ABC/Image Group LA Ashley McBryde‘s much-anticipated sophomore album arrives today, featuring eleven cuts, including the defiant title track, “Never Will.”
The Arkansas native recalls the song came to life on an especially productive day.
“It started out with two friends and I, like all my stories start out, just kind of writing around,” she tells ABC Audio. “We’d already written a song that day. And my lead guitar player, Matt Helmkamp sent over just a voice memo from his phone, [and said] ‘Listen to this little thing that I wrote today.’ And we wound up writing a song with that.”
“It wound up being every person in the band had contributed something,” Ashley points out, “where this song wouldn’t have existed at all without each person’s contribution. And so that makes everybody in the band a co-writer.”
Ashley admits that in itself is nothing short of a small miracle.
“You know what it’s like to try to get five band members to agree on anything,” she explains. “Even just wearing black on black on black, somebody’s gonna disagree with that. And so it was really special for us to write ‘Never Will.'”
Ultimately, Ashley believes Never Will ends up being a fitting bookend to her 2018 debut.
“I think it’s a really good answer, a good sequel to ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere,'” she reflects. “And so now if you were to set the two records next to each other, you would have Girl Going Nowhere and Never Will.”
Never Will‘s lead single, “One Night Standards,” is currently just a couple spots away from breaking into country’s top thirty.
Tonight, Ashley hosts a special album release livestream with her band on her YouTube channel, starting at 8:30 p.m. ET.
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