Ashley McBryde Reveals How Her Rural Upbringing Influenced Her New Single “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs”

Ashley McBryde is ending 2024 on a high note with the release of her latest single “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs.” The track sees the Arkansas native leaning hard into the traditional country sound with plenty of fiddle and steel guitar to please even the staunchest purist. Lyrically, the song is a critique of the lack of discernibly country music in the genre today. In short, this is McBryde in top form.

Recently, McBryde sat down with Cowboys & Indians Magazine to discuss “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs.” During the conversation, she discussed the writing process and inspiration behind the song.

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Ashley McBryde Discusses “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs”

Ashley McBryde co-wrote “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs” with Trick Savage and Chris Harris while on the road in Arizona.

 “We were in our venue dressing room in Phoenix. Chris came up and said, ‘Whatever we write today, I just know there ain’t enough cowboy songs,’” McBryde recalled. “It’s like you threw one rawhide into the middle of several small terriers. Chris had his mandolin and Trick and I had our guitars,” she added. “We stopped two times to have a cigarette which is one of my favorite parts of writing a song. I’ll go smoke it out. Sometimes, when you take a drag of a cigarette, you come up with ‘ride off into the sunset.’ That change of scenery lets the next thing pop into your head,” she said of the writing process.

“This one was all about where we live and the genre we love, and realizing that the horse I rode in on got put out to pasture,” McBryde explained. “I came from Arkansas, then I moved to Memphis, and then I was playing bars in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana. Then I moved to Nashville. You just keep working really hard, because if you work hard enough, you’ll get better at what you do and you’ll have the things that you work hard for. But that’s just not the way it is anymore,” she added.

McBryde grew up in rural Arkansas. Her father was a game warden and conservationist. She learned many lessons from living life out there and gained wisdom from her father. “Cowboys are the ones doing what needs to be done before it is an emergency,” she said. “If you would simply be where you are, do what you say you’re gonna do, and mean what you say when you say it, it would simplify a lot of things,” McBryde added, sharing one of the most important lessons she learned from her upbringing.

Featured Image by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images for ACM