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Wow, Morgan Evans — we see you! Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
Wow, Morgan Evans — we see you! Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
This June, Ashley McBryde will celebrate four years of sobriety, a milestone that didn’t come easily. Amid her rising career, she found herself in a downward spiral that few people, not even her parents knew about, leading her to make a change that would impact her life forever.
McBryde appears on a new episode of on Bobby Bones Presents: The BobbyCast, where she opens up about her sobriety journey and the emotional and physical turmoil that she was facing behind the scenes while still maintaining a successful music career.
“When it went off the rails, it went off the rails in a big way. And as I’ve had to say over the last three years, I’m a drunk. And if you find yourself wanting to be like, ‘No, you’re not.’ That’s how good I am at it. I’ve had people say, ‘I never really saw you as much of a drinker.’ And so now I can say, ‘if you were around me prior to three years, nine months, six weeks, and however many days ago, I was drunk. Sorry. I am sorry,” she told the show’s host, Bobby Bones.
The Arkansas native explains that she did not embarrass herself, her team or the country music genre in the midst of her battle with addiction, however it became more and more evident that her struggles were getting worse. McBryde tried to get a handle on it by not drinking before shows, but she found herself turning to the bottle to calm her anxiety before meet and greets and then letting loose after shows.
“For some reason, my brain was like, ‘You didn’t drink till after a show and now you have to drink as much as humanly possible.’ And so everybody that I work with, everybody I was close with, not even my parents knew the extent of it,” she revealed.
McBryde says she felt angry over the fact that the substance had taken control of her life, and she knew staying in treatment was the only way to reclaim it. “I was going to die,” she admitted.
“I kept being like, “I can’t do this. I don’t know where I am. I can’t … Oh my God, I have to do this. I mean, I’m going to do it. They got me here. I’m going to do it. ” But I just kept being like, “There’s no way I’m doing this for 30 days. That’s insane. I don’t live under a bridge. I didn’t hurt anybody.” And now I can hear my other self going, “Oh kid, sit down and shut up and put your seatbelt on.”
Her wake-up call came after a night she barely remembers when she woke up in another artist’s home to find her team ready with an intervention, determined to get her the help she needed before it was too late.
“I woke up in a bed that’s not mine, in pajamas that aren’t mine, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that must have been a doozy. I’m thirsty. I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know where water is, so I’ll just go find water.’ And when I went to find water, I found a living room, and in that living room was my team, Dana and John Peets and my day to day. I looked at them and that artist was also on the couch. And I said, ‘Okay, I don’t know where my boots are, but I need my boots,’ she recalled with tears in her eyes. And they said, ‘We need you to stop.’ And I said, ‘I need me to stop too.’ And that was when I found out that she took me to her house that night after we’d been out to make sure I didn’t die, but I didn’t,” she said with tears filling her eyes.
Looking back now, the “Light On In The Kitchen” singer admits her mental health was quickly going to a dark place, to the point where she considered that it would be easier to end her life than to try and quit drinking.
“The more times I would allow myself to be that drunk, the scarier, the darker it got faster. And it wasn’t six drinks in then. It was three drinks in and pretty soon that becomes one and that’s a scary place to be. It’s a scary spot.”
She saw a chance to turn things around and become a better version of herself that would no longer hurt her or the people around her. So, she stayed in rehab.
“If this goes any farther, this is really, really ugly,” she thought to herself at the time. “This is like they’ll have to make a movie about it bad. So I just buckled down and decided, ‘Well, I’m here and technically I can leave, but we’re far enough out in the middle of nowhere that I wouldn’t know what direction to go.’”
Once she had finished her course of treatment and was released from the facility, Ashley McBryde then had another challenge to face: how to navigate a career that honors and celebrates drinking at every turn.
“When I left, I went to a couple of my practitioners and therapists and I said…’When I leave here, you need me to never, ever, ever encounter alcohol again. I will leave here at noon. I will be around alcohol by 10:00 PM. I will be in the bus. I’ve already fixed it at this time to where one of my buses, there is no alcohol, the other bus, you can have alcohol on it.’ And I said, ‘I’m not going to drink. I know that I won’t. And you don’t know me well enough to know that if I’ve made a decision, that’s it. I need you to give me the tools to be around it tomorrow.’”
Even more fears started to set in as she wondered if she would have the same kind of success sober as she did while drinking. McBryde also admits she was worried about how the world would respond to her sobriety, which is why she chose to wait at least several hundred days before sharing the news.
“I didn’t want to talk about it at all when I first quit drinking because I didn’t want it to look like it was performative, especially when nobody knew how bad it was. They’re like, ‘Oh, she must be suffering for ratings right now because she’s suddenly like, I’m going to be sober.’ And I thought, ‘If I screw it up, that’s the first thing we’re going to wait for is for me to screw it up if I talk about it.’”
That was over three years ago, and since then, McBryde has continued her career with authenticity, fully embracing her best self. Her music now reflects the raw emotions of this chapter and the daily fight she still faces. Sobriety has also led to other unexpected accomplishments as well, including the creation of her own non-alcoholic-forward bar, Redemption, located inside Eric Church’s Chief’s on Broadway.
“I’ve made the joke, I didn’t know not drinking came with a bar, but it’s wonderful. And it’s the only place on Broadway where you can order anything on the menu. It already comes without alcohol and you’re welcome to put alcohol in it if you’d like to. Our bartenders are happy to do that for you, but everything you order, Martini McBryde, there’s no alcohol in there,” she explained.
Nearly four years later, McBryde continues to embrace the life she fought so hard to reclaim. What once felt impossible, living and working in a world surrounded by alcohol, has now become proof of just how far she’s come.
Even more of this emotional and heartfelt conversation can be found in the full episode of Bobby Bones Presents: The BobbyCast, now streaming on Netflix.
The post Ashley McBryde Gets Emotional Opening Up About Her Journey To Sobriety: ‘I Was Going To Die’ appeared first on Country Now.
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Gabby Barrett brings her latest breakup anthem, “The Easy Part,” to life in a brand new music video.
The Quentin Cook-directed clip opens with a couple arguing inside their home, capturing the intense moment when the man storms out and drives away as the woman watches from the front door. After he leaves, she returns inside and reflects on moments from their heated argument, as well as the happier memories they once shared together.
Performance clips of Barrett are woven throughout the video, and as the story reaches its emotional peak, a storm begins to roll in, with rain pouring down around Barrett and outside the woman’s window.
As time passes, the sun eventually rises on a new day. When the woman finally leaves the house where they once made so many memories, the former couple unexpectedly cross paths at a four-way stop. In a final twist, it’s revealed that the man has moved on, with a new woman now riding shotgun in his truck.
The storyline follows the story of the breakup song ashe she sings, “Go on and slam that front door/ Go on and tell me where I can go/ Put that pedal to the floorboard/ Leave me a mess in the middle of the road/ Go all Jack D crazy/ Tell yourself leavin’ me is so hard/ But I got news for you baby/ That’ll be the easy part.”
Penned by Barrett with Michael Hardy (HARDY), Zach Abend, and Jon Nite and produced by Zach Kale, Zach Abend, and Ross Copperman, “The Easy Part” has been steadily picking up steam since its release, with SiriusXM giving the track strong rotation across its country channels.
“’The Easy Part’ plays with the idea that sometimes the dramatic moment in a relationship feels like the hardest part, but often it’s what comes after that really stays with you,” shares Barrett. “The song reflects on those memories; the good and the complicated, and realizing what they meant over time. In the video, you see those moments play out as she looks back on the relationship and ultimately chooses peace and keeps moving forward.”
Gabby Barrett has also compared the song to her 8x Platinum smash “I Hope,” revealing, “In some ways, it feels like a distant cousin to ‘I Hope.’ It’s a different kind of heartbreak, one that settles in slow and quiet.”
Click above to watch the just-released clip.
The post Gabby Barrett Unveils Dramatic New Video For Breakup Track ‘The Easy Part’ appeared first on Country Now.
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It helped to launch a massive career. Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
For the first time, Ashley McBryde tells the full story of what sent her to rehab. Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
For the first time, Ashley McBryde tells the full story of what sent her to rehab. Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
Ella Langley recently revealed the very unusual way a pet kangaroo helped spark the idea for her historic hit, “Choosin’ Texas.”
According to the rising country star, years ago she heard about the time Miranda Lambert got pulled over with her pet kangaroo in the car. Langley traced that story back to when she was 18 years old and had met a man named Scotch Taylor at what she describes as being “a redneck Top Golf” in Montgomery, Alabama. Scotch was the first person she had come across who had a connection to Lambert.
“He told me this story about her having a kangaroo and then getting pulled over with the kangaroo in the car. And I had so many questions about that,” Langley told Audacy’s Katie Neal. “And every time I’ve ever seen her, I wanted to ask about it, but I wait. I’m like, ‘This isn’t the right time. We’re on the red carpet. You can’t ask about that now.’”
She eventually grew a close enough bond with Lambert that she was able to ask her about that story during a songwriting session together.
“Straight up, I was like, ‘Did you ever have a pet kangaroo at one time?’ She goes, ‘I did. I had a pet kangaroo.’ And she literally rerouted places on her tour because there were places that wouldn’t have a kangaroo. She brought it on tour…she said one day she was riding dirt roads and she had a dog in the back and the kangaroo in the passenger seat and she ended up getting pulled over on this dirt road and somehow talked her way out of this ticket,” Langley explained.
She then joked that the cop likely could easily tell that Lambert was from Texas, not just from her Texas license plates, but also from the chaos unfolding in the car. Suddenly, the iconic line, “she’s from Texas, I can tell,” that we now know from the chart-topping hit fell out.
“That’s kind of how I come up with a lot of songs is it’s really just in conversation and I’ll say a phrase that I like or something just catches my ear.”
Within the span of an hour, the song came to life with Lambert throwing in her own ideas until the clever story was complete.
“We’ve all experienced a feeling like that where you’re so into somebody and they’re not in you, they’re into somebody else, way more than you and that sucks. So we really wrote to that feeling…I’ll never forget us getting the line, ‘He always loved Amarillo by morning.’ I’ll never forget her saying that. And we both went, ‘I should have taken that as a warning.’ And that easy, fell out. And it was just one of those kismet things. And I mean, we all love that song.”
“Choosin’ Texas” has become an absolute fan-favorite for country music lovers and beyond. It has made such waves that it rose to the No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making Ella Langley the first woman to lead the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts simultaneously. It also claimed the top spot of the Mediabase Country Audience, Billboard Country Streaming Songs chart, Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart, SiriusXM’s The Highway Hot 30 Countdown, and UK Country Radio.
Much like this beloved track, the Alabama native says just about every other song on her next album, Dandelion, came together effortlessly. Each of these songs also offer deeply personal stories that capture where she’s at in life right now, while intertwining elements of reflection and joy. A good example of this is an unreleased track titled “Lovin’ Life Again,” which she teased “might or might not be” the next single.
“I took some time off last year because I had to. I was just, it’s too much. It got too much. This job became too much. It became more important than me, more important than my health, more important than the human version of me,” Langley said. “I came back from that little break and I was hanging out with my friend Ernest and he asked how I was doing and he was somebody I talked to a lot about my mental health. Him and Miranda were my two last year, really. But I said, ‘Just like that, I’m back to lovin’ life again.’ And I mean, immediately we were both like, ‘Ooh.’ And the song just kind of fell out.”
From the very start, Langley says she knew what this album would look like. She had vision boards laid out, she had colors picked out, she knew the title, and all the songs eventually came together under that umbrella. As a result, she feels this will be the project where people listen to the songs and think, “That’s where the artistry clicked for her.”
“I love this record. I love making this record. I can’t wait to perform this record. It represents me in a way that I don’t think I have represented myself and the fact that I think it’s a little more feminine. I think it’s womanly,” she added.
The post Ella Langley Reveals How Miranda Lambert’s Pet Kangaroo Sparked The Idea For ‘Choosin’ Texas’ appeared first on Country Now.
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Remember Sara Evans’ First No. 1 Hit?
It wasn’t until her second album that the Missouri native scored her first chart-topper. Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country