Ashley McBryde is a true gem.
She won her very first Grammy award yesterday with Carly Pearce in the Best Country Duo/Group Performance category for their hit “Never Wanted To Be That Girl,” which was also Ashley’s first career #1 at country radio.
And of course, they gave a pretty incredible speech together, summing it all up quite nicely like so:
“We won a Grammy…. holy shit!”
And after the show was over and Ashley stopped by the press room to talk about what this win meant to her, a reporter asked what advice she would give her younger self knowing what she knows now… that she’d eventually be a Grammy-award winning country artist.
Ashley says she first started learning guitar around age 9, and found herself growingly frustrated by her musical dreams when she was a teenager trying to figure out how she’d turn it into a real career one day:
“I thought about this, it might’ve been last night I was discussing with my family. I started playing guitar when I was nine, started learning bass and things when I was 12, but I think if I could go to 16-year old me, who was pretty angry, just really frustrated…
‘cuz like, how am I gonna work this out? And I gotta have a real job and I just really wanna make songs up.”
She added that while, she wouldn’t want to spoil all the incredible things that were in store for her life, she would tell herself that Reba would text her for a very important reason that would eventually meant all the hard work paid off:
“If I could grab her by the shoulders, I would say, ‘I wanna tell you what happens, but it’s so cool. It involves Wynonna Judd and a few other of your heroes, and they’ll just text you. You’re gonna get a text from Reba, but I’m not gonna tell you why.’
Which is what happened to me today. I got my phone back when we got back, and it said, ‘Congratulations, I’m so happy for you. Love, Reba.’
And I took a selfie of me going like this and sent it back. That’s what I would tell 16-year old me. It gets really cool.”
I mean, if there’s a more deserving person in country music of all this incredible success than Ashley McBryde, I certainly don’t know who it would be…
She’s absolutely crushing it right now, and I couldn’t be happier that she’s finally getting the recognition she deserves after so many years grinding it out and busting her ass to make it.
It’s a great thing that she’s becoming one of the superstars in the genre, and she certainly made country proud last night:
And it’s safe to say, I think 16-year old Ashley would be more than thrilled to know how it all works out…
“Never Wanted To Be That Girl”
