Ashley McBryde released her debut album, Girl Going Nowhere, in March, and the singer is currently on the road on her first headlining tour in support of the project.
While she’s currently focused on her tour, McBryde shared with PopCulture.com that she’s also in the process of writing her second record, something she’s been attempting to do, though not always to too much success.
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“It’s sort of like everything’s all pent up all the time,” she explained of writing on the road. “You get home and you get to write for that one day, and you either write something really, pretty good, or complete crap. I was hoping I would be able to write while on the road, and so far writing with road brain is impossible. Because you’re constantly thinking, ‘We’re gonna get there in an hour, we’re there but we have to load in in 30 minutes.’”
“You can’t ever get your brain to sit down with you,” the Arkansas native added. “You’re working but you’re like, ‘I wanna write a song!’ And you’re head’s like, ‘I have a few things to write down.’ So, I’ve got to find a way, if it’s possible, to do it on the road, to separate myself from where we are and get your brain back in the ether and try to do that, because it’s been really hard.”
While fans won’t hear too much of a different sound on McBryde’s next album, the 35-year-old noted that it’s always important to expand between projects.
“One of the things we made sure to do in the first record was not use every idea we came up with, so we would have some room to grow,” she explained. “You’ve got to grow between records one and two, or everybody’s gonna get bored, and you will too. So, some of the things that we had ideas for, ways to arrange a song, or instrumentation, we were able to save those. It’s gonna be fun to grow and we only want to wear the pants we sit in.”
“We’re not gonna all of a sudden just โ we’re not all gonna play kazoos through this amplifier or anything,” McBryde joked. “We’re definitely gonna grow it a little bit.”
McBryde shared that she hopes to finish the project in 2019 in the midst of tour, which is set to extend into next year.
“I also will get the opportunity to take time off from the tour and finish writing the second record,” she said. “So maybe that’s a good goal to say, is I get to finish writing the second record.”
Photo Credit: Getty / Jason Davis