As Ashley McBryde celebrates her 41st birthday today (7/29), she is crossing the country on her headlining “The Devil I Know” tour. This evening, she is celebrating her birthday at a tribute concert in Nashville for Toby Keith, where she will be performing. Keith passed away in February after a bout with stomach cancer.
Others paying tribute to Toby in song tonight in Nashville are Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Jordan Davis, Riley Green, HARDY, Tyler Hubbard, Krystal Keith, Parker McCollum, Mac McAnally, Jelly Roll, Darius Rucker, Carrie Underwood, Lainey Wilson, and more.
McBryde was opening shows last year (2023) for Jelly Roll, and when I interviewed her recently, she told me about the man everyone is talking about. Ashley shared about her friend, “He’s so loving and so inviting. I love being on the road with him. The culture he has created with his band, crew, and everything about that is really welcoming.”
She added, “He told me my first day, ‘You’ll never feel more at home on any tour than you will on this tour.’ And I thought at first, ‘Aw, I don’t know, I’ve toured with some really amazing tours.’ He told me, ‘You’ll never feel more at home with any fanbase than you are with mine,’ and he’s right. His fan base is so diverse, and at first, when you look at a snapshot of it, you go, ‘These people don’t all belong under the same canopy right now,’ but they do. And that feeling while you’re watching a show is amazing.”
McBryde did say when you go to a Jelly Roll show, you better get there early. She noted, “They show up early, and every seat is filled. If you don’t show up by 4 o’clock, you’re not getting in your seat by the time Jelly takes the stage. Every seat is filled.”
When we chatted with Ashley before her album came out late last year, we discussed how long she has been writing her own songs. McBryde was just a child when she first realized that she was a songwriter. She said, “I think I must have been really small because I’ve been telling my mom that I was gonna move to Nashville, Tennessee, and become a country singer since I was really small, probably five years old.”
And the song’s lyrics and melodies came quickly to her. She said, “I would make things up. I would just come inside and sing what I had done. Like if I walked to the mailbox or whatever I’d seen, I’d come in and sing that to my mom.”
As Ashley celebrates her birthday today, we thought looking at five of her best music videos would be fun.
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