Ashley McBryde Reveals Most Frustrating Part of Releasing Upcoming ‘Never Will’ Album

If you’re anxiously awaiting Ashley McBryde‘s upcoming sophomore Never Will album, you’re not alone. McBryde is just as anxious, if not more, to share it with her fans, and reveals the most frustrating part of not having the record released is the waiting.

“It’s frustrating as hell because the record’s been done,” McBryde told Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1. “We recorded in June. We were ready to go to master fairly soon after that. So not being able to talk about the songs, not being able to perform the songs live, not being able to tell you it’s April 3rd but [only] I know it’s April 3rd was really, really frustrating. So the guys and I just tried to make sure that the Girl Going Nowhere show that we’d built, we just tried to keep that fresh and really tried to just focus on doing work, doing work, doing work. Because getting frustrated is the worst.

“And we always, we just want to share the damn songs,” she continued. “Everything has to have a purpose and there were two songs I wanted on this record so bad and I kind of based what I thought the record would be about off these two songs that I didn’t write, but I just knew they belonged on the record. At the end of us recording everything, those were the two songs that did not make the record. Every time I listened to the record down, which I do pretty often with the band, we can’t tell if it’s a country record with rock songs on it or a rock record with country songs on it, which is kind of cool.”

McBryde was influenced by a lot of styles of music over the years, which, thankfully, all come out in Never Will.

“It gets all the way down into damn near bluegrass town with a song called ‘Velvet Red,’” McBryde revealed. “And then there’s things like ‘Voodoo Doll’ and ‘Never Will,’ which are just wall of guitar sound. I didn’t even know I had a rock scream, but I have one of those and it is in the song ‘Voodoo.’ So there’s your rock stuff covered, there’s your bone; it’s so country it has to drop towards town to go hunting, you got that style covered.”

The Arkansas native also touches on some of the darker times in her life, including the loss of her brother, Clay, in 2018.

“There’s a song on the record called ‘The Stone,’ which Nicolette [Hayford] and I wrote,” said McBryde. “Each of our brothers were veterans and both have since passed on. So it was a really hard subject to tackle, but we tackled it. So hopefully that’ll help somebody out.”

Never Will will be released on April 3. It is currently available for pre-order on her website.

Photo Credit: Getty Images for CMT / Viacom