With touring still on hold, ACM and CMA Award winner Ashley McBryde gives fans a taste of what her GRAMMY-nominated album sounds like live with her upcoming six-song EP Never Will: Live From A Distance available to pre-save now and arriving Friday, May 28.
EP opener “First Thing I Reach For – Live,” which Rolling Stone boasts, “conjures the Telecaster wisdom of Merle Haggard,” is available everywhere now. Fans can join McBryde’s fan club, The Trybe, to be the first to hear the new songs and get exclusive opportunities.
“We released Never Will on April 3 last year, so we went straight from rehearsals for a tour to not seeing each other in person for months,” reflects McBryde. “Getting together to rehearse and record these live versions safely was our way of giving the fans a taste of what they would have seen had the world not changed so much. Man did it feel good to strap on the guitar and see my guys and just play, but we cannot wait to do it again with our incredible fans in person soon.”
The four-time GRAMMY nominee continues to garner critical acclaim for Never Will, earning the title of Best Album from January’s Nashville Scene’s 21st Annual Country Music Critics’ Poll, voted by a consortium of leading national music critics, along with achievements in four additional categories: Best Single for “One Night Standards” at No. 3 and “Martha Divine” at No. 26; Best Female Vocalist at No. 2; Best Songwriter at No. 6; and Artist of the Year at No. 4.
“In an election year that misread the flyover, where people are both lonely and broke, it’s a gift to have someone who writes so well about money and desire as well as Ashley McBryde does,” Steacy Easton shared with Nashville Scene, while Jim Macnie remarks, “From throwing Grandma’s ashes off the roof to responding to treachery with a murderous glee, McBryde has upped her artistic confidence, and the music soars in kind.”
“McBryde honed her skill in the rock ’n’ roll bars of Memphis and is as much a rocker as Stapleton and Isbell. But she’s also a master of such traditional country music tropes as the pun song (“The First Thing I Reach For” and No. 3 Best Single “One Night Standards”) and the barroom sing-along catch phrase (“Never Will” and “Shut Up Sheila”),” praised Geoffrey Himes of Nashville Scene.
McBryde kicked off 2021 with multiple television appearances, including a debut performance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” with current single “Martha Divine,” applauded by Stereogum as “an arena-sized take on the song” and declaring McBryde as a “country singer whose grimy, gritty, desperate, literary songs fly in the face of Nashville-industry orthodoxy,” followed by a special performance of title track “Never Will” on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on January 20. Watch McBryde and her band perform “Martha Divine” HERE and “Never Will” HERE.
“Martha Divine” follows “One Night Standards,” which emerged as McBryde’s first Top 10 hit while going RIAA-Certified Gold in both the United States and Canada, landing on NPR’s “25 Best Songs of 2019” and Rolling Stone’s “25 Best Country and Americana Songs of 2019,” along with The New York Times’ “Best Songs of 2020,” the only country song in the top 15.
Never Will: Live From A Distance Track List:
- First Thing I Reach For (Ashley McBryde, Randall Clay, Mick Holland)
- Shut Up Sheila (Nicolette Hayford, Charles Chisholm)
- Velvet Red (Ashley McBryde, Patrick Savage, Daniel Smalley)
- Voodoo Doll (Ashley McBryde, Nicolette Hayford, Brandy Clark, Connie Harrington, Jake Mitchell, Aaron Raitiere)
- Martha Divine (Ashley McBryde, Jeremy Spillman)
- Sparrow (Ashley McBryde, Nicolette Hayford, Brandy Clark, Connie Harrington, Jake Mitchell, Aaron Raitiere)
