'Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville' winks at reality in hard times

"People are disasters. Sometimes someone gets their a** whupped for cheating [on their partner] in the parking lot of an Exxon filling station. And we're not just going to talk about it at the beauty salon. I hope this album is one where people hear it, feel smarter or better for hearing it, and when they do, it either makes their chins drop in thought, or they smile to themselves. Then I want them to whisper to their friends to stream it from beginning to end."

Ashley McBryde is candidly discussing the creative vibe that governs her third album, "Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville." It arrives on September 30 as the Mammoth Spring, Arkansas native, is knocking on the door of 40 years of age with much less to prove than ever before as a Nashville superstar.

2022 finds her with twice as many Country Music Association Award nominations as she had a year prior. 2021 saw her pair with Carly Pearce for the heart-wrenching ballad "Never Wanted to Be That Girl." The song won a trophy for Music Event of the Year at March 2022's Academy of Country Music Awards. Moreover, she's at a place where she's also the only person in town who could draw an uninterrupted line from Eric Church to Carly Pearce and exist in a Venn Diagram with songwriter Shane McAnally and vocal superstars Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris.

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As a songwriter, she's an unparalleled creative force with the broadest-reaching Rolodex in town. Her calling card is retaining the genre's rawest human essence while retaining its rootsy beauty.

Thus, "Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville" becomes a recording that is inclusive of the entirety of the ever-widening umbrella that the genre touts as courting.

"This isn't music that is trying to sell you a mattress," she says, regarding the lack of true 'pop-country crossover' material on the album. She names a fascinating array of artists including Tyler Childers and Wynonna Judd as artists who make music that pairs well with her latest release.

"I'm not slick or in the business of paving dirt roads. Preserving the sacred essence of small-town America is important. ["Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville"] is the type of album that succeeds at scraping all of the meat off the bone," McBryde says. "I grew up in a one-stoplight town where people don't drink wine and go to yoga. Instead, these are people like my [drunken] alter ego Blackout Betty who say, 'why can't I have just one glass of wine? I'm a real piece of s**t sometimes.'"

"Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville" sprang from a whimsical COVID quarantine writing session in a Tennessee cabin two hours away from Nashville and near a body of water at the bottom of a hill. Unfortunately, nobody who partook in the session can accurately recall its location. "All of us who took part in this are people who get really weird if we don't fuel the creativity that drives our careers," says McBryde. "We also needed to feel good by telling some stories in song that made us laugh."

Those writers included McBryde, Aaron Raitiere, Nicolette "Pillbox Patti" Hayford, Connie Harrington, Brandy Clark, and Benjy Davis. During the sessions, they brought a fascinating blend of inspirations to the table.

Foremost, there's the work of Dennis Linde, the songwriter of Elvis Presley's 1972 hit "Burning Love and The Chicks' 2000 hit "Goodbye Earl." The album -- and its fictional small-town setting -- is named for him. An iconoclastic figure, once described by Nashville manager Scott Siman described Linde as a "mystery man" who challenged his talents in unique ways including writing a song starting with every letter in the alphabet during his career.

As well, previous work in McBryde's career had yielded ribald characters like the previously mentioned Blackout Betty, plus "Shut Up Sheila," Jenny, and Leroy. Lindeville gives these vivid characters -- including Ronnie, the owner of a pawn shop, added dimension and scope through a fictional hometown.

"We drank and smoked around a table in the weirdest house possible for 14 hours a day without limits or rules writing stories and commercial jingles about a [fictional] town," Hayford tells The Tennessean. "The energy that Ashley and I share is fearless, magical, and built on trust."

Generally, "Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville" essentially emerged from nowhere in a space where time seemed to stand still. However, that time coincided with something skyrocketing: McBryde's career.

Her April 2020 album "Never Will" was the singer-songwriter's superstar-making turn. The evocative and engaging series of stories (singles "Martha Divine" and "One Night Standards") led to Female Artist and Vocalist of the Year Nominations from the CMA and ACM.

McBryde admits that the album that follows her visibility in the genre is reaching its most incredible heights yet shouldn't be a "magical vanity project." However, working with frequent co-writers Hayford and Raitiere created place that lies between Hayford's roots in Starke, Florida, Raitiere's birthplace of Danville, Kentucky, and McBryde's time spent in North Arkansas near the Missouri border.

Nashville's in that loop. "Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville" presents the most captivatingly charming version yet of a growing passel of anthemic, blue-collar songs having a Music City moment that now includes everything from HARDY, Devin Dawson, and Lauren Alaina's "One Beer" to Jelly Roll's hit "Dead Man Walking."

In a blend of wanting to work with a friend and also likely wishing to aid in some level of likely top-tier acclaim, everyone McBryde asked to partake in the album's recording agreed. The Brothers Osborne were her first call -- John to produce and T.J. to lend his voice to a heartwarmingly earnest ballad entitled "Play Ball," where a young man advises that "going to church, loving your mama, and playing ball" are the keys to a fulfilling existence.

A terrifying night playing as a one-woman backing band at a "super-sketchy," illegal Arkansas strip club inspired McBryde to proclaim "Jesus loves the drunkards, the whores, and the queers" on the track that's most likely to be either the quietest or loudest-beloved (depending on the person) track on the album, "Gospel Night At The Strip Club."

Juxtaposing being disgusted with her strictly religious, anti-musical background in a town that doesn't serve alcohol on Sundays with a father who was a preacher ("God won't hear you when you're drunk and praying" was a familiar childhood lesson).

"I don't care if I get in trouble for this song," she states emphatically.

However, she likely will not. The reason? Currently, country music is at a place where the genre, like the Greek mythological tale of Icarus, is flying closer to the heat of diversity and pop music's metaphorical blazing sun than ever before. Instead of encountering that moment -- as many already have -- with antagonism, intentions that potentially cause more significant division, and protest, McBryde has compiled an album that instead presents truth wrapped in vibrant caricature. Thus, it can do things like delivering a mindful dose of blasphemy in the most smile-inducing of manners.

Also smile-inducing on "Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville" is McBryde's take on Linda Ronstadt's 1974 cover of The Everly Brothers' 1960 pop classic "When Will I Be Loved," featuring Brandy Clark, Caylee Hammack and Hayford. It is similar to her work alongside Hammack, Elle King, Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, and Tenille Townes on their ACM Award-nominated cover of Elvin Bishop's 1975 ballad "Fooled Around And Fell In Love."

"That era of music is just good, orchestrally well-constructed music," says McBryde.

McBryde jokes that she recently told her therapist that while she may have nothing left to prove to the music industry, she's still very much attempting to prove her stardom to herself.

"I operate from a position of 'should I do this' a lot, and I probably shouldn't do that anymore. But, I'm accepting of the fact that I should bet on myself more often. Hopefully, everyone hears this and has the same 'hot damn, I'm gonna do what I want' moment that I did."

"This is a very human album that amplifies all aspects of our personalities and hopefully makes it okay to talk about our tendency to get into all sorts -- sometimes super sh**y -- situations. Sometimes we instigate fights. Other times, we get caught cheating on people. But, we always try to be the best sons and daughters we can be."