I have been dying to hear this song.
Ashley McBryde did an interview for BMI last year where she admitted she had written an unreleased song inspired by Dolly Parton’s track “These Old Bones,” which immediately piqued my interest for obvious reasons.
I searched the internet high and low for even a clip of this mysterious track to no avail… until today.
Thanks to a loyal Whiskey Riff who sent it in, we finally have a full version of Ashley’s “Gypsy Queen,” which she says is actually about:
“a lady who lived up in the woods that everybody was afraid of… imagine that!”
And yes, I would love nothing more than to have it featured on Ashley’s next record, whenever that comes.
From a performance in 2017 when she was opening up for Lynyrd Skynyrd, she detailed that part of the song was inspired by her raising in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas and an area of the mountain she was never allowed to go:
“There was a hill where I grew up, I’m from the Ozark mountains, there was a hill you weren’t supposed to go up on top of there.
And I still don’t know why… but it was dangerous. We got to talkin’ about it one day, and thought we’d just write a story about it.”
Her imagination runs wild here, as she dreams up what kind of gypsy lady might’ve been hiding up there all those years:
And Dolly’s song that inspired “Gypsy Queen”:
