Ashley McBryde joins Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen for a candid and thoughtful look at her new album ‘The Devil I Know.’ The singer decodes “the five Ashleys” on the album’s artwork, identifying with each of the flawed characters. She also honors her late friend and cowriter Randall Clay and reveals that she’s been sober for over a year.
Listen to the full conversation anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.
Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music About ‘The Devil I Know’ Album Cover
Blackout Betty is on the couch. There is basically regular street Ashley looking at her. There is observer Ashley behind the piano. There is a fully glammed version that is tossing a pancake at somebody. And then there’s the Ashley in the middle with a cup of tea. But in this frame, because when you open the album, it’s band and crew, and there’s an Easter egg for every single song on the record. There’s an Easter egg inside this picture. Once you’ve listened to the record, you can look at the picture and go, “That’s why that’s on the floor.”
Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music About a Specific Line from ‘Blackout Betty’
There’s even a line in Blackout Betty that says, “Why can’t I have just one glass of wine? Hey, I’m a real piece of s**t sometimes.” And at the time, I was. Pretty often. But you’ll hear it in context and you’ll be like, yeah, it’s kind of said in a jabbing you in the ribs kind of way… And I know that my therapist would be like, “We’re not going to say that I’m a piece of s**t sometimes. We can say I’m messy, we can say I’m complicated.” But at the time, it was absolute truth. I mean, I wrote the song hung over.
Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music How ‘Blackout Betty’ and ‘6th of October’ Are Related
I do love that at the beginning of “Blackout Betty,” right in the first verse, because these songs weren’t related until I put them together on this record, but she says, “What time did you throw up?” The very first line of the 6th of October is, “I threw up this morning in Christiansburg, VA.” So at the time, this song is written with CJ Field and Blue Foley and myself. We’re at my house. This is back when I lived out in Watertown, out in the middle of the woods. And we had a co-writer and best friend, Randall Clay, that had passed away. And this is probably six or eight months after he passed away. And we are on the porch to write together. We’re not going to write about Randall. We just want to kind of invite his spirit to be with us… On the last verse, we thought, if Randall were here on the porch right now, what advice would he give? I won’t recite it because it’ll make me tear up. And that’s how the record ends. So there’s so much advice on the record. And then I was like, the record has to end this way.
Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music About Being More Than 450 Days Sober
KELLEIGH: Do you want to talk about where you are with drinking?
ASHLEY: I didn’t check the counter and I haven’t, but it’s 450 something days. I think the last time I sat with you, it was 100 days.
KELLEIGH: 100. It was 100.
ASHLEY: What a white-knuckled time to sit down and talk. But I didn’t really want to talk to anybody about it even lightly until a year had passed because I was like, what if I screw it up?
KELLEIGH: Oh, so much-
ASHLEY: But it’s so wonderful.
Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music Why She Got Sober
Turns out it was just really detrimental. And then when you’re finding out the reasons that you’re going so overboard all the time was because of your inability to feel something that your brain was like, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’m like, well, that’s weak. I’m not going to accept that. I’d rather just hurt. This morning I was at the boxing gym working out with my coach. We were doing something that was hard, and he said, “Are you okay? Do you need a break?” And I said, “I know how to hurt.” I do now. I mean, I knew how to hurt before and add extra to it for no reason. And now, when I’m uncomfortable, I say out loud, “I know how to be uncomfortable.”… This conversation is hard. That’s okay. I know how to have a hard conversation… And I don’t have to go hide because I’m not a weenie. When I was like, “You have no idea how much I can drink. I can drink you under the table,” what an awful thing to admit. You are so weak that you have to drink an entire bottle of anything instead of just feel what you feel.
