Ashley McBryde Refused to Change Who She Was Early in Her Career When Nashville Executives Told Her to Go Blonde and Stop Getting Tattoos

No matter how successful Ashley McBryde gets, she has remained committed to staying true to herself. That authenticity that fans have come to expect has been something that she’s fought to protect since the beginning of her career, even if it could have cost her.

At the start of 2026, the country star released a new song that uses “Arkansas Mud” as a metaphor for the parts of herself that can’t ever be scrubbed away. The track serves as a reflection of her deep roots and finds her reiterating the mindset that no matter how much others try to change her, the person she is underneath will always remain.

“It’s in my throat/ It’s in my bones It’s on my boots/ And in my blood/ That Ozark streak sure runs deep/ And it sticks to me/ Like that Arkansas Mud,” she sings.

McBryde tells Rolling Stone that the day she wrote that track with Chris Tompkins and Jessie Jo Dillon, she was in a particularly “spiteful” and “defiant” place after thinking back to how much the industry tried to change her appearance when she first came onto the Nashville music scene.

“They were like, ‘Curly hair, probably not. How do you feel about being blonde?’ And I was like, ‘Go sit by yourself.’ I’m not tall like the other options in country music or at the time I’m not blonde. I’m covered in tattoos, not as many then as there are now. And that’s how I met that advice when they were like, ‘Stop getting tattoos.’ And I was like, ‘You stop getting tattoos,” McBryde remembers.

She was also encouraged to change up her look to fit the typical country music image by adding fringe to her ensembles and putting her pants inside her boots.

“I was like, ‘Is it raining? Is there a reason?’ And I’ve tried it. I will do it. I don’t have to tell you it looks ridiculous. You can see that it looks ridiculous.”

Seeing this as “terrible advice” she refused to give in and instead shared her discomfort loud and clear in order to get her point across.

“I have a gift for if something makes me that uncomfortable, it’s now your problem. You will be as uncomfortable as I am. And that’s how I met that advice,” she added. “Why keep that to yourself? You’re giving me terrible advice. Why should you not feel the effects of this?”

Ashley McBryde takes pride in who she is and where she comes from. Growing up surrounded by bluegrass and roots music in Arkansas continues to influence her sound and storytelling to this day.

“I’m lucky because not only being raised in Arkansas, I was also taken to bluegrass festivals. By the time I was seven days old, I was at bluegrass festivals and that was a lot of my summer and a lot of my fall was spent in roots music, people playing their instruments into a microphone. There was nothing fancy about that.”

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Those early experiences helped shape McBryde’s love for storytelling and stripped-down musicianship, both of which remain a part of her creative process with each album she releases.

“A lot of that music is based in storytelling. A lot of it is singing what are sad lyrics in a hopeful and happy way that makes you want to listen to it. So that has never left my creative process. And everything being built from an acoustic guitar up has never left my creative process.”

Ashley McBryde is currently bringing her authentic self and unique storytelling to fans across the country on her headlining Into the Wild Tour. The “What If We Don’t” singer says that this run has already fulfilled her mission of creating a space where everyone feels like they’re part of the show. Not only does she show up to perform for the fans, but the listeners also show up for her in different ways each night.

“The crowds are doing this cool new thing where the fan club, the tribe is meeting up outside of the show and doing things…One night they made picket fences with razor wire wrapped around them and held those up during a part of the show…I love that the feeling of ownership that our crowd has of our show. They are not there only to watch a band make music. They’re there to be a part of the night together. And I think that sense of togetherness is something we desperately need all the time, especially when things are dicey.”

She added, “You come to my show and you feel okay for 90 minutes, you give me that same benefit for 90 minutes.”