you sing it out at them, and then they grab it and they throw the energy right back at you. And as long as it’s at that exchange, and it’s this really cool conversation between a group of individuals who love to make music together. And a group of individuals who love to hear it. There’s this really cool buzz that happens between a band and a crowd that you can’t get anywhere else. That’s my favorite part.”

Photo Credit: EB Media/AlysseGafkjen