With her debut major label album, Girl Going Nowhere, Ashley McBryde staked her claim as a perceptive troubadour, the kind of artist who trades in a no-fuss style of bygone lyricism, imbued with wit, humor, and heart.

Country radio may not have been swift to engage with McBryde’s music, though one would scarcely have guessed it judging by her appearance on the Academy of Country Music Awards earlier this year, where she not only was honored as New Female Artist of the Year, but performed twice during the broadcast—a vulnerable, triumphant rendering of “Girl Goin’ Nowhere,” as well as in a fiery collaboration with Eric Church on “The Snake.”

McBryde’s debut album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album. In June, she was honored with the MusicRow Award honor for Breakthrough Artist of the Year, as well as Song of the Year for “Girl Goin’ Nowhere.”

Accolades don’t only come in the form of awards; for McBryde, finding out that “Bible and a .44,” an autobiographical song from her debut project, is also included on Trisha Yearwood’s upcoming album Every Girl, was an honor in itself.

“As a songwriter, that’s the feather in the cap, when someone you respect like Ms. Yearwood decides that something you wrote is something she would lend that voice to. Her voice is pretty much the best voice that’s ever been on country radio.”

McBryde’s first inclination that the song would be recorded came from none other than Garth Brooks.

“I got a call from Mr. Brooks and he had a couple of questions about ‘Bible and a .44’ and ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere.’ He wanted to get to know me, know about my co-writers. Then I found out through my publishing company at the time that Trisha was thinking about cutting it. Then I found out through a tweet that she did cut it,” she says with a chuckle.

When it comes to her own music, McBryde is deep in the weeds of working on her follow-up project.

“We are working on it. I think we are done with song selection. I think what we’ve got right now—I’ve got some reference mixes on the bus with me right now. What I have right now is a really solid swing.”

The album blends songs McBryde has had in her arsenal for the past five years, along with more recent material. While the first album was recorded in two nights at Jay Joyce’s studio in Nashville, she has had more time for experimentation on album number two.

“We knew we couldn’t stretch in every direction we wanted to stretch [on the first album]. Jay told me, ‘Take a snapshot of where you’re at, and leave yourself room to grow.’”

She heeded the advice and says the coming album will have grittier lyrics and will embrace her rock ‘n’ roll proclivities to a greater extent.

“Everything on the new record is everything you would expect to get from me—you are going to have a finger-picking song, the acoustic stuff and then straight-up rock ‘n’ roll stuff. It’s part of our tendencies that we weren’t able to fully express with the first record. So we decided to fully express it in the second record and see where it takes us.”

McBryde’s extensive time on the road opening for artists like Eric Church earned her hefty performance cred, but left little time for creating new music. “I really only had like a day a month to write and that is not enough. I have to write,” says McBryde, who notes she began writing for the new project in earnest in January.

One of the first of those January session songs is the stunning Nicolette Hayford co-write “Two Birds, One Stone,” a title McBryde says has been whittled down to just “Stone.” Both Hayford and McBryde have brothers who died, including McBryde’s brother, 53-year-old William Clayton McBryde, Jr., who died in mid-2018.

“I use humor to deflect trauma and I know this about myself,” McBryde says. “We were writing something else and it got kind of boring for us. I said, ‘You know we are both in the dead brothers club. And if anyone is going to write a song about being in the dead brothers club and how much it sucks, it’s going to be me and you.’ We started smoking cigarettes and I told her how angry I was at my brother. I’m just ranting and raving. I’m like, ‘You know what? He’s got one son [Bradley]. And every time Brad reaches a milestone, I’m going to have to take care of this shit. He left a huge mess.’ I was just screaming and she was like, ‘Damn, you are really angry.’ Both of our brothers were Army veterans and I was like, ‘Yes I’m angry. We have to write a pissed off song.’ She said something and it made me laugh, and I went, ‘Whoa, when I laugh, I sound like my brother.’ We exposed a nerve. We would not let up on each other. So we were just crying, had a glass of whiskey and it took us four or five hours. We’d laugh and then cry more. I think what we came out with helped us and we thought it could help somebody else.”

Brandy Clark has two tracks on the project; McBryde’s “Girl Goin’ Nowhere” co-writer Jeremy Bussey also has a track on the project.

“We have some dark subjects, even if some of them are kind of humorous,” she says, naming a song titled “First Thing I Reach For,” which she wrote with late songwriter Randall Clay. “It was a sad song. We went to cut it and rearranged it, sped it up a little bit and it became the most charming, honky-tonk sing-along.”

Though the album is still a work in progress, McBryde is most concerned about the consistency of message, rather than a linear sound.

“When I first put the songs together, I was like ‘Dang this is kind of all over the map,’ and when you listen to what we have, it all has the same message, the same direction. It reminded me that honesty is a necessity. When you are selecting what to give to the people who love your music, you have to select with honesty and vulnerability first.”

And if McBryde is feeling pressure to write that elusive country radio hit, she’s not succumbing to it.

“You have to remind yourself that if you write for radio, you are behind the curve. You are writing for the wrong people and you’ve creatively shot yourself in the foot.

“Great music, thanks to streaming, is a lot like Netflix. When one of us finds out about a cool series, we text it to everybody and we start watching it on the bus. Music is much the same way. Music fans feel an ownership to music. They find that light in the dark and they will hover around it and they will bring their friends to it. People will go down a rabbit hole to find more music from you.”

Blanco Brown‘s viral hit “The Git Up” continues its domination on the Country On-Demand Streaming chart this week, while Luke Combs‘ This One’s For You extends its run atop the country albums chart, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

Brown’s “The Git Up” earned 22 million streams this week, far ahead of its followers on the Country On-Demand Streaming rankings. Blake Shelton‘s “God’s Country” is at No. 2 with 9 million, while Combs’ “Beer Never Broke My Heart” is at No. 3 with 8.9 million. Morgan Wallen‘s “Whiskey Glasses” is at No. 4 with 8 million, followed by another Combs entry, “Beautiful Crazy,” at No. 5 with 7.6 million streams this week.

On the country albums chart, Combs’ This One’s For You brings in 21K in total consumption this week, followed by Dan + Shay at No. 2 with their self-titled effort (16K). Wallen’s If I Know Me is at No. 3 with 12K, followed by Combs’ The Prequel EP at No. 4 with 11K. Chris Stapleton‘s Traveller rounds out the Top 5 with 11K this week.

You know the one; the white station wagon in the background of the world’s introduction to country wave-maker, Sam Hunt. The retro, white car on the album cover of his Between The Pines acoustic mixtape.

Affectionally called Belle by its owner, Old Gringo Music’s Chris Hunter, the car has sat between the office buildings of Hunter’s and MusicRow Magazine’s on 17th Avenue South for years. Until, recently, it was to be moved to a new location, and was destroyed in the process.

The car was headed to a friend, Chris Trull‘s garage, to perhaps be worked on this winter.

“I cleaned it up, started it, drove it around town that morning,” Chris Hunter tells MusicRow. “[Chris Trull] got in the car and said, ‘Well, I’m going to head to my house.’ He called me about 30 minutes later and said, ‘Man, I’m on Moores Lane and this car has caught on fire. It has burnt to the ground.'”

Photo: Chris Trull

The cause of the explosion is unknown. Hunter believes that perhaps the fire was caused by a bird’s nest under the hood, or a fuel line that had been damaged by icy weather.

“This car has had such a history,” Hunter says. “I bought the car in 2012. We drove it down to Cedartown, Georgia, which is where we made the ‘Raised On It’ video. Chris Trull was with me! We drove it down there that weekend and that’s where we shot the photo [for the Between The Pines cover].

“I signed Sam in 2009,” Hunter continues. “I found him through a mutual friend, and moved him and John Worthington—his tour manager—up at the end of 2008, and started the publishing company. We ran the gamut, writing with everybody in town and trying to find his sound.”

This is not the first adventure Belle has endured. She was once stolen, and then recovered by Hunter himself.

“I came into work one morning, and my car wasn’t there, and there was broken glass on the ground. I called the police and then I put a post on Facebook that said, ‘Someone did not know how much I loved this car. It’s hurting my heart, I just can’t stand it. I have to have my car back.’ It wasn’t two hours until a lady called and said, ‘I just saw your car!’ I said, ‘Where?’ She said, ‘The Cracker Barrel on Harding Place. It’s parked in the parking lot.’

“So I drove out there and there it was. The window was broken out, so there was snow inside it. The police said that [some criminals] will steal those old cars because they can hot-wire the steering column easy. They will steal them to go commit a crime; and then they will leave them somewhere. They said it happens all the time.”

Belle has since been laid to rest. “It’s going to the giant junk heap in the sky,” Hunter said. “I’m heartbroken.”

To quote Hunt, himself: She was over me before the grass grew back where she used to park her car / She’s leaving those same marks in someone else’s yard.

Belle’s marks in the grass on 17th Avenue in Nashville.

Hunter Hayes. Photo: Brenton Giesey

Hunter Hayes’ album Wild Blue (Part 1), which released Friday (Aug. 16), may have come as somewhat of a surprise to fans, but for Hayes, the project is the chronicle and culmination of years of self-discovery, rejuvenation, creative freedom, and, as the album’s lead single suggests, heartbreak.

In 2011, Hayes released his self-titled debut project, which went on to earn a 2x multi-Platinum certification from the RIAA. At the tender age of 19, Hayes’ honey-smooth pop confections such as “Wanted,” “Somebody’s Heartbreak,” and “I Want Crazy” ushered him to the top echelons of the country charts, earning more Gold and Platinum certifications and introducing country music fans to a young, energetic conveyer of polished pop-country earworms, who was also touted for his keen guitar work and abilities as a multi-instrumentalist.

He followed with 2014’s Storyline and the following year’s The 21 Project, though only one single from those projects, “Invisible,” reached the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Hayes kept writing, though, by his creative standards, he kept coming up short.

“As a writer, I kept running into a wall,” Hunter says. “What I realized in hindsight, was that I had stopped including everything in my life in my writing, and only including the things that I thought I was allowed to write about. I wasn’t seeing what I felt like was proper progress and I wasn’t feeling the songs come to life.”

Earlier this year, he scrapped a newly-crafted batch of songs, retreated to his home studio, and started over, in secret.

“I didn’t tell the label, I just started making the record as if no one was watching. I thought, ‘This is a great opportunity for me to hit reset without anybody really knowing about it. I thought, ‘What would this album be if nothing kept me from telling the truth?’”

The songs poured out. First, “Wild Blue,” followed by “One Shot” and “My Song, Too,” and others that make up the 12-track album. The album is a study in self-acceptance, taking in the lessons from life’s lowest points, and moving on.

Live and learn/repent then repeat, build a bridge then burn it he sings on “One Shot,” his lone solo write on the project, his voice fill with a confident, emotional rawness while melding jazzy, quirky piano licks with a jubilant rhythm.

I’ve heard of demons but I never knew I had so many of my own, he sings on the title track amid a clipped, syncopate rhythm and tense guitar solos, soothed by ethereal piano, as he compares the feeling of flying with letting go of a relationship.

“I’ve been in love with aviation for a long time. I dreamed about being a pilot as a kid. I had an aircraft simulator on my computer. But more so, I think the song was born out of the feeling of flying, being weightless.” Says the 27-year-old, whose voice still brims with boyish energy.

“All my friends tell me about these flying dreams—I’ve had one in my life. Apparently it is something that happens when your soul is properly free, when you are not weighed down by anything. So it’s kind of a journey to have that dream and Wild Blue (Part 1) is the road to hopefully having one of those. It something you have to slowly manifest and hope you’ve done the work to clean out all the things that are holding you back. It’s just about moving on from things and the struggle. Part 1 is about the triumphs the struggles and the achievements about getting to that point.”

Those struggles came in various forms, as Hayes simultaneously found himself in the dissolutions of both business partnerships and a serious romantic relationship along the way.

He’s gracious over the loss of a lover in a pair of songs penned with Jordan Reynolds and Dave Barnes, “Loving You” and “My Song, Too.”

“It started with about an hour and a half of trying to write something else,” Hayes says of the latter track. “I didn’t have that title, but I said it sometime during the session. We took a break and I started spilling my guts for about 30 minutes. Dave called me out on it. He said, ‘What would you do with that as a title?’ I had to hide the fact that I was crying the entire time. Just being brutally honest, it was tough to go into those details—every line in that song is so personal. I wanted a song that had gratitude in it, because at that point, that was the biggest emotion I had to work with. I wanted a song to say that. I didn’t want to write a bunch of angry breakup songs.”

His voice carries a rugged edge that complements the weightier material, such as the searching, questioning “Dear God,” penned with Andy Grammer and Dave Spencer. Hayes transparently wrestles with the self-doubt and spiritual questions that arise in the aftermath of loss on lines like When everything I love just leaves/Are you sure that there’s nothing wrong with me?

“I worried that song would be too heavy. I was surprised at how many people needed a safe space to have that conversation. Andy was the first to sing the chorus; I was scared of it and at the same time I thought it was brilliant, because that’s so honest. How many times have I wanted to ask that just to get confirmation that it’s not [true]?

“I was convinced I would send the song in [to the label] and no one would react to it, or everyone would be scared of it. I was so dead wrong. Everyone on my management team, at the label, and my close circle, felt is was powerful. It was encouraging like, ‘Ok, I did the one thing I was scared shitless to do and that’s what’s connecting.’ It taught me, ‘Keep being scared, and do things that scare you, that’s where the magic is. That’s what connects.’”

As the title suggests, Wild Blue (Part 1) is the first in a trilogy of albums.

“I wasn’t planning on telling anyone it’s a three-part thing. I was going to give myself an out, but I ‘m ok with the world knowing that,” he muses, saying that Part 2 is over halfway completed.

“We’ve got some stuff mixed and mastered. There was a time this summer where we felt the entire album was there, but I just keep writing. I’ve never written so much and I’m writing a lot of songs by myself, which tells me I have a newfound creative confidence I haven’t had in a while.”