As Ashley McBryde releases new music following 2023’s The Devil I Know, she’s feeling like there “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs.”
The “One Night Standards” hitmaker explains exactly what she means.
“I’m not saying we all need to be cowboys. I’m not saying we all need to own horses or anything like that,” she tells ABC Audio. “But the way of life and the way that you approach things is what is cowboy to me: remembering someone’s name when you’ve met them and shook their hand, being willing to stand up for someone when they’re unable to stand up for themselves, or when they’re just in a weak moment, even if it makes you look like an idiot for a minute. Those things are cowboy to me.”
“And so, ‘Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs,”” she continues, “I’m so glad we got to write that, because we got to encapsulate some of the things that we think are missing from our lives that we’d like to have more of.”
Ashley finds plenty of “cowboy songs” in country music’s past, particularly in the ’90s.
“If you think of Mark Chestnutt, the song ‘I’ll Think of Something.’ And he says, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll think of something.’ That is cowboy,” she says. “Pam Tillis saying, ‘I’ve got a rough and tumble heart.’ That is cowboy.”
“Patty Loveless, holding on to ‘Nothin’ but the Wheel,”” Ashley adds, thinking of one more. “That is cowboy. And the way those songs made us feel, and the way they shaped who we are, that’s what’s missing from my life and what I’m starving for.”
It’s likely Ashley’s cowboy yearnings have been fed lately, as she’s been on the Leather Deluxe Tour with Cody Johnson.
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